BY BRIAN ALM, EDITOR

We may be way out in front on this one, but we're going ahead anyway in the belief that it's better to be on top of a potential market opportunity early in the game than to wait until somebody else sees it and gets in high gear while you're still pondering. I'm talking about vacuum excavation, which is the subject of a special RM market/product focus on pages 56-63.

NES, this month's cover story (page 20), has found what may be an ideal business position: a core mix of selected specialty markets that provide stable, predictable business volumes to support the company's disciplined growth strategy. NES has found good niches and has gotten into them early in the game and has developed them. Some of these niche markets have had little attention from other rental companies, so NES can expand within them - i.e., increase "share of customer" - without much distraction from competitors.

Is niche, or specialty, marketing the key to your future? What niches might fit your operation - given your market area, product line, employees and customer base? Maybe something like vacuum excavation will be the niche for you.

A.R.A. Director of Education Maureen Conway leads off our six-part package of stories on the subject of teamwork. "Those who are truly interested in looking for increased satisfaction in the workplace, greater productivity and customer service," Conway says, have learned to tap the power of the team: they let go of the megaphone and listen for a change. "The true power of teamwork," she says, "is action in the workplace." The rest of our package tells how to make teamwork work, how to organize, motivate and empower a team and how to pick out the brutes who could make it fail, and get them on board.

Rental Management has won honors in three categories of The Communicator Awards 2000 Print Media competition, which "recognizes outstanding work in the communications field," according to the sponsoring organization.

Rental Management won the Award of Distinction in two categories - Magazine Cover Design (specifically for the August 1999 cover featuring Fiesta Rentals of West Palm Beach, Fla., designed by RM Art Director Jane Swanson) and Magazine Writing (for the February 2000 issue as a whole). RM also won an honorable mention in Feature Writing for the August 1999 cover story by Editor Brian Alm. There were 2,508 entries from throughout the United States and several other countries in this year's competition. About 19 percent of the entries won the Award of Distinction.

The last time Rental Management entered The Communicator Awards Print Media competition was in 1996, when RM won in the editorials category.