The Competitive Advantage

August 12, 2025

Inside the Mind of a Research Buyer, Part 4

In our last post, we continued this blog series based on interviews with research buyers I had the pleasure of meeting over the last couple of months. Their insight into how buyer’s buy should be required reading for all MR agency employees. Here’s #4 in that series…

Name:  Brett Garrison
Title:  Manager, Market Insights
Company:  Aflac
Years at company:  8

August 5, 2025

Inside the Mind of a Research Buyer, Part 3

Earlier this year, I interviewed a couple of research buyers around the topic of how they connect with and buy from their agency partners. They were (and still are) among the most read blogs I’ve ever posted. Well, as a result of hosting & moderating the Insights Association’s Summer Sales Webinar Series last month – and attending the Quirks NY Event – I’ve added a few more interviews to the list. I hope you find value in their perspective…

Name: Jen Lovinus
Title: Senior Manager, MRO Insights
Company: Grainger
Years at company: 3

July 29, 2025

The Future is Face-to-Face

I was reading a post on LinkedIn yesterday, talking about AI, and suggesting that one of the fallouts from it is that in the very near future, we won’t know if what we see and hear online or in apps is ‘real’ or was created by AI. Because of that, Marc Cuban – billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks – is predicting “an explosion of face-to-face engagements, events, and jobs.”

Well, that sure seemed to be the case last week at The Quirk’s Event in New York.

July 21, 2025

What Buyers Want

And I know this because they told me!

Over the past couple of weeks, I had the pleasure and privilege of hosting and moderating the Insights Association’s Sales Accelerator Series. All the presenters were terrific, including the very insightful research buyers who participated in a panel discussion on the last day.

June 24, 2025

Want More Sales Success? Slow Down!

I was having a conversation earlier this week with one of my clients about his sales process. He had what was ostensibly a two-step process: Connect with someone on LinkedIn, then get them to see his software demonstration. And while he had decent success getting connections, and even some success getting prospects to sit through a demo, not much was happening after that. My advice to him? Slow down.

June 11, 2025

Skills Training? It’s Not Just for Research.

I was reading an article the other day entitled, “14% of Our Sellers Drive 80% of Our Revenue!” Kind of a staggering statistic… but not all that surprising.

Are you familiar with the Pareto Principle, also known as the 20/80 Rule? The theory applies to a lot of business situations… for example, that 20% of your clients generate 80% of your revenue; that 20% of your services drive 80% of your profits; and in this case, that 20% of your sales team generates 80% of your sales.

OK, but what if you’re a sales team of one (or two or three), as is often the case with small research firms in our industry? Well, statistically speaking, you likely fall into the 80% (industry-wide) of those who are not generating as much revenue as the other 20% in the industry. Sorry… no offense.

June 2, 2025

Churn Baby Churn, Part 2

The REAL reasons clients leave you.

In last week’s blog post, we explored why it’s so important to focus on keeping and growing your existing clients… that is, to minimize ‘churn.’ And, in fact, it ought to be your #1 priority when planning for revenue growth!

The question is, why do you have churn in the first place? That is, what are you doing – or not doing – that causes seemingly good clients to leave your firm and take their business elsewhere?

May 29, 2025

Churn Baby Churn!

One of the tools we use when onboarding a new client is something we call the ‘5-Year Revenue Review.’ It’s a report that your accounting team can easily provide: Revenue by Client by Year for the past 5 years. And what you can learn from it is interesting and eye-opening.

Many business leaders regularly look at revenue year-to-date and compare it to last-year-to-date. And that’s fine. That trouble is that even if there’s overall growth, it may be hiding problems lurking beneath the surface. But when look at a 5-year report, you’ll see gaps and trends in the data that a 2-year analysis can’t reveal.