The Competitive Advantage

April 1, 2025

Creating a Sales-Friendly Culture

Part 1 of a 4-part series on managing seller-doers.

The vast majority of salespeople at Research firms are “seller-doers.” That is, they are senior managers, subject matter experts or longtime researchers, who have also been tasked with selling… part-time. And not surprisingly, their sales manager is most often the business owner, president or managing director who has also been tasked with managing the seller-doers… part-time.

If you’re one of those sales managers (with little or, likely, no formal sales management training), this 4-part blog series on sales management will cover the fundamentals to make sure you get the most from your seller-doer sales team.

February 18, 2025

Is This the ‘New’ Sales Pitch?

I recently had a conversation with a client (an MR agency) who was describing a recent selling opportunity that came their way. They were asked by a large healthcare system to meet. Great news, right? But rather than being asked to deliver a full-blown pitch presentation, the buyer’s team and the agency’s team just sat around the table… and talked! No PowerPoint. No handouts. Just… talking.

I love this!

November 19, 2024

‘Former’ Clients Don’t Have to Be ‘Former’ Forever

When a client leaves you for a competitor, do they come back? In many – if not most – cases, the answer is ‘no.’ But why is that?

For most of us, when we lose a client, our mindset becomes, “Well, it was a good run – time for us to move on.” In some cases, we get busy with other clients and other projects and just forget about them. Occasionally, we get pissed at them, “How dare they? We did good work for them… why are they leaving?” But the fact is, it doesn’t have to be like that.

Gone doesn’t have to mean gone forever. Here’s an example of a client experience that happened to us recently…

November 5, 2024

How NOT to Be an Effective Sales Manager in Our Industry

True story… I was talking recently with an agency-side market research professional that I’ve known for a long while. He not only heads up one of the primary service lines for his firm, but he’s also responsible for revenue generation for his team… the true definition of a ‘seller-doer.’

We talked about some of the challenges he’s facing in the marketplace, and as I asked some questions about his selling environment, the conversation slowly transitioned to a number of internal issues he’s facing – most of which, sadly, are far too common in our industry. And none of which are his fault…

June 25, 2024

“You’re failing in sales because of the front door.”

My wife and I spent a week at the beach last month and made friends with a couple sitting under the umbrella next to us. We got to know Bill and Nina over a few days and found out that Nina was a former pharmaceutical sales manager… so she and I really hit it off.

During one of our ‘sales discussions,’ she told me about a former sales rep that reported to her who had all of the tools, skills, and personality to be wildly successful… but wasn’t. And as Nina told this rep, “You’re failing because of the front door.”

May 15, 2024

Buyers Don’t Care About Your ‘Sense of Urgency.’

See if any of these sound familiar…

• “I met a potential buyer at a conference last week and we had a really good conversation. So, I can’t understand why isn’t he interested in buying from me today.”
• “The perfect sales prospect downloaded a white paper off of our website yesterday, but she said she doesn’t want a capabilities presentation from us.”
• “I’ve been connected with this prospect on LinkedIn for a month, but they’re showing no interest in becoming a client.”

April 30, 2024

Bad Salespeople? Maybe You Should Blame the Sales Manager.

It seems like every couple of years, I need to rant about how bad selling is in our industry. I was hoping it would improve over time, but that just ain’t happening.

Here are three real sales stories – all targeted at me – that happened in just the last two weeks:

#1) I attended IIeX a couple of weeks ago, and as I was walking by an exhibitor’s booth, one of the sales reps in the booth literally stepped out in front of me, waved his arms over his head and yelled “Stop!” Really?!

September 19, 2023

3 Steps to Seller-Doer Success

The seller-doer sales model is employed by nearly all small-to midsize firms in our industry. It’s a challenging model that asks non-salespeople to BE salespeople. But often, they don’t want to do it, don’t like to do it or don’t know how to do it. So, what’s the answer?

While there are dozens of things you could do to maximize the results of your seller-doer program, the majority fall into three main categories…