The Competitive Advantage

February 26, 2014

Giving client gifts? Are they “unexpected?”

On my flight home from the MRA Conference in Las Vegas two weeks ago, I was watching an old movie on my iPad… Finding Forrester, with Sean Connery.  A really good movie, by the way, if you haven’t seen it.

In it, he’s giving advice to young man on the best way to a woman’s heart.  And his is advice is to give… “an unexpected gift at an unexpected time.”

Great advice… and it works for clients, too.

January 29, 2014

Just starting (or re-starting) your marketing & sales efforts? Follow these 4 important guidelines.

I had coffee last week with the principals from a small, local firm.  Been around several years, reasonably successful… and doing virtually nothing to grow their business.

What their inactivity boiled down to – and it applies to pretty much all small firms – is that everyone there wears a bunch of hats, most of which have to do with taking care of clients.  I get it.  And it’s not that they don’t want to grow their business, the problem is that no one is dedicated to marketing & sales and no one allocates much (if any) time to the firm’s growth.  Consequently, not much growth is going on.

Sound familiar?

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 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!

October 23, 2013

Hey small business owner! Time to get serious about marketing.

An independent research consultant (in business for 15+ years) reached out to me recently to learn about what we do.  In preparing for our call, I did a little homework on her firm.  Here’s what I found:

• A YAHOO email address
• An old, unattractive, homemade website
• Website text that is all internally focused
• No resources (articles, blog, etc.) available for website visitors
• An incomplete LinkedIn profile… no image, generic LinkedIn address, etc.
• No LinkedIn company profile
• No listing/membership in key association – QRCA
• No Twitter account that I could find

September 4, 2013

Get ready to exhibit this fall… part 1 of a 3-part series

The conference season is right around the corner… ESOMAR, TMRE, QRCA, CASRO, etc.  And many of you have committed to exhibiting at one or more of these shows. I’m a big fan of exhibiting… done right, exhibiting can be an outstanding marketing vehicle and help you to generate highly-qualified sales leads, launch a new product or service, generate market awareness and support your association.

On the other hand, with the cost of the exhibit space, travel and lodging, building or updating your booth, shipping, event marketing, etc., your firm’s presence there could very well be the single largest marketing expense you have all year. Exhibiting is one of those things you must do really well to see a solid return on your investment.

August 13, 2013

If your summer is slow, focus on marketing & sales for a competitive advantage; part 9 – Do something!

OK… we’re almost to the end of our 10-part summer series.  I hope you’ve taken the opportunity during this time to work on your business and not just in it.

Based on the feedback I’ve gotten, I know that many of you have grabbed on to some of these ideas and done something about them.  But there may still be a few of you who have done your reading and not yet leapt into action.  If that describes you, we offer up…

Summer tip #9: Do something… even just one thing… and make some progress

July 9, 2013

If your summer is slow, focus on marketing & sales for a competitive advantage; part 4 – get smarter about business development

So, are you keeping up… are you taking the time to focus on your marketing & sales this summer?  I hope so, because it’s a great time to do it.  We started with conferences, LinkedIn your online presence and now…

Summer tip #4: Get smarter about business development

Marketing has evolved and changed as much as any discipline in business.  We used to think about marketing as print ads and direct mail.  Then along came the internet and our choices expanded to include email and banner ads.  And in the last few years, thanks to advances in technology, our choices have expanded further to include social media marketing, search engine optimization and mobile marketing.

With the proliferation of options – where do you turn for answers?  Ironically, to the same technologies that are the cause of this anxiety in the first place… the internet and social media.  There’s enough information available – most of it for free – to make almost anyone a marketing expert!