The Competitive Advantage

August 31, 2021

How Differentiation Can Help You Win the Competitive Battle

Do a quick favor for me and read through the following statements (taken from actual websites in our industry)…

• “Every project that comes through our doors gets senior-level attention every step of the way.”
• “[We are] committed to working with clients to identify the right solutions to their specific challenges.”
• “[We are] a full-service custom research firm that develops long-term partnerships with its clients.”
• “We know how to truly listen and collaborate – so you gain a partner, not just a vendor.”
• “We consult with Clients to translate what consumers say and do into insights and actionable recommendations.”

I’ll bet I’m not going too far out on a limb to say that your firm’s website likely contains several of the same sentiments, maybe using almost exactly the same words.

August 17, 2021

Knowing Your Competitors Can Help You Grow Your Business

There are three primary categories of information that impact your marketing & sales strategy… your Company, your Clients and your Competitors. The ‘3 Cs!’

If I were to ask you what’s going on with your Company… you’d probably tell me about your experienced team, your products and services, revenue numbers, industry trends, and so on. If I asked about your Clients, you’d probably tell me about the markets or industries you serve, how they’re using your services, who your Top 10 clients are and the buyer persona you target.

But when I ask about your Competitors… I’m likely to get a shoulder shrug. Or a comment like, “all firms in the industry are my competition,” which somehow – in your mind – absolves you of having the need for any real knowledge of what and who you’re competing against. That needs to stop.

August 3, 2021

Hiring Your First Sales Rep? Follow These Steps. [Part 3]

Welcome to the third and final installment in this series on hiring your first sales rep. In Part 1, we focused on getting ready internally for the hire, with an emphasis on culture, structure and compensation. Last week, in Part 2, we explored the actual hiring and training of that new rep. In today’s post, we talk about how to best support your first sales rep – the investments you’ll need to make on their behalf and how to best manage them for maximum results.

July 27, 2021

Hiring Your First Sales Rep? Follow These Steps. [Part 2]

Last week, in Part 1 of this series on hiring your first sales rep, we focused on getting ready internally for the hire, with an emphasis on culture, structure and compensation. In this post, we’ll explore the actual hiring and training of that new rep.

Hiring your first sales rep

Most importantly – and everything else pales in comparison – hire for selling skills and sales experience (communication skills, phone selling, presentations, proven sales success, etc.). You can train them on market research once they’re on board. Yeah, I know… that recommendation is going to rub a lot of folks the wrong way, but remember why you’re hiring them… to sell, not to do research. That’s the job of your ops team. If they have some market research background, great! But selling skills and experience are your first priority.

July 20, 2021

Hiring Your First Sales Rep? Follow These Steps.

If you’re like 90%+ of the firms in our industry, your business development efforts are led by seller-doers… business owners, leaders and managers who, in addition to their primary job, have the added responsibility of growing revenue for their firm.

But if that’s not working out for you and you want (or need) to more proactively grow revenue, you might be considering bringing on a full-time sales rep… someone who’s only job is to grow revenue. If that describes you, this series of articles on how to best do that can help.

July 6, 2021

Improve Your Sales Presentation… Get Rid of ‘About Us’

Take a look at your current sales presentation deck. If you’re like the [vast] majority of firms, it starts with slides labeled ‘About Us’ or something similar. And generally, not just one or two slides, but a bunch of them.

Here’s my advice… delete them all!

When you stand in front of the room – or the zoom – to deliver a sales presentation, never start with ‘About Us.’ Why not? Because no one in the room cares! They already know what you do. If they didn’t, you wouldn’t have been invited to present.

June 23, 2021

Stop These 3 Bad Social Selling Habits Today!

Social selling using LinkedIn has been part of the sales landscape for several years, but it has exploded over the past year because of the pandemic. For many businesses, the cancellation of conferences and trade shows has meant the loss of one of their primary lead generation opportunities. So, they turned to social selling on LinkedIn. The problem is that it’s being done badly… too many people in sales have taken their old, bad sales habits and just moved them over to this new channel.

June 15, 2021

If You’re in Sales, Your Job Is Not to Sell!

Yeah, I know… sounds kind of wrong, doesn’t it? But let me finish that statement. Your job is not to sell… it’s to help buyers buy.

This philosophy is based on the premise that ‘people don’t like to be sold, but they love to buy.’ Think about your last car buying experience. There’s nothing that feels quite as good as driving off the dealer’s lot in a beautiful, brand new car. But leading up to it, you dreaded going to the dealership because of the pushy salespeople. You didn’t want to experience that sort of pressure or be forced into buying something that wasn’t quite right.

Now think about your role as a sales rep or a seller-doer. If you make a sale, that’s good for you… you win. But maybe it’s not what’s best for the client. However, if you help the client make a good buying decision, that’s a win-win.