The Competitive Advantage

February 5, 2014

Marketing’s Dirty Little Secret… It’s Not an Exact Science!

Here are the kinds of questions I regularly hear from my clients…

• “What email open rate should I expect?”
• “How many downloads will my new white paper get?”
• “What’s the average bid conversion rate?”
• “What are the ‘right’ steps for the lead nurturing process?”

The correct answer for all of the above is… “It depends!”  Sorry… wish I had a better answer.

January 29, 2014

15 easy, low-cost marketing and sales tactics for 2014 – Part 1

I’ll bet that when it comes to marketing and sales, you’re handling the big stuff reasonably well: You have a website and maybe a blog; are somewhat active on social media; have a listing in the appropriate directories; network at a couple of conferences each year; and have a decent capabilities presentation.

But so does everyone else!

Where you can really begin to separate your firm from all the others is in how you plan and execute some of the smaller marketing and sales tactics. These are the little things that everyone thinks are easy to do – and they really aren’t that difficult – but they do require some effort to do well.

January 29, 2014

Just starting (or re-starting) your marketing & sales efforts? Follow these 4 important guidelines.

I had coffee last week with the principals from a small, local firm.  Been around several years, reasonably successful… and doing virtually nothing to grow their business.

What their inactivity boiled down to – and it applies to pretty much all small firms – is that everyone there wears a bunch of hats, most of which have to do with taking care of clients.  I get it.  And it’s not that they don’t want to grow their business, the problem is that no one is dedicated to marketing & sales and no one allocates much (if any) time to the firm’s growth.  Consequently, not much growth is going on.

Sound familiar?

January 22, 2014

Are your clients ALWAYS right?

When I first got started in business, I used to say that “the client is always right.”

Once I got a little time under my belt, that morphed into “the client is always right, but they aren’t always correct.”

Now, after three decades in business, it’s “the client is often right, but when they aren’t… it’s time to talk.”

Here are the 3 times when you must have a “direct” conversation with your clients…

January 15, 2014

The Customer Experience: Make it Easy to do Business with your Firm

My wife and I had to run to the mall this past weekend… one of the stops was Banana Republic to pay a credit card bill that was almost due.  On the way over, my wife mentioned to me that she really liked Banana Republic – that it was one of her favorite stores.

Spoiler alert… those feelings were about to come to an end!

January 8, 2014

The 3 Basic Principles of the Customer Experience

My wife and I just finished going through the process of deciding which health insurance we wanted for 2014.  Believe it or not, even with all of the “stuff” going on right now related to health insurance, the process actually started out just fine.  And then the wheels fell off.

January 2, 2014

Track your revenue this year… really track it!

Ah… the start of a new year.  The excitement.  The possibilities.  The same ol’ stuff?!

Before you can decide where you want to go, you need to understand where you’ve been… and the following little exercise can help you leverage the past to think more effectively and more strategically about the future of your firm.

December 23, 2013

13 Lessons for Researchers Who Don’t Want (or Like) to Sell

Question: How can you tell if a market researcher is extroverted?

Answer: He looks at your shoes when he’s talking to you!

I’ve written before about how the skill set to be good at market research and the skill set to be good at business development are very, very different.  And yet, at many – if not most – research agencies, there are researchers who fell (or were pushed!) into a sales position that don’t necessarily have the background or experience to be successful.

If that describes you… then maybe this article can help.  Below are 13 suggestions you can implement to enhance your selling efforts: