Latest "research" Posts

Holiday Cards and Presents, Really?

I’m already late…I should have the database cleaned out for the Holiday Cards by now. We should have picked out the card, the greeting, scanned in our personal signatures for printing by now. And, of course, we should have set the budget for gifts by now- grading our clients and partners in the “A”, “B” and “C” budget categories as well as “Card Only” for gifts this season.

I’m late. It’s my fault. I struggle with this ritual every year. I have taken every approach I think at this, but I’m looking for fresh ideas for what to give for the Holidays to clients, prospects and vendors. Please share your ideas with me and everyone else. I don’t need just good ideas, or new ideas- I just want to know what you and your company are doing.

Here are the categories I have used in the past:

Food – Simple, easy to order – take care of an entire list of higher-end clients in one sitting with a catalog, a credit card, a list of addresses, handful of seasonal wishes written down so I don’t forget them, and a bottle of red wine- (wine is optional, but I find it an excellent shopping lubricant). Of course the challenge – it’s not memorable or meaningful.
Iconic – Much harder, have to pack in a lot of meaning, thought and something that is not offensive. My best ever was a glass prism used in olden times on boats for lighting lower decks by being embedded in the floors of decks above them and allowing light into the lower decks.

Social Media and B2B Selling: Survey Says…

With the help of the TAS Group, Dave Stein and his company ES Research Group just completed a very interesting study–“The New Social Media: Do They Enable B2B Selling?”–which measures the top social media tools’ effectiveness in B2B selling. You can take a look at the key findings at www.esresearch.com/socialmedia (the executive summary is available here). The survey was filled out by nearly 400 sales professionals in the U.S.

For the lazy or only mildly interested, here is where they ranked in order of effectiveness:

Hoover’s/OneSource is the most helpful in winning B2B Sales at 54%, although 61% of those surveyed used it
LinkedIn is more widely used than other social media platforms, with 86% of those surveyed using it, but it helped in winning sales for 42% of those surveyed
Twitter is being used by almost a third of those surveyed (31%), but is only producing results for 13% (more thoughts on this later)
Plaxo and Facebook are being used by about half of those surveyed (50% and 48% respectively), who claim be to similar traction as with Twitter – (13% and 15% respectively)

The report’s conclusions were…