The Competitive Advantage

September 21, 2021

Your Customers’ Experience (CX) with Your Firm Can Make or Break You!

I’m a bourbon drinker. But sadly, this blog post isn’t about bourbon… it’s about CX – the customer experience.

As a bourbon drinker, I have gotten into the habit of sending bottles of bourbon as gifts to clients. And I’ve been using a website called ReserveBar.com to do it.

It’s a really easy site to use… to find the particular product I’m looking for and to have it sent. But recently, I had a problem with a purchase there.

June 15, 2021

If You’re in Sales, Your Job Is Not to Sell!

Yeah, I know… sounds kind of wrong, doesn’t it? But let me finish that statement. Your job is not to sell… it’s to help buyers buy.

This philosophy is based on the premise that ‘people don’t like to be sold, but they love to buy.’ Think about your last car buying experience. There’s nothing that feels quite as good as driving off the dealer’s lot in a beautiful, brand new car. But leading up to it, you dreaded going to the dealership because of the pushy salespeople. You didn’t want to experience that sort of pressure or be forced into buying something that wasn’t quite right.

Now think about your role as a sales rep or a seller-doer. If you make a sale, that’s good for you… you win. But maybe it’s not what’s best for the client. However, if you help the client make a good buying decision, that’s a win-win.

March 30, 2021

Why don’t research firms conduct research on themselves?

We’ve all heard the saying that “The cobbler’s children have no shoes”… which means, in business terms, that some companies are really good at doing things for their clients, but not so good at doing those same things for themselves.

And there’s no escaping that predicament in the Market Research industry.

For the nine years we’ve been in business, we’ve worked with scores of market research firms across the U.S. and around the world… and with relatively few exceptions, none of these firms conduct any research on themselves. Specifically, they’re not doing any post-project customer satisfaction surveys.

February 16, 2021

The #1 Reason Why You Lose Clients? Arrogance!

Sure, there are a lot of reasons why you lose clients… you messed up a project or a competitor dramatically under cut your prices or your key contact left the company. But the #1 reason why you lose clients is ‘arrogance.’

You assume that your good work is enough to solidify your relationship with the buyer. It isn’t.

You assume that your good work will keep you top-of-mind with clients. It won’t.

November 17, 2020

Your Sales & Marketing Focus Is All Wrong!

When you think about sales & marketing, what comes to mind? For most business people… it’s about acquiring new clients – about building awareness in the markets or industries they serve, then generating sales leads that lead to new business.

And that’s wrong!

The fact is, when you think about sales & marketing, your first priority – the primary focus of your strategies and planning – should be to maintain and grow your current client base.

February 18, 2020

5 Reasons Why Former Clients Will Come Back to You

True story: Over the past two weeks, four different firms reached to me to ask about our services and how we might best work together. What makes this a bit unusual is that – at some point in the past – I had a relationship with every one of these firms.

October 22, 2019

There is Nothing That Rivals In-Person Meetings for Deepening Client Relationships

We had clients visit us in our offices last week. These in-person meetings are a fairly rare occurrence in today’s ‘connected’ world. Aside my ‘road trips,’ most client get-togethers happen by phone or, maybe, video chat. And while those calls are always productive, they still leave me feeling a little disconnected.

So, when this client said they wanted to come to Nashville to meet, we got really excited.

September 24, 2019

Not sure what sort of customer experience you deliver? Just ask!

Here’s a short [true] story about an incredibly effective way to understand what sort of ‘customer experience’ your firm is delivering to the marketplace…

We subscribe to a webinar platform called WebinarNinja… and have been a client of theirs for just under three years. It’s proven to be a very good platform for our webinar program and workshops. WebinarNinja is one of those fast-growing tech companies, led by a sharp and energetic leader. In this case, his name is Omar Zenhom.

One of the risks when running a growing company is getting pulled in a lot of different directions and, as a result, slowly becoming ‘distanced’ from your clients. Losing touch with them. Getting so wrapped up in dealing with all of that other ownership and management ‘stuff,’ that you become disconnected from what made you successful in the first place… those clients.