The Competitive Advantage

September 30, 2020

Stop Selling… Start Helping!

I generally empty my spam folder every day, but for some reason, I had skipped a few days… and had a mountain of emails to be deleted.

As I was looking through them and getting ready to hit the ‘delete’ button, I noticed a consistent theme across all of them. Other than a couple of “I’m a barrister in Dubai I need your help to claim $20 million,” every single one of them was a hard sales pitch: SEO services, website design, app creation and so on and so on. And most from companies I had never heard of.

Even though this was my spam folder, I think there’s still a lesson here… if you want someone to take notice of you – in an email, over the phone or in person – stop selling and start helping. Or as one of my clients likes to say, “bring value to the relationship.”

August 4, 2020

Why Full-time Sales Reps Fail in Our Industry

Hint: It’s almost never the sales rep’s fault.

There is an all-too-common occurrence among Market Research firms. It seems that when they finally summon the nerve (and resources) to hire a full-time, 100% business development professional (i.e. a ‘sales rep’), that sales rep fails (and is subsequently fired) almost every time. And pretty quickly, too. I can count on one hand the number of firms I know where there has been some level of success with this structure.

The question is, “WHY does it fail?” What is going on at all of these research firms that almost predisposes the sales rep to failure?

July 28, 2020

12 Things to Do When Launching a New Service or Product

Congratulations! With the extra time you’ve had on your hands recently, you and your colleagues decided the time was right to launch a new service. Not just a small upgrade to what you’re already doing… but something entirely new. That’s terrific news.

Probably.

June 16, 2020

The Best Marketing Strategy? “Try It and See!”

While there have been a few remakes over the years… many of us remember the very first Life Cereal commercial featuring ‘Mikey’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgB25WBeBxA) which debuted in 1990. It features a couple of young brothers who didn’t know what to expect from a new breakfast cereal their parents gave them. So, they pass it on to their little brother, Mikey, who – to no one’s surprise – tries it and likes it!

June 9, 2020

Marketing & Sales During the Pandemic: Invest or Wait-n-See?

I’ve talked with a lot of business owners in our industry over the past few months, and every firm falls into one of just two buckets… those that are actively investing in marketing & sales during the pandemic and those that are standing pat and taking a wait-and-see stance.

And by ‘invest,’ I don’t necessarily mean money (though a little of that wouldn’t hurt)… I’m talking about a commitment to an active marketing & sales initiative. To spend the time and effort to make it happen… and then to stick with it.

You can easily guess which side I come down on, but not because marketing & sales are the businesses we’re in… but because it really is the smart thing to do.

And here’s why…

March 1, 2020

“But we’re a really good partner.”

3 Steps to True Big-Client Partnerships

I had a conversation last week with a friend of mine, the well-known CEO of a large market research firm. He was telling me about the time when he first joined his firm and, as part of his onboarding, reviewed their top 10 clients. One of them was a Fortune 100 company, a manufacturer of consumer food & beverage products… a brand known around the world. He was excited to learn that this company was his firm’s largest client and that his firm was a “good partner” to them.

December 3, 2019

This Seller-Doer Sales Strategy is Right in Your Own Backyard

Let me start with a few questions. As a seller-doer…

#1. Do you live in or near a fairly large city? [Everyone in NY, Chicago, Atlanta, LA and even in places like Nashville & Baltimore are putting their hands up in the air.]

#2. Do you have clients or potential clients (i.e. sales prospects) based nearby? [Most of the hands stay up.]

Final question. Have you visited any of those clients or prospects, in-person, in the past 3 months? [That sound you hear is all of the hands dropping.]

Why is that? Why would we not visit nearby “business opportunities” in-person?

November 20, 2019

Their marketing worked! This time.

I needed a new part for my truck. The armrest was busted and I needed a new piece to fix it. I asked my mechanic about replacing the entire armrest, but was a little appalled at the cost of a new one. And I didn’t know quite where to go to find a piece as specific as the underside plate for an armrest in a Ford truck.

Then, in a huge stroke of luck/coincidence, I saw an ad on TV for a place called RockAuto. So, I went to their website, found the part, ordered it, the part showed up a few days later… boom! The advertising worked for them.

Sort of.