Tech stocks closed modestly higher a day ahead of Cisco’s (NASDAQ: CSCO) quarterly earnings report, but blue chips sagged despite a couple of blockbuster mergers.

Cisco was down a fraction ahead of its results. Analysts are looking for earnings of 31 cents a share on a 15 percent sales decline to $8.7 billion, according to Thomson Reuters, but more importantly will be Cisco’s comments about order trends.

Cisco also announced a technology partnership with EMC (NYSE: EMC) and VMware (NYSE: VMW).

Chip stocks were weak after Morgan Stanley sounded a warning about rising inventories. Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) and Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT) were lower on the news, and Micron (NYSE: MU) and SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK) fell on a Wedbush Morgan downgrade.

AMAT will reports its earnings on Nov. 11. HP (NYSE: HPQ) will report on Nov. 23, and Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) on Nov. 19.

Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) rebounded strongly a day after a Citi downgrade on competition from Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android.

Sonic (NASDAQ: SNIC) surged on a video download partnership with Best Buy (NYSE: BBY).

Ness Technologies (NASDAQ: NSTC) fell 18 percent on its results and guidance.

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Lisa Barone reports that a Citibank and Gfk Roper study found that 76 percent of small business owners don’t find social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn helpful in generating leads and business (Can SMB Owners Make Social Media Useful?, Small Business Trends).

Lisa’s take on this is that it’s not that social media isn’t or can’t be useful; it’s just that it takes so much time. The solution? Time management. You need to know why you’re using social media and plan in advance where and how you’re going to engage.

Lisa’s post is full of tips for focusing your time and energy. Planning and scheduling are key, she says, and there are many tools that can help you avoid overload and stay organized such as “Tweetdeck, HootSuite or Seesmic to help you manage conversation and schedule tweets ahead of time” and “Google Alerts via either email or RSS to keep track of social media mentions.”

What I found really useful is her point about establishing a “strong listening station” to combat what I’ve found to be the biggest problem using social media: immediacy. How do you keep up with real-time conversations when you’re a person who isn’t glued to the Web all day and can’t handle constant interruptions?

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As a small business owner, you may be new to selling or marketing your product. Selling your product, however, will keep your business alive. To be successful,you need to understand sales and marketing. Jean Scheid takes a look at sales tips that will work for you.

What Are the Top Ten Selling Tips?

You’ve probably heard the old saying, “the customer comes first,” but that won’t get you far in selling your product. Browse the Internet for sales tips and you’ll find many so what’s the secret to selling success? Here are top ten selling tips that can help you sell to almost any customer:

Know Your Customer-Base – This means watching and listening to your customers as well as knowing their spending trends, base incomes for your sales area, and who is the decision-maker when you want to close the sale. Knowing these things upfront can be gold in successful selling. Offer Good Solutions – Instead of looking at a sale as only a sale, think of it as a solution. By selling your product, you are meeting some sort of customer need. Identify customers needs and turn your “sales” into “solutions.” Go the Extra Mile – Customers are delighted to get something for nothing.

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John Arnold has had many roles in his nearly four years with Constant Contact. For those of you not familiar with Constant Contact, it is an email marketing company that has been at the forefront of the email marketing industry for over 10 years. Many of you out there might have done an email marketing campaign while those who are new entrepreneurs this might be a thing you have heard of but don’t know much about it.

John is the author of E-Mail Marketing for Dummies and co-author of the comprehensive desk reference Web Marketing All-In-One for Dummies. John is presently the Director of Training and Certification. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with him and talk with him about Constant Contact and email marketing trends. Here is a transcript of that interview:

Steve: John, Constant Contact has been around for over 10 years and as email marketing has evolved do you think that social media has been the biggest shift in online communications?

John: Clearly social media is getting a lot of attention from marketers, and I think it’s a good idea to be aware of the possibilities and make a few moves. A v

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