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The Competitive Advantage

tag: strategy

October 28, 2015

A Handshake Still Matters

handshake 1I spent last week on Brickell Key in Miami (yeah – I took one for the team!) at CASRO’s 40th Annual Conference. Good event, some really interesting speakers and sessions, well-done social activities and a couple dozen exhibiting firms (including us!).

Over the 3 days, I had the opportunity to connect with a number of new industry contacts (now called ‘sales prospects’) and – maybe more importantly – re-connect with a bunch of old friends, contacts, colleagues and clients.

Say what you will about technology and the digital world we live in, but in business, nothing is more important than that person-to-person (P2P) connection. The handshake… the smile… the laughter… a REAL connection.

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October 6, 2015

Integrated Marketing: Getting Maximum Impact from your Marketing Tactics

Imagine you work for a small-to-mid-size firm with a small – but active – marketing program. You have a solid website, you blog weekly, send out a monthly email blast, post to social media daily (LinkedIn and Twitter) and even produce a webinar once each quarter. Pretty good stuff!

But here’s the thing… if all of those tactics are not working together, you might not be achieving the kind of results you could be. For example…

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September 1, 2015

Is the “Customer Experience” improving in our society?

waiter2In the course of just a few days last week, I had four separate [unexpected] experiences that made me wonder if businesses are finally starting to “get it”… and understand that the Customer Experience may be the most important aspect of marketing, let alone its obvious impact on satisfaction and loyalty.

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August 26, 2015

Seek first to help… then to sell

helpLast week was the inaugural Instant Impact™, a 1/2-day virtual workshop on marketing and sales in the market research industry. (By the way, it was awesome!) If there was an underlying theme to the event – although, interestingly, an unintentional one – it was this, “Seek first to help… then to sell.” And it applied equally to both the marketing and sales portions of the program.

This philosophy works for a lot of reasons…

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August 18, 2015

Why you get hired… the reason behind the reason

Why

Last week, I was chatting with a friend about our firm – what we do and who we serve – when he asked me what I thought was a fairly straight-forward question, “Why do you get hired?”

I responded with a few of those things I thought he would expect to hear: “We have a proven track record”… “We offer services in the market research industry that virtually no one else does.”… “We work only in the MR industry which allows us to hit the ground running.” And so on.

Then he said, “No! Why do you really get hired? What’s the reason behind the reason?” Ahh… now I understood what he was getting at.

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August 4, 2015

Partnering with others can accelerate your growth.

partnersI’ve been doing a little thinking and planning lately around the future of Harpeth Marketing – noodling on a variety of strategies and tactics – and one of the things I’ve realized is that a key driver of our past success has been ‘relationships’… no, not just the buyer-seller kind, but the ‘partnering’ kind.

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May 20, 2015

I Lost a Client Today!

In fact, it was our longest-standing client.

No, we didn’t mess up. And no, they didn’t find another marketing services supplier.

The issue is an all-too-common one in our industry… they lost their largest client. In this case, one that accounted for more than 25% of their total revenue. And with that kind of financial hit, my client is facing some serious cash-flow issues… and that’s what got us.

For some firms, a client worth 25% is actually on the low side… I’ve heard of a single, large client accounting for as much as 60-70% of a firm’s total revenue! And with a huge client like that… it’s not IF you will lose them, it’s simply a matter of WHEN.

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April 15, 2015

Do you really know what clients want?

skilletI was flipping through a magazine this morning and came across a small article announcing a new product available to consumers.

It’s a Bluetooth-enabled frying pan that helps you find the right temp so you know when to flip your pancakes (or whatever you’re cooking). Are you serious?!

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