The Competitive Advantage

August 25, 2020

How to Build Trust with Buyers

One of the guiding principles of B2B sales is that ‘a buyer won’t buy from you until they get to know you… then like you… then trust you.” It can’t and it won’t happen any other way.

And of those, ‘trust’ is the most difficult to achieve. But ‘trust’ isn’t just about you. Your firm (and its staff and its services & products) also has to be trusted by the buyer. So, how can you help a buyer reach that level of trust in you and your firm?

August 11, 2020

Sales Managers Need to Be Sales Leaders

I struck a nerve last week.

The article I wrote – ‘Why full-time sales reps fail in our industry’ – was one of the most widely-read articles that I’ve written in the past 8 years. It also generated a lot of engagement and comments on LinkedIn.

But there’s more to the topic than was covered last week. So, this week, I want to talk about a couple of common sales tactics that – in most cases – are executed very poorly in our industry. And why that happens.

August 4, 2020

Why Full-time Sales Reps Fail in Our Industry

Hint: It’s almost never the sales rep’s fault.

There is an all-too-common occurrence among Market Research firms. It seems that when they finally summon the nerve (and resources) to hire a full-time, 100% business development professional (i.e. a ‘sales rep’), that sales rep fails (and is subsequently fired) almost every time. And pretty quickly, too. I can count on one hand the number of firms I know where there has been some level of success with this structure.

The question is, “WHY does it fail?” What is going on at all of these research firms that almost predisposes the sales rep to failure?

July 28, 2020

12 Things to Do When Launching a New Service or Product

Congratulations! With the extra time you’ve had on your hands recently, you and your colleagues decided the time was right to launch a new service. Not just a small upgrade to what you’re already doing… but something entirely new. That’s terrific news.

Probably.

July 21, 2020

The Top 10 Marketing & Sales Blog Posts of 2020 (so far!)

In the first six months of this year, more than 5,000 visitors spent some time on our blog, The Competitive Advantage. A deep and genuine “thank you” goes out to all of you who visited.

At the half-way point in the year, I thought it would be interesting to look back and see which articles attracted the most readers. Not surprisingly, several of the top posts were about conducting marketing & sales during the pandemic. But not all of them.

July 14, 2020

12 Touchpoints While Waiting to Hear Back from a Sales Prospect

I signed-up a new client last week. Pretty excited about it, too. And it only took 2 years to make it happen! :-0

Do you have clients and prospects that are slow to respond? OK, maybe not 2-years-slow – and that was certainly an anomaly for us – but waiting to hear over a period of weeks, or even months, can be very challenging and incredibly frustrating.

June 23, 2020

Make Role Playing the Centerpiece of Your Sales Training. Here’s Why.

True story: My first job after college was as a sales rep for the DuPont Company. While much of the 3-month training program was technical in nature, we also spent a good deal of time developing our selling skills. And on one particular day, we were tasked with doing some role playing (and it was to be videotaped!). My training scenario was that I was visiting a client (played by the Sales Trainer) who started complaining vehemently about the terrible quality of our product. After 30 seconds of being berated by the client and trying to respond appropriately, I just froze up, looked at the camera and said, “Help me!”

June 16, 2020

The Best Marketing Strategy? “Try It and See!”

While there have been a few remakes over the years… many of us remember the very first Life Cereal commercial featuring ‘Mikey’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgB25WBeBxA) which debuted in 1990. It features a couple of young brothers who didn’t know what to expect from a new breakfast cereal their parents gave them. So, they pass it on to their little brother, Mikey, who – to no one’s surprise – tries it and likes it!