The Competitive Advantage

December 6, 2016

4 Easy Tips for a Website Update by the End of the Year

Planning for revenue growth in 2017: Part 5 of 6

If you’ve been reading along with this series for the past several weeks, you know that we’ve covered several fundamental, but critical, ways to enhance your marketing & sales as you move into 2017, including:

• Understanding the perception of your firm in the marketplace
• Sprucing up your LinkedIn profile
• Starting to blogging
• Picking up the phone

Today, we explore what should be at the hub of your marketing efforts – your website… and how to do a website update.

Without suggesting you embark on a complete re-do of your website – especially before the end of 2016 – here are 4 easy tips to help get your website ready for 2017:

November 29, 2016

What do your clients really think about you? Their perception matters!

Planning for revenue growth in 2017: Part 4 of 6

This series began with a discussion about effective use of the telephone… then we moved onto blogging… and last week, LinkedIn. Today, we tackle understanding the perception of your firm.

If I were to ask you what each of your clients think about you, you would probably say something about them generally liking you… after all, they’re sending you their business. And you’d probably be right.

But what if you’re not?

November 21, 2016

Planning for revenue growth in 2017: Part 3 of 6

5 Ways to Spruce up your LinkedIn Profile

In the first two weeks of this 6-week series on getting ready for growth in 2017, we discussed:

• Reaching out to past clients
• Blogging

Today, we tackle social media… specifically – how to improve and enhance your LinkedIn profile.

Our research shows that the first action a prospective client will take when conducting their due diligence on new suppliers is to go to their websites. No surprise. The second thing? They visit the LinkedIn profiles of the firm’s key executives and the ‘sales rep.’

So, it’s critical that your LinkedIn profiles are as up-to-date and complete as possible. To that end, here are 5 tips for sprucing yours up…

November 15, 2016

Planning for revenue growth in 2017: Part 2 of 6

As many of us are sitting down to start thinking and planning for next year, we’re posting this 6-part blog series highlighting a number of proven marketing & sales tactics that you can employ to help with revenue growth in 2017. Last week, we kicked-off this series discussing effective use of the telephone.

This week… Start Blogging.

November 8, 2016

Planning for revenue growth in 2017: Part 1 of 6

It’s getting to be that time of year… when we start looking ahead to next year and thinking about and planning for how we’re going to move our business forward (and upward). To help with that, we present this 6-part blog series. Each week, we’ll outline a different – and fairly easy to implement – activity that you can employ to get a leg up on revenue growth in 2017.

October 31, 2016

Revenue Growth? Try the ‘5% Challenge’… it’s Brilliant!

I’ve known John Boyens for more than 15 years now. John is the Founder of the Boyens Group and is one of the top sales and management consultants and trainers in the country.

John recently delivered a presentation on revenue growth at a conference (see photo) where the topic was his “5% Challenge!” The premise of his challenge is that several types of small, incremental gains (5% gains, to be exact!) can lead to significant revenue growth.

As I looked at the details of the challenge, I couldn’t help but think that they were a great fit for our industry, as well.

Challenge 1: Improve client retention by 5%.

Look at your business over the past 5 years. What percentage of your clients in 2012 returned in 2013? And what percentage of your 2013 clients returned in 2014. And so on… and so on. Imagine if you could have retained just 5% more of your client base… what would that mean for your business?

October 26, 2016

Stop Setting Stupid Sales Goals… Think Small Instead

I had a boss (the company Founder) several years ago who would set the annual sales goals for our company… without much regard for what was really happening in the marketplace. The trouble was – and no surprise here – that he set ridiculously high goals (think 50%+ growth or more). Then, the rest of the team would jump through hoops to re-do all of the plan and budgets… all the while knowing that there was no way in hell we would come close to achieving those goals.

That’s NOT how to do it.

October 18, 2016

Your Key Accounts Need More Love!

Here are 6 ways to make that happen.

In the 4+ years we’ve been open, I don’t think I’ve spoken with a single research firm that doesn’t have 40-50-60% (or more) of its revenue tied up with just 3, 4 or 5 clients. Losing a small client is bad enough, but losing one of these ‘Key Accounts’ can be devastating. So, what can you do to ensure this doesn’t happen to you?