The Competitive Advantage

July 25, 2017

Why Are You Afraid of Marketing & Sales?

Twelve years ago, this month, I started my career in the Market Research industry. And it didn’t take very long for me to come to the conclusion that “This is an industry that does not embrace marketing & sales.”

Over the years, I have repeated that statement to scores of people – in all kinds of companies covering all kinds of roles – and guess what? Not a single person has ever disagreed with me. It’s amazing to see in 2017 just how many firms…

• Have a website that hasn’t been updated in years
• Have virtually no social media presence
• Have not published any thought leadership
• Have no proactive sales effort

July 18, 2017

The #1 Sales Activity You’re NOT Doing… or Doing Badly!

7 Ideas for Improving Your Follow-up Process

See if this sounds familiar… you attend a conference where you, once again, prove your ability as a networker. You meet a number of potential clients (a.k.a. “sales prospects”), have several solid conversations and collect a pocketful of business cards. All-in-all, not bad!

Then you return to the office and are diligent about sending out the “nice to meet you” emails as soon as you can. And then… crickets! No one responds or says they’re looking for a new vendor. At best, you get a few “nice to meet you, too” responses – but nothing more.

When that happens – and it always happens – what do you do?

July 11, 2017

My son quit his job last week to pursue his dream!

For the last two years – since graduating from college – my son has been working as a financial analyst for a healthcare consulting firm in Dallas. And it’s a great firm… fast-growing, profitable, a leader in its niche, beautiful offices, takes great care of its employees, and so on.

But he hasn’t been happy… he wants to be in New York and he wants to change industries (from healthcare to music/entertainment). So, he’s saved his money, quit the firm and is moving north! Next week!

July 4, 2017

Your Sales Forecast Doesn’t Have to be a Guessing Game!

Revenue makes everything else possible. It’s what powers the business engine. And the better we are at forecasting revenue (a.k.a. sales), the more effective we can be at planning for the other parts of the business – operations, staffing, product development, marketing, etc.

But sales forecasting is too often perceived as a ‘crystal ball’ activity… where we hope for some sort of cosmic intervention to give us the answer.

But if you don’t have a working crystal ball, the more likely scenario is this… your boss gets asked in December what he or she wants “next year’s revenue goal” to be. And the response is usually something like, “Well, we did a million dollars this year… and I’d like to see 20% growth… so let’s shoot for $1.2 Million next year.” And it’s done!

June 20, 2017

Why I left this webinar after just 10 minutes!

The two most common ways presenters butcher a webinar…

I sat in on a webinar last week… sort of. It was a presentation on Customer Journey Mapping and I was genuinely excited by the topic.

But after less than 10 minutes, I left! While the topic was certainly of interest to me, the delivery of it was so horrible that I just couldn’t sit through it.

June 5, 2017

Lead generation is a 3-step process.

Not every sales lead becomes a client.

On the other hand, you don’t have a single client that didn’t start out as a sales lead.

Sales leads are the beginning of the buying-n-selling process. Generating a steady supply of them is critical to the success of your business.

But the lead generation process is NOT as simple as grabbing a few business cards at a conference. Getting those ‘names’ is just Step 1 in a 3-step process.

May 30, 2017

Lazy sales & marketing people… UGH!

It happened again. [Actually, it happens pretty regularly.] I received an email – in this case, a LinkedIn message – from a company representative promoting a discount on their services for the summer.

In general, I’m opposed to salesy emails to begin with… but this one, like so many others, completely missed the mark with me. The note was promoting services targeted to market research firms and independent moderators. Our firm is neither of those.

Why do people responsible for sales & marketing think it’s OK to just blast out email sales pitches to anyone and everyone on their list?! It’s just lazy!

May 23, 2017

How to Max Out Lead Generation for MR Firms

Fact: Not every ‘sales lead’ becomes a client.

But every client was – at one time – a sales lead. Can’t happen any other way! Sales leads are the lifeblood of growth for every MR organization. Generating (and qualifying) them should be a top-priority strategy for everyone involved in sales and marketing at your firm.

There are numerous ways to generate sales leads, but the two most effective ones in our industry are:

• Gated content
• Conference participation