The Competitive Advantage

March 31, 2020

Stuck-at-home marketing & sales, part 3

6 MORE things to start doing while you’re hunkered down during the pandemic.

In the past two articles (3/18 and 3/24), I listed out a number of low-cost/no-cost marketing & sales ideas you might want to consider implementing while you’ve likely got a little extra time on your hands during the pandemic.

I wanted to continue that theme this week with 6 more ideas…

March 24, 2020

Stuck-at-home marketing & sales, part 2

5 MORE things you can do while you’re hunkered down during the pandemic.

In last week’s post, I outlined 7 low-cost/no-cost marketing & sales ideas you could implement while you had a little extra time on your hands during this COVID-19 outbreak. Since it looks like this ‘new normal’ will be with us for a while, here are 5 more marketing & sales activities to work on while your new office is the kitchen table:

March 18, 2020

Stuck-at-home marketing & sales, part 1

7 low-cost/no-cost things to do with the extra time on your hands.

We’re in the midst of an unusual and unprecedented time period. Business owners simply don’t know how to deal with the COVID-19 crisis.

Some are promoting their services that can help right now… for example, offering to conduct online qual research, rather than doing in-person focus groups. Others are mentioning their enhanced healthy employee procedures. And that’s fine.

March 1, 2020

“But we’re a really good partner.”

3 Steps to True Big-Client Partnerships

I had a conversation last week with a friend of mine, the well-known CEO of a large market research firm. He was telling me about the time when he first joined his firm and, as part of his onboarding, reviewed their top 10 clients. One of them was a Fortune 100 company, a manufacturer of consumer food & beverage products… a brand known around the world. He was excited to learn that this company was his firm’s largest client and that his firm was a “good partner” to them.

February 26, 2020

Don’t Just Show Up! 19 Hacks for Conference Networking Success.

At this time of year, firms throughout our industry are gearing up for Spring conferences – Quirk’s, IIeX, Qual360, AAPOR, NEXT, plus scores of smaller regional and vertical events. They’re preparing to spend hundreds of man hours and thousands of dollars to send a couple of their key personnel to a few of these events to learn and network. Will it be worth? Often… it’s not.

So, to be sure you get maximum ROI from the conferences you’ll be attending, here are 19 hacks to help in your preparation:

February 18, 2020

5 Reasons Why Former Clients Will Come Back to You

True story: Over the past two weeks, four different firms reached to me to ask about our services and how we might best work together. What makes this a bit unusual is that – at some point in the past – I had a relationship with every one of these firms.

February 11, 2020

Sell Like a Doctor… it’s Really the Only Way

Unfortunately, I’ve spent a lot if time over the past few weeks with doctors. And in the end, it looks like surgery will be the solution to my problem. In fact, it’s the only solution.

I don’t think of doctors as ‘salespeople,’ but they are. They could not thrive on just office visits, so ‘selling’ surgical services is an important part of their business model.

But here’s the thing… my doctor didn’t really ‘sell’ me on surgery. I made the decision to ‘buy’ it. Because it is the best solution to my problem.

And that’s the way ALL selling should be.

February 2, 2020

In Our Digital World, Do We ‘Crave’ the Human Touch?

STORY 1: I recently reconnected with an old friend who owns a large B2B publishing company, producing very targeted industrial magazines. As part of their service to advertisers, they also produce a number of vertical trade shows (aligned with those magazines).

When I asked about his publishing business, he said that it was doing fine… but then he added, “The trade shows are growing like crazy!”