The Competitive Advantage

December 23, 2013

6 Marketing & Sales Lessons I Learned from our Workshop Participants

We just wrapped up our second M|R Marketing Workshop™.  For the past 6 weeks, I have worked with several firms from around the world (gotta love technology!) helping them to learn the process of creating a marketing & sales plan for their firms.

While I’d like to think they learned from me, I also learned some things from them… or at least made some interesting observations:

December 18, 2013

Are your PMs up-selling and cross-selling? They should be!

Every time I go to my local coffeeshop – which is several times each week – I get the same thing… a medium coffee.  In fact, when they see me walk in, a cup is waiting for me at the counter.  (I don’t know if I love the customer service or hate that I’m so predictable!)

But what’s really interesting – even though I am a very good customer – is that the person behind the counter never says… “Would you like a scone with that?” or “We just took some muffins out of the oven – would you like one today?”

And my question is… why not?  Why not take 5 seconds to try to up-sell me?  To add to my order?  To incrementally increase sales?

December 11, 2013

Didn’t achieve your revenue goals this year? Do something about it!

As you’ve probably heard before… the definition of ‘insanity’ is to keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting the results to change.

With that in mind, answer these questions…  How was business this year?  Did you exceed your revenue goals?  How many new clients did you pick up?  How many did you lose?  How about leads generated or conversion rates?

Here’s my point… if you’re not happy with your business development results – then do something about it!  More importantly – do something different!

December 4, 2013

“Should we send holiday gifts to clients?”

This is one of those questions that always stirs up a lot of additional questions within businesses.

“What do we send?”  “How much to spend?”  “Who do we send them to – all clients or just our largest ones?”  “Do we send them to individual contacts or just one per client?”  “What about past clients or sales prospects?”

“Can we afford to send them this year?”  “Are there any religious or cultural implications?”  “Who do they come from – the executive team, sales, marketing or the project managers?”  “Do we also send holiday cards?”

November 26, 2013

Social media marketing success in 30 minutes a day

I’ve been a marketing guy for the majority of my 30-year professional career and the evolution of the marketing discipline during that time has been nothing short of astounding. Think back: mass media advertising… then direct mail… then the Internet and banner ads… then e-mail marketing… pay-per-click ads… and now social media marketing.

Social media has become mainstream and the options seem endless: Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Reddit, StumbleUpon and literally hundreds of other platforms. Even though social media has been around for a while, it’s surprising how poorly it’s being used by so many people. Success in the socialsphere isn’t especially difficult but it does require some effort, discipline and a little time. In fact, I believe you can be pretty good at it in about 30 minutes a day. Here’s how…

November 26, 2013

It’s OK to say ‘no’ to a sales rep.

We’ve all been there… we submit a bid or proposal for a project and don’t hear back for a few days.  So we check in, only to be told they’ve been wrapped up with another project and haven’t had a chance to look at it yet – but will get back to us in a few days.  Good news.  A few more days pass and we check in again… and this time he hear, “It looks good… but no final decision yet.”  Ahhh… hope!

November 19, 2013

Frequency vs. Quality: The Content Marketing Balancing Act

Guest blogger: Debra Semans, Lead Writer at Harpeth Marketing

Content is King!

Consider*:

• Companies that blog 15 or more times per month get five times more traffic than companies that don’t blog at all.
• Small businesses (1-10 employees) tend to see the biggest gains in traffic when they publish more articles.
• Companies that increase blogging from 3-5 times/month to 6-8 times/month almost double their leads.
• Even B2B companies that blog only 1-2 times/month generate 70% more leads than those that don’t blog at all.

November 13, 2013

Never forget… we are in the “people business.”

“All things being equal, people do business with people they like.  All things not being equal, people still do business with people they like.”

Say what you will about the efficiencies of technology like emails, text messages, social media posts and even the telephone… the best business is still conducted face-to-face.

That was validated and confirmed for me yesterday… when I flew to Pittsburgh to meet with a client to talk about planning for 2014.