The Competitive Advantage

March 19, 2024

What are your buyers buying? Hint: NOT what you’re selling!

I think most people with sales responsibility – full-time salespeople and seller-doers – understand that being successful at selling is essentially about being successful at solving your clients’ problems. And they’d be right.

But here’s the rub… too many salespeople think that what they sell IS the solution to their clients’ problems. And when that’s their mindset – especially for seller-doers at research agencies – they spend all of their time talking to potential buyers about their methodologies, or their cool technology, or the new industry pro they just hired. And that’s understandable… It’s where they’re most comfortable and what they know.

But it’s wrong!

December 13, 2022

Setting Your Sales Goal for 2023? You’re doing it wrong!

Right about now, management teams from firms all over our industry are gathering around conference tables to make plans for next year. And one of the key items on every one of those agendas is, “What’s our sales* goal for 2023?”

[*For those of you afraid of the word “sales,” insert “revenue” here.]

Too often, the management team will defer to the president or CEO, who picks a number ‘out of the air’ because that’s what he/she would like to see happen in the next year. Sadly, very little thinking has gone into the president’s sales goal… it’s mostly gut feel and hope.

November 8, 2022

The 4 Biggest Mistakes That Seller-Doers Make… and How to Fix Them

In the 10+ years I’ve been working with seller-doers in our industry, I’ve observed a number of common behaviors that impact sales. Negatively! Behaviors that the vast majority of seller-doers exhibit. Behaviors that are actually pretty easy to change and in doing so, would significantly help them to be more successful.

March 16, 2021

Your Clients Don’t Know What They Need!

Alternate title: ‘Don’t Be an Order-Taker’

I received a call from a client last week. He said he wanted to talk with me about our sales training workshops. Great! Love to do those!

In my younger days… I would have hopped on the phone call and told him everything about our workshops, all the topics we covered, key takeaways for his employees and what makes it different than any other sales training workshop in our industry. It would have been awesome… at least that’s what I would have thought back then!

But I’m not that guy anymore… I’ve learned a few things.