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The Competitive Advantage

tag: sales management

June 1, 2021

Creating a Sales Culture is Critical to Success

Firms in the Market Research industry are, by nature, operationally-focused. You manage your businesses around delivering services to clients, almost always one project at a time. Virtually everyone on staff is there to contribute to the projects. It’s what you do and who you are. New clients come to you as a result of the good work you do and word of mouth.

Then you make the decision to become more ‘proactive’ with your sales effort. Maybe you bring in a full-time sales rep… or designate a couple of your senior staff as “seller-doers.” Either way, the chances of success with your new sales efforts are dramatically enhanced if you can help to create a ‘sales culture’ within your organization. Without it, you’re likely to stir up rumor, speculation and a lot of resentment.

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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?

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May 4, 2021

Get Your Sales Meeting Right… Or Lose the Battle in the Marketplace

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been asked to sit in one several of our clients’ weekly [online] sales meetings. It’s been really eye-opening.

Like the vast majority of seller-doers in our industry who have no real sales background, the sales managers in Market Research (with actual titles like President, Owner or Practice Lead) also have no real background as sales managers.

Which, unfortunately, leads to bad sales leadership and guidance and can have a dramatically negative impact on your sales efforts.

To help, here’s a menu of ideas/topics to help you prepare for your future sales meetings…

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April 20, 2021

Why Former Clients Are So Important

One of the on-boarding activities that we do with all new clients is to take a look back at their business for the past five years. And one of the things we inevitably see – and our clients seem to have forgotten – is the large number of former or lapsed clients. [Or maybe they remember, but just don’t like to be reminded of it.]

What’s really interesting about these former clients is that they stay former. That is, it’s extremely rare to see any of them come back into the ‘current client’ category.

I think this happens for three reasons…

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April 13, 2021

Stop Using Lousy Salespeople… They’re Killin’ You!

This morning, I participated in a Zoom chat with the senior team from one of our clients… there were five of them on the call. At one point, the CEO mentioned that he was receiving sales calls from this particular West Coast fieldwork firm. And before he could finish his comment, two of his colleagues jumped in with comments of their own.

One of them said, “They call me all the time.”

The other said, “They are ‘relentless!’” [And he didn’t mean that in a good way!]

Then the CEO chimed back in, “The kid calling me was obviously new at this… he was so bad that I almost felt sorry for him.”

Nothing was said about their professionalism, helpfulness, that they shared good information, that they had something new to talk about, etc. Just that they were selling hard and pretty bad at it.

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December 15, 2020

Selling is a Solo Act… But It’s Also a Team Sport

sales repIn the world of sales, connecting with a prospective buyer, establishing a relationship, building trust and then finally asking for the business is very much a 1-to-1 endeavor. It’s just the sales rep and the sales prospect.

But that doesn’t mean you can just send your reps out into the market and expect them to fend for themselves. Sadly, that’s the strategy used by far too many firms in our industry.

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December 8, 2020

Lead Nurturing for Seven Years? It’s True!

lead nurturingI first met with the founder of this particular MR services firm in early 2013. After his initial interest and a few phone calls, he said he was not ready to move forward.

A year later we reconnected… similar interest, a few more phone calls… same outcome.

And again, two years after that.

But now, it looks like it’s finally coming around and will actually happen. The interest, the need and the urgency are all higher than ever before. So, what happened? How did a sales prospect from 2013 finally come to pull the trigger (we think) more than seven years later?

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November 24, 2020

Generating Sales Leads is a Waste of Money… If You Don’t Follow-up

Sales leads are the lifeblood of any growing business. In the good ‘ol days… they came from networking at a conference, meeting visitors at your trade show booth and cold calling. Today, they come from hosting webinars, leveraging LinkedIn connections and creating downloadable gated content.

But here’s the problem (today and back then)… the vast majority of those sales leads are never followed-up on. It doesn’t matter if the guilty party is a full-time sales rep or a part-time seller-doer… this is where the sales process breaks down. Happens all the time! I don’t know if it’s because the sale rep gets lazy, gets distracted or gets busy.

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