The Competitive Advantage

May 6, 2025

Build Your Awareness… Build Your Business!

There are a couple of statements I hear fairly often from MR firms, especially smaller ones, and they go something like this… “We’re a well-kept secret” or “We want to break into a new in industry, but no one knows us there.”

These two statements get at an immutable truth… that buyers can’t buy from you if they don’t know you exist.

April 30, 2025

The Job of a Sales Manager? To Manage AND Coach!

Part 4 of a 4-part series on managing seller-doers.

When we hear the term, “sales manager,” most people think about that person managing their sales team. Not only is that job description incomplete… it’s also wrong.

In a nutshell, the role of the sales manager is two-fold… to manage the sales process and systems and to coach the members of their sales team. Let me explain…

April 22, 2025

Create a Seller-Doer Commission Plan to Achieve Your Desired Results

Part 3 of a 4-part series on managing seller-doers.

In Part 1 of this series for those managing a team of seller-doers, I wrote about creating a sales culture in your organization. In Part 2, we explored the process for creating your sales plan. And in this part, we’ll talk about compensating your seller-doers for their sales efforts.

Introduction

There are too many types and variations of compensation plans to explore them all, so let’s focus on the most common structure: a base salary plus commission plan, where a commission is paid as a percentage of sales.

Why Sales Commissions?

There are two reasons that a firm would/should elect to install a commission plan for its seller-doers…

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 on managing seller-doers.

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

Creating a Sales-Friendly Culture

Part 1 of a 4-part series on managing seller-doers.

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!