The Competitive Advantage

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

May 16, 2017

Content marketing stalled by writer’s block? Here’s what I did.

For the past five years, I have posted a blog once a week, virtually without fail. As a provider of content marketing services, we not only have to talk the talk… we also have to walk the walk. But after nearly 250 posts… I hit a wall. For the first time since we started Harpeth Marketing, I had writers’ block.

It’s not that I couldn’t come up with any good ideas for posts, I couldn’t come up with any ideas… period! It was truly frustrating.

May 2, 2017

Measuring Sales… it’s Not just about Revenue

In my first sales job after college (many, many, many years ago), my first Vice President once said to me, “I don’t care how many sales calls you make… as long as you hit your sales goal.”

And for him – because he was being judged on revenue – that makes perfect sense. But for the day-to-day management of salespeople, that’s a bad way to manage. Let me explain…

While the end goal is, of course, to generate revenue… it’s the steps in the process they get you there. Make no phone calls, send out no emails, deliver no capabilities presentations… and you’ll generate no revenue. So clearly, sales activity is critical to sales success!

April 18, 2017

Former Clients + Coffee = New Business Opportunities

This morning, I met a former client over a cup of coffee. Though we haven’t done business together in a couple of years, we have stayed in touch… first, because he’s a recipient of our firm’s on-going marketing efforts (emails, social media posts, etc.), and second, because we take the time for an occasional meeting over a cup of coffee (once or twice each year).

April 11, 2017

Using webinars for marketing? Follow these 4 guidelines.

Webinars can help you achieve a number of marketing objectives… building awareness for your firm, positioning you (the presenter) as a Subject Matter Expert and, of course, generating sales leads. We like webinars so much, we started our own program this year.

And as we’ve gotten into this program, we’ve learned 4 key lessons that can be helpful to anyone with webinars in their marketing & sales plan.

April 4, 2017

The 3 Cardinal Rules of Building Awareness

A simple fact: Potential buyers can’t buy from you if they don’t know you exist… or if you never come to mind for them.

So, whatever your marketing & sales plans, strategies or tactics… it all starts with being known. That is, it all starts with building awareness. Period.

March 27, 2017

7 Selling Behaviors Seller-Doers Must Employ to be Successful.

Our industry is full of sell-doers. You know, those independent consultants, owners of small firms and executives at large firms who spend part of their time serving as a sales rep for their business.

Do they want to be selling? Generally, no… but without a dedicated salesperson on their team, the responsibility falls to them.

And why don’t they want to be selling? Primarily, because they did not get into market research to sell, they got into it to do research. Selling is often a task they’re uncomfortable with, not trained for and just don’t like to do.