The Competitive Advantage

April 15, 2025

What the Masters Teaches Us About Building a Brand

I’m interrupting my 4-part sales management blog series (back next week) to talk about brands, logos, and customer loyalty. I had the opportunity to attend a day of the Masters golf tournament last week (yes, that’s my wife and me at Augusta National). It was my first time… and something I’ll never forget.

A few years ago, I wrote a post about going to Disney World with my family… and what a great job they did with their entire brand, paying attention to the details and creating an amazing customer experience. Well, I think that the Masters (and Augusta National) does just as good a job at that, if not better! Here’s why…

April 7, 2025

Create a Sales Plan for Your Seller-Doer Sales Team

Part 2 of a 4-part series for sales managers.

In Part 1 of this series, we explored how to create a sales-friendly culture… that is, to help make your firm the kind of firm that likes, respects and appreciates what your seller-doers make possible for everyone else there.

Now, with your culture improving and a seller-doer sales team in place, it’s time to create your sales plan… that is, your “roadmap” to help you and your team achieve sales success. Following is an outline to help you create that plan:

April 1, 2025

Getting the Most from Your Seller-Doer Sales Team

Part 1 of a 4-part series for sales managers.

The vast majority of salespeople at Research firms are “seller-doers.” That is, they are senior managers, subject matter experts or longtime researchers, who have also been tasked with selling… part-time. And not surprisingly, their sales manager is most often the business owner, president or managing director who has also been tasked with managing the seller-doers… part-time.

If you’re one of those sales managers (with little or, likely, no formal sales management training), this 4-part blog series on sales management will cover the fundamentals to make sure you get the most from your seller-doer sales team.

February 25, 2025

My Best Sales Tip? Ask more questions!

I was invited last week to be a guest lecturer at UT-Southern – a satellite campus for the University of Tennessee – located in the town of Pulaski. It’s a quaint campus about a 60-mile drive south from where I live.

This was my third visit to the campus, and this time, I was speaking to an upper-level entrepreneurship class (note: every student in the class had a business they were planning to launch upon graduation… and two had already started them – an impressive group!)

One of the ‘lessons learned’ that I shared with them was that if you are the business owner… then you’re in sales! No exceptions.

February 18, 2025

Is This the ‘New’ Sales Pitch?

I recently had a conversation with a client (an MR agency) who was describing a recent selling opportunity that came their way. They were asked by a large healthcare system to meet. Great news, right? But rather than being asked to deliver a full-blown pitch presentation, the buyer’s team and the agency’s team just sat around the table… and talked! No PowerPoint. No handouts. Just… talking.

I love this!

February 5, 2025

Seller-Doers: What Are Your Goals for This Year?

No, not your revenue goals… but your personal growth goals?

And not those silly New Year’s resolutions that are almost certainly forgotten by now… but personal goals that will help you develop into a true sales professional. Don’t have them? Well, let me give you a few things to think about…

January 22, 2025

Inside the Mind of a Research Buyer, Part 2

In our last post, we started this blog series based on interviews with research buyers I had the pleasure of meeting at the end of last year. Their insight into how buyer’s buy should be required reading for all MR agency employees. Here’s the second in that series…

Name: Brad Dancer
Title: President & General Manager
Company: WSHU Public Radio
Years at company: 1, after 22 years at National Geographic (EVP, Global Data, Insights & Brand Standards) and 3 years at WWE (SVP, Global Strategy & Data Analytics)

January 7, 2025

Inside the Mind of a Research Buyer, Part 1

This past November, I had the privilege of hosting and moderating the Insights Association’s webinar series on sales. [A terrific event, by the way!] As part of this program, I had the chance to meet with several research buyers representing a variety of businesses across the US. And a few of them agreed to allow me to interview them for this blog. Here’s a transcript from the first of those interviews…

Name: Karen Kraft
Title: Associate Director, Consumer Insights & Analytics
Company: Johnsonville
Years at co: 6