The Competitive Advantage

August 9, 2022

Sales Success is About Your Activity – the Quantity and Quality

I started my career at the DuPont company a long, long, long time ago as a Technical Sales Representative. [My parents were so proud!] On the very first day of training, the national sales Director – Jim Thorn – welcomed our three-man training class to the company. To this day, I still remember his words, “I don’t care if you make only one sales call a week, just hit your sales goal!” True story.

And while it’s a bit of an extreme example, that philosophy still reigns supreme in the world of sales today. As a sales rep or seller-doer, exceeding your sales goal IS the goal! And that’s great… but it’s your selling activity that makes it happen. Send no emails, make no phone calls, send no proposals and – I guarantee – you won’t sell anything.

August 2, 2022

Stop Being Complacent… and Build ‘Other’ Relationships

Last year, I wrote a blog post entitled, ‘The number one reason why you lose clients? Arrogance!’ It was one of the most read posts in all of 2021. Today I want to write about reason #1A – and the one I hear about more than any other reason for the loss of clients – complacency! And the story (err… excuse!) goes something like this… “We had a great relationship with [insert Fortune 500 company name here]… and they were a great client for several years… but then our main contact left and we lost the business.”

July 18, 2022

Stop Selling on Price… It Can Ruin Your Business

I was having a conversation this past week with a firm in our industry when they told me that they had implemented a rebate program as a way to build and reward client loyalty… and to also have something new and interesting to catch prospects’ attention.

And to no one’s surprise, it was working pretty well. Existing clients appreciated the ‘free money’ (credits against future purchases) and it also got them in front of several new potential clients. I told them that I was happy for their success, but that they needed to be careful. That selling on price is a very risky B2B sales strategy. And for a whole host of reasons:

July 5, 2022

2022 is Half Over…

… Are you halfway toward achieving your goals?

It’s hard to believe that this year is already half over… it has absolutely flown by! And I hope it’s been a good year, so far, for you and your firm. This midpoint in the year gives you an opportunity for a little reflection. To see if you’re on pace to achieve this year what you wanted to achieve.

June 28, 2022

Marketing During a Recession

The economy – and the potential for a recession – has been the focal point of the news lately… and as business owners and leaders, we have to make business decisions while considering that economic input. Historically, when times get tough, ‘marketing’ is often the first thing that gets cut back (or cut altogether)! In this article, we’ll explore why cutting marketing during a recession is not a smart business decision… and ways to keep actively marketing for little or no cost.

June 22, 2022

The 3-Step Website SEO Review (+ FREE Tools)

A guest blog post by: Chris Work, Technology Lead, Harpeth Marketing

Once again, Google delivered a massive core algorithm update… this time in May. If you haven’t checked in on your website’s SEO health lately, there’s no better time than the present. And to help, here are some quick tips and tools you can use. The best part… it will take just a little time and the tools are free!

June 14, 2022

6 Common Blogging Mistakes and How to Fix Them

Blogging is one of the most common marketing activities – and for a whole host of good reasons. It helps to support your reputation in the marketplace, it builds awareness, it showcases your subject matter expertise and it’s a great way to nurture sales leads and your relationships with existing clients. Further, it costs virtually nothing to do (other than some of your time) and you can write about nearly any topic on your mind. Which is why so many firms include blogging in their marketing arsenal.

However, it is still a marketing tactic that needs to be done well… and too many firms are making too many mistakes with it. In this blog post, we’ll explore the six most common mistakes and make recommendations for how to fix them.

May 24, 2022

The Dramatic Impact of Simple Marketing

Recently, one of our outsourced marketing clients asked me to deliver a short presentation to their entire company about the work we are doing for them and the impact it’s having.

As I was putting together the PowerPoint deck, it reinforced for me how dramatically impactful even simple marketing can be – if done properly – and the disservice most firms are doing to themselves by not doing any real marketing. Here’s what I talked about with this client…