The Competitive Advantage

June 16, 2026

If You Win on Price… You’ll Lose on Price

Since the first Neanderthal was going cave-to-cave with his “luxury animal skins,” selling on price (that is, lowering the price when the buyer objects to the cost) has been a standard M.O. for the vast majority of “untrained” sales people.

And, to be fair, there is an understandable logic to doing it… often, it will win you the sale. But doing that also brings with it a number of problems… and why you should never sell on price:

June 11, 2026

Do Your Seller-Doers Have Permission to Sell?

Yeah, I’m sure you have given them some sort of tacit permission (“Mary, I’m promoting you to seller-doer… now go sell something!”)… but do they have PERMISSION?! Have you created an environment where your seller-doers want to succeed and really can succeed… and not fall back into the trap of defaulting to doing project work? Let me explain…

May 26, 2026

The Biggest Mistake Most Sales Meetings Make (and How to Fix It)

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of being invited to sit in on a number of my clients’ sales meetings. These were all small-to-midsize firms with a team of 3 to 15 seller-doers (and in some cases, full-time salespeople). All of these meetings were very similar… and all of them made the same mistake!

In every case, the person responsible for managing sales would spend most of the time going around the room (or the zoom) and asking each seller-doer for a recap of their current sales activity and pipeline.

WHY?!

May 5, 2026

2026 Is 33% Over! Are You on Track to Hit Your Sales Goals?

As of last Thursday (April 30^th), the year is already 33% gone! Hard to believe. But it’s also a chance to reflect on and assess what’s happened so far… and maybe to make some tweaks to your plans for the rest of the year.

March 24, 2026

Don’t Waste Another Minute! 3 Proven Ways to Protect and Grow Your Key Accounts.

All clients matter… but BIG clients matter more. They just do. Big clients are your business’ foundation. They are what allow you to make payroll and keep your lights on.

But there’s a problem with big clients. For most firms, there are 3, 4 or 5 clients that account for 40, 50 or 60% (or more) of your revenue. Which is great… until you lose one. You never want to lose any clients, but the loss of one of your big clients can be catastrophic!

March 9, 2026

You Can’t Manage What You Don’t See

Great sales management happens IRL (in real life), not on a spreadsheet.

Here’s a fairly common scenario… one of your seller-doers is not hitting her sales goals. But it’s not a question of activity level levels, she’s doing all the right things… and plenty of them. But she’s still falling short.

So, if it’s not the choice of her activities or the quantity of them, it must be the quality – how well she’s doing them.

February 24, 2026

The Fastest Way to Improve Sales Performance? Model What Already Works.

We’ve all heard the phrase that, “You learn more when you fail than when you succeed.” Well, that may not be exactly true when it comes to selling, especially inside of research agencies. Maybe your salespeople can learn to be better at selling when they model their sales behavior after the most successful performer(s) on your team.

February 17, 2026

“Trust” Isn’t the New Currency. It’s Always Been the Price of Admission.

I’ve read a number of articles recently with a title like, “Trust is the new currency.” There’s even a book by that name. And every time I see an article like that, I laugh! Since when is ‘trust’ a new concept in business… and especially for salespeople?

OK, I’ll admit that with AI becoming more prominent – and all of the things it can do that might be hard to describe as ‘authentic’ – trust may be more important now than it ever has been.

But a new idea? Since when was trust not a factor in sales?