The Competitive Advantage

June 11, 2025

Skills Training? It’s Not Just for Research.

I was reading an article the other day entitled, “14% of Our Sellers Drive 80% of Our Revenue!” Kind of a staggering statistic… but not all that surprising.

Are you familiar with the Pareto Principle, also known as the 20/80 Rule? The theory applies to a lot of business situations… for example, that 20% of your clients generate 80% of your revenue; that 20% of your services drive 80% of your profits; and in this case, that 20% of your sales team generates 80% of your sales.

OK, but what if you’re a sales team of one (or two or three), as is often the case with small research firms in our industry? Well, statistically speaking, you likely fall into the 80% (industry-wide) of those who are not generating as much revenue as the other 20% in the industry. Sorry… no offense.

June 2, 2025

Churn Baby Churn, Part 2

The REAL reasons clients leave you.

In last week’s blog post, we explored why it’s so important to focus on keeping and growing your existing clients… that is, to minimize ‘churn.’ And, in fact, it ought to be your #1 priority when planning for revenue growth!

The question is, why do you have churn in the first place? That is, what are you doing – or not doing – that causes seemingly good clients to leave your firm and take their business elsewhere?

May 29, 2025

Churn Baby Churn!

One of the tools we use when onboarding a new client is something we call the ‘5-Year Revenue Review.’ It’s a report that your accounting team can easily provide: Revenue by Client by Year for the past 5 years. And what you can learn from it is interesting and eye-opening.

Many business leaders regularly look at revenue year-to-date and compare it to last-year-to-date. And that’s fine. That trouble is that even if there’s overall growth, it may be hiding problems lurking beneath the surface. But when look at a 5-year report, you’ll see gaps and trends in the data that a 2-year analysis can’t reveal.

April 30, 2025

The Job of a Sales Manager? To Manage AND Coach!

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

When we hear the term, “sales manager,” most people think about that person managing their sales team. Not only is that job description incomplete… it’s also wrong.

In a nutshell, the role of the sales manager is two-fold… to manage the sales process and systems and to coach the members of their sales team. Let me explain…

April 22, 2025

Create a Seller-Doer Commission Plan to Achieve Your Desired Results

Part 3 of a 4-part series on managing seller-doers.

In Part 1 of this series for those managing a team of seller-doers, I wrote about creating a sales culture in your organization. In Part 2, we explored the process for creating your sales plan. And in this part, we’ll talk about compensating your seller-doers for their sales efforts.

Introduction

There are too many types and variations of compensation plans to explore them all, so let’s focus on the most common structure: a base salary plus commission plan, where a commission is paid as a percentage of sales.

Why Sales Commissions?

There are two reasons that a firm would/should elect to install a commission plan for its seller-doers…

April 7, 2025

Create a Sales Plan for Your Seller-Doer Sales Team

Part 2 of a 4-part series on managing seller-doers.

In Part 1 of this series, we explored how to create a sales-friendly culture… that is, to help make your firm the kind of firm that likes, respects and appreciates what your seller-doers make possible for everyone else there.

Now, with your culture improving and a seller-doer sales team in place, it’s time to create your sales plan… that is, your “roadmap” to help you and your team achieve sales success. Following is an outline to help you create that plan:

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 25, 2025

My Best Sales Tip? Ask more questions!

I was invited last week to be a guest lecturer at UT-Southern – a satellite campus for the University of Tennessee – located in the town of Pulaski. It’s a quaint campus about a 60-mile drive south from where I live.

This was my third visit to the campus, and this time, I was speaking to an upper-level entrepreneurship class (note: every student in the class had a business they were planning to launch upon graduation… and two had already started them – an impressive group!)

One of the ‘lessons learned’ that I shared with them was that if you are the business owner… then you’re in sales! No exceptions.