The Competitive Advantage

March 19, 2013

Hiring your first sales rep? Answer these 3 questions first… (part 1 of a 3-part series)

I’ve worked with several research firms in the past year that made the commitment to hire their first sales rep.  That’s a big step for most firms… and to be successful with it, there are three key questions that need to be answered before the new rep comes on board.  [This is the first of a 3-part series to help answer those questions.]

Question #1: Inside or outside?

The decision for your first sales rep to be inside or outside is not an easy one – the implications are many.

February 20, 2013

You’re a researcher… so do some for yourself to gain a competitive advantage!

Every day… you get up, go to the office, collect some data for your clients, interpret that data and give them some feedback to help them do their jobs better.  Yeah, a little over-simplified, but you get my drift.

So, here’s the question… are you doing that same thing for yourself?  Particularly with your marketing & sales as a way to help you do it better?

February 6, 2013

6 Simple Marketing & Sales Ideas that almost Never get implemented

In trying to build our businesses, we often get so wrapped up in working on the bigger marketing & sales initiatives (e.g. social media strategy, advertising campaigns, etc.) that sometimes, the simple little things just pass us by.  So, to help with that, here are six simple marketing & sales ideas to get you thinking in that direction:

January 29, 2013

Sales Management… how are you defining your ‘sales territories?’

Remember back when you were 5 or 6 years old and you and a sibling or next-door neighbor would be fighting over the newest toy… “It’s mine!” “No, it’s mine!” No, it’s mine… gimme!” And back and forth it went… until your mother stepped in to mediate the dispute.

Well, if you work for a firm with more than one person responsible for sales – especially if they are compensated for new business growth – then unless you’ve got a very structured and manageable way to keep leads and clients separate for each rep, you’re going to end up with that same 5-year-old tug-of-war in your office.  And it ain’t pretty!  But there’s a fairly easy way to fix it…

January 23, 2013

Lead Generation drives business; 8 effective ways to generate leads for a competitive advantage.

Regardless of your sales philosophy or sales processes… virtually no sale has ever taken place that didn’t start out as a ‘sales lead.’  Those leads are developed and nurtured… and with some perseverance and a little luck, they eventually become clients.  That truism means that Lead Generation should be one of the primary strategies for every firm’s business development program.

January 1, 2013

2013 Marketing & Sales Resolutions

At this time of year, we start thinking about how we can improve our lives for the coming year.  We start making our annual resolutions like “I need to lose weight,” “…stop smoking,” or “…pay more attention to my spouse.”

But most of those “goals” never happen.  Why?  Simple… because they are not action-oriented.  You can’t just “lose weight,” but you can go to the gym 3 times a week.  You can’t just “stop smoking,” but you can start chewing nicotine gum whenever you have a craving.  And you can’t just “pay more attention to your spouse,” but you can make sure every Friday night is “date night.”

See the difference?

Now let’s look at your 2013 Business Resolutions, from a marketing & sales perspective and see what you can come up with…

December 5, 2012

Get prepared… part 5 of a 5-part series on how to create your marketing & sales plan for 2013

One of the key parts of crafting your plan (Phase 3) is building in the mechanisms for measuring each of your marketing & sales tactics (which you execute in Phase 4).  If you’ve been disciplined about measuring and testing your tactics, in Phase 5, you will go through the results and decide what worked / what didn’t / and what needs to be tweaked.

October 31, 2012

Your best prospects are right in front of you… just open your eyes!

Let me ask you a question… “How long have you been in business?”  Two years?  Five years?  Ten or more?

Now, my follow-up question… “In all those years in business, how many clients and prospective clients have you come in contact with… responded to their inquiries, met at conferences, submitted bids or done projects for?”  Hundreds?  Maybe thousands?

What that says to me is that somewhere in your organization – captured in a CRM, listed on a spreadsheet or collected on business cards wrapped in a rubber band – you’ve got the names, phone numbers and email address of hundreds (or thousands?) of potential clients.

So, what are you doing with those names?  How are you engaging them?  What’s your plan for staying on their radar so that when they need to send out an RFP – they think of you?