The Competitive Advantage

March 21, 2023

The Case for Being a ‘Specialist’

Take a look around our industry… most research firms are generalists. They provide a variety of services to a variety of different kinds of clients. In fact, it’s kind of difficult to find one that is legitimately a specialist in any one area.

February 14, 2023

The Biggest Challenges to Revenue Generation

At the Insights Association’s CEO Summit last month, one of the presentations highlighted the results from a survey that the association conducted of its members. And one of the topics was on growing revenue. Ahhh… music to my ears.

In the presentation, they reported on the top three obstacles to growing revenue:

1. Getting qualified leads
2. Recruiting more effective sales professionals
3. The cyclical nature of the seller-door model

And while it’s hard to argue with the results of the survey – and I’m glad to see that these firms recognize these issues – what’s interesting is that I don’t see very much being done to address them!

December 28, 2022

The Top 10 Blog Posts of 2022

Over the past year, our blog posts were read thousands of times. To all of you who stopped by to take a peek… thank you. We hope you found the articles to be interesting, helpful and maybe even a little inspirational.

Secondly, our blog now houses more than 500 articles on sales and marketing (this is actually #521), all related to growing your business in our industry. And the fact is, if you keep reading them… we’ll keep writing them.

December 21, 2022

Are You Prepared for Sales and Marketing in 2023?

As 2022 winds down, and you start looking at your sales and marketing efforts for 2023, there’s one question you’re probably asking yourself – like we all are – and that is, “How do we grow [more] next year?”

Before I try to answer that question, let me share one of my favorite business philosophies… “If you keep doin’ what you’re doin’, you’ll keep gettin’ what you’re gettin’.” The fact is, if you want to grow in 2023 – or grow more than you did in 2022 – you’ll have to try something new. Or maybe several somethings. Maybe this is the year you test LinkedIn advertising, create some videos or employ SEO in your marketing. Or finally pull the trigger on hiring your first full-time sales rep.

Whatever it is… you need to embrace it. If not, then the best that you can hope for in 2023 is exactly what happened to you this year.

October 18, 2022

Is Your Work Good Enough to Ensure Repeat Clients?

Spoiler alert: It’s not!

If you were to ask 10 market research business owners what keeps their repeat clients coming back, nine of those 10 will say, “It’s because of the good work we do.”

To be fair, if you do lousy work, your clients won’t become repeat clients. But the reality is that most all firms do good work. It’s table stakes these days. There’s nothing unusual about it. Just to ‘be in the game,’ you’d better be good at what you do.

August 2, 2022

Stop Being Complacent… and Build ‘Other’ Relationships

Last year, I wrote a blog post entitled, ‘The number one reason why you lose clients? Arrogance!’ It was one of the most read posts in all of 2021. Today I want to write about reason #1A – and the one I hear about more than any other reason for the loss of clients – complacency! And the story (err… excuse!) goes something like this… “We had a great relationship with [insert Fortune 500 company name here]… and they were a great client for several years… but then our main contact left and we lost the business.”

June 28, 2022

Marketing During a Recession

The economy – and the potential for a recession – has been the focal point of the news lately… and as business owners and leaders, we have to make business decisions while considering that economic input. Historically, when times get tough, ‘marketing’ is often the first thing that gets cut back (or cut altogether)! In this article, we’ll explore why cutting marketing during a recession is not a smart business decision… and ways to keep actively marketing for little or no cost.

May 10, 2022

A Great Customer Experience Comes Down to One Thing

I spent several days last week with my grandchildren at Disney World in Orlando (yes, that’s my grandson in the photo). It’s been almost 20 years since I was last there and Disney hasn’t missed a beat… the customer experience there is still unmatched.

As I walked through the parks (Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom), I kept asking myself, “Why is the experience here so good? What are they doing that’s so special?”