The Competitive Advantage

April 26, 2023

“If I can’t measure it, I’m not doing it!”

My technology manager and I were chatting with a client last week about different ways to approach marketing, when the client suddenly said, “If I can’t measure it, I’m not doing it!” Wow! I love that!

Most businesspeople we talk with don’t think a lot about measurement when they’re talking about marketing. And if they do, it’s very rarely to that extent. I was genuinely shocked!

November 15, 2022

Revenue Measurement: 4 Ways to Improve What You’re Doing Now

There are all kinds of metrics that business owners and leaders need to track… but none more important than revenue. And if I was a betting man, I’d wager that you’re tracking your firm’s revenue in three or four ways:

• Revenue this month
• Revenue year-to-date
• Revenue last year-to-date (for comparison)
• Revenue by sales rep (if you’re including sales commissions in their comp plan)

And there’s nothing wrong with those. What you learn from them is helpful in terms of the health of your firm, but there’s not much ‘actionable’ you can take away. Those measurements are good… but they’re incomplete.

May 11, 2021

A Sales Pipeline is NOT Just About RFPs

Nearly every firm we speak with says they’re using a sales pipeline as part of their business development process. But they’re really not.

Too many firms think that a sales pipeline is only about what’s at the end of the pipeline (or ‘bottom of the funnel,’ depending on your hardware preference). These firms are concerned only with ‘proposals out in the marketplace’ and the status of those opportunities. And while RFPs are certainly important, focusing on them is a little nearsighted. RFPs are more about the now. What about the future?

September 2, 2020

“I’m a sh*tty guesser!”

This morning, our monthly enewsletter went out to our database. And as I often do, I ran an A/B test on the ‘subject line’… always trying to find the right kinds and grouping of words that get the highest ‘open rate.’ As usual, as the email was being blasted out, I guessed which subject line would be the winner.

And as usual, I was wrong!

June 16, 2020

The Best Marketing Strategy? “Try It and See!”

While there have been a few remakes over the years… many of us remember the very first Life Cereal commercial featuring ‘Mikey’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgB25WBeBxA) which debuted in 1990. It features a couple of young brothers who didn’t know what to expect from a new breakfast cereal their parents gave them. So, they pass it on to their little brother, Mikey, who – to no one’s surprise – tries it and likes it!

March 29, 2016

Not doing Client Satisfaction surveys for yourself? Whuuuuut?!

8 Tips for Building Better Services with Surveys

In the perfect personification of ‘the cobbler’s’ children having no shoes,’ I am amazed at how many market research firms – that conduct studies for clients across the U.S. and around the world – don’t conduct any for themselves.

And the oddest one of those is the huge percentage of firms that don’t conduct a client satisfaction survey after each project. Why is that?

September 23, 2015

Don’t Be an Idiot When Making Marketing & Sales Decisions

How do you make your marketing & sales decisions?

For example…

• What topics do you choose to blog about?
• How do you decide what your ads will say?
• Why don’t you Tweet?

For most people and most firms… these kinds of decisions are often made by the senior executive at the firm… who relies (far too much, IMHO) on his or her own feelings… on what they think ought to happen… and on what their gut tells them to do. And even if it’s a reasonably well-informed gut – it’s still boils down to just a guess.

June 25, 2014

Great business quotes #4 – on measurement.

If you’ve read any of our previous content, then you know we believe that marketing is a process… and part of that process is the commitment to measure each step along the way.

It’s this philosophy that leads to the 4^th great business saying in our series…

What gets measured gets done.