For companies that do business in the channel, old competitors are becoming fiercer, and new competitors are cropping up at a blinding pace.

The industry as a whole is changing more quickly than ever, and IT Best of Breed has had several conversations in recent months in which VARs and solution providers have argued that companies that fail to adapt will soon be out of business.

That's a lot of pressure, and it can be seen in the faces, heard in the voices and read in the emails we get from channel marketing folks.

There's an art to marketing, and the channel would do well to be a little more artful. Frequently, we at IT Best of Breed are blitzed by marketing materials, press releases and pitches that leave us shaking our heads.

Thankfully, a new e-book published by Acrolinx has some very solid advice for cleaning up your marketing efforts and helping them make deeper, more meaningful connections with customers, vendors and the media.

The book, "Watch Your Tone," is all about crafting the things your company says. This sounds deceptively simple.