The Competitive Advantage

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:

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…