Blog:
The Competitive Advantage
September 3, 2024
Get Out From Behind Your Desk… In Person Selling is More Effective
Last summer, I posted several times on LinkedIn about a road trip I took – partially to do a little fishing and partially to visit some clients in person. The response I received was nothing short of astounding! Visiting clients in person? You would have thought I was the caveman that discovered fire!
Why is that? Have we become so dependent on technologies like Zoom that the idea of actually sitting down in person with a client has become foreign to us? Are we so reliant on technology that we’ve lost our interpersonal skills?
Continue ReadingMay 15, 2024
Buyers Don’t Care About Your ‘Sense of Urgency.’
See if any of these sound familiar…
- “I met a potential buyer at a conference last week and we had a really good conversation. So, I can’t understand why isn’t he interested in buying from me today.”
- “The perfect sales prospect downloaded a white paper off of our website yesterday, but she said she doesn’t want a capabilities presentation from us.”
- “I’ve been connected with this prospect on LinkedIn for a month, but they’re showing no interest in becoming a client.”
March 5, 2024
Pigeonholed by Clients? Here’s How to Break Free!
A while back, I was asked by one of my clients to talk to some of their clients. They wanted to get unfiltered feedback about how they were doing and those companies’ perception of them. I was happy to do it.
Now, all of these companies were good, fairly long-standing clients, so we expected pretty positive feedback. What we didn’t expect was the ‘pigeonhole’ conversations.
While I talked with only a dozen companies, three of them (again, good, long-standing clients) said that they would be interested in learning what else my client could do for them.
What?! My client had a good, ongoing relationship with these three companies, had been working with them for a couple of years, and yet, was providing only one service, when they could’ve been providing others?
How does this happen? And how can you change it?
Continue ReadingNovember 29, 2023
Giving Client Gifts This Holiday Season? Why Not All Year Round?
It’s that time of year again, when the vast majority of businesses send out some sort of gifts to their clients as a holiday “thank you” for their business during the past year. It’s often a basket of fruit, a bottle of wine, a Starbucks gift card or maybe something ‘kitschy’ from the vendor’s home town. And I support that… I think sending out gifts for the holidays is a very nice gesture.
The problem is, for most companies, the gift giving stops there. Why?! Why would you not want to say “thank you” to your clients all year round?
Continue ReadingJuly 25, 2023
Is ‘In-Person’ Still Relevant?
As I write this, I’m 35,000 feet over Pennsylvania, on my way home from the Quirks New York event… two days of networking, learning, selling and bonding for 1,500+ MR professionals. Well done, Team Quirks! And it’s because of that event that I’m writing this article. So, to answer the question in the headline – Is ‘In-Person’ Still Relevant? – consider this:
Continue ReadingMarch 29, 2023
Want to Win Your Clients’ Trust? Change 1 Word in Your Vocabulary.
I was having a conversation with a client last week – the president and his senior staff. We were talking about their business objectives for the year and the kinds of marketing and sales efforts they would need to achieve them.
As I was laying out a number of strategies and tactics that could help them reach their goals, the president interrupted me, and said, “Steve, don’t tell us what we could be doing… tell us what we should be doing.”
Continue ReadingMarch 2, 2023
It Really Is All About the Customer Experience
For Christmas of 2021, my wife and I bought our daughter and her husband, a Nespresso coffeemaker to replace an old Keurig machine that went kaput. And they loved it and have been using it ever since.
But recently, they started having some problems with it… and here’s where the story gets interesting.
Continue ReadingMay 10, 2022
A Great Customer Experience Comes Down to One Thing
I spent several days last week with my grandchildren at Disney World in Orlando (yes, that’s my grandson in the photo). It’s been almost 20 years since I was last there and Disney hasn’t missed a beat… the customer experience there is still unmatched.
As I walked through the parks (Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom), I kept asking myself, “Why is the experience here so good? What are they doing that’s so special?”
Continue Reading