The Competitive Advantage

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

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).