The Competitive Advantage

September 12, 2017

How Sharp are Your Marketing and Sales Skills?

Over the next couple of months, I have the privilege of speaking about marketing and sales at several Market Research industry events:

• QRCA’s Business Development SIG inaugural event
• The Insights Association Annual Conference
• Greenbook’s Insights Marketing Day

These events got me to thinking… every year, most MR professionals and principals attend a few conferences, workshops or webinars as a means of improving their research skills and staying on top of new trends in our industry.

But what about staying on top of business development for your firm? What can you do – in addition to attending the events above – to improve your marketing and sales skills? To help, here are few other resources to investigate if your marketing and sales skills need brushing up…

August 22, 2017

Are you ready for ‘conference season?’

For as long as I have been in the market research industry, Fall has been ‘conference season.’ And while organizations like Quirk’s have established solid events in the first part of the calendar year, September-October-November continue to host most of the industry’s top events:

Insights Leadership Conference

TMRE – The Market Research Event

The ESOMAR Congress

The Corporate Researchers Conference (CRC)

The AMA Annual Conference

If you’ve got conference plans on your calendar this Fall, there are three areas that – if you’re properly prepared – can have a dramatic impact on your success at these events.

July 25, 2017

Why Are You Afraid of Marketing & Sales?

Twelve years ago, this month, I started my career in the Market Research industry. And it didn’t take very long for me to come to the conclusion that “This is an industry that does not embrace marketing & sales.”

Over the years, I have repeated that statement to scores of people – in all kinds of companies covering all kinds of roles – and guess what? Not a single person has ever disagreed with me. It’s amazing to see in 2017 just how many firms…

• Have a website that hasn’t been updated in years
• Have virtually no social media presence
• Have not published any thought leadership
• Have no proactive sales effort

May 30, 2017

Lazy sales & marketing people… UGH!

It happened again. [Actually, it happens pretty regularly.] I received an email – in this case, a LinkedIn message – from a company representative promoting a discount on their services for the summer.

In general, I’m opposed to salesy emails to begin with… but this one, like so many others, completely missed the mark with me. The note was promoting services targeted to market research firms and independent moderators. Our firm is neither of those.

Why do people responsible for sales & marketing think it’s OK to just blast out email sales pitches to anyone and everyone on their list?! It’s just lazy!

May 23, 2017

How to Max Out Lead Generation for MR Firms

Fact: Not every ‘sales lead’ becomes a client.

But every client was – at one time – a sales lead. Can’t happen any other way! Sales leads are the lifeblood of growth for every MR organization. Generating (and qualifying) them should be a top-priority strategy for everyone involved in sales and marketing at your firm.

There are numerous ways to generate sales leads, but the two most effective ones in our industry are:

• Gated content
• Conference participation

April 4, 2017

The 3 Cardinal Rules of Building Awareness

A simple fact: Potential buyers can’t buy from you if they don’t know you exist… or if you never come to mind for them.

So, whatever your marketing & sales plans, strategies or tactics… it all starts with being known. That is, it all starts with building awareness. Period.

March 14, 2017

“Why should I care?”… the question your website visitors are asking!

Your clients don’t care about what you can do… they care about what you can do for them.

We’re working with a new client who has developed a unique market research methodology. It’s really very interesting and kind of heady stuff – with a lot of science behind it. And that’s exactly how it’s described on their website. Which is fine.

In fact, that’s how most firms describe their products and services on their websites in our industry: “here’s what we do”… “and it’s really neat”… “and we’re really great at it!”

Meanwhile, your website visitors – a.k.a. potential clients – are reading that copy and asking themselves, “So what?! Why should I care?”

And they’re absolutely right… why should they care? You haven’t given them a reason to.

February 28, 2017

Hey Sales Rep… Your Manager Should be Fired!

I receive “cold call emails” all the time…. I guess as President of the company, I’m a magnet for salespeople. Fine… it comes with the territory.

But this past week, I received a sales email so bad that I had to share it (names are being withheld so they don’t die of shame!).