To become the latter, research firms must avoid these 10 sales mistakes

Editor’s note: Rosie Balk is director, marketing research and strategy, at Advocate Health Care, a Chicago area hospital group.

As a buyer of market research services - big and small - I welcome a variety of market research firms to pitch me on their services. I’m often surprised at how little effort even the biggest firms put into selling and keeping clients. Some of the mistakes suppliers make:

1. Not making the effort to differentiate your company

Want to get in the door to see me? So do hundreds of your competitors. Cold-calls are likely to be returned when supplier salespeople give a taste of their company’s unique offering as it applies to my business generally. Think speed in delivering results is your advantage? Say so. Do you have an insightful way of doing analysis? Say so. Do you have senior staff writing excellent reports for the C-suite? Show me. Don’t announce that you are a full-service market research firm and then stare at me expectantly, waiting for me to hand you my budget. That won’t happen.

2. Not customizing your pitch to my industry or business

Yes, I know you are billing your hours and can’t pre-research everything there is to know about my company despite your interest in selling your services. No one is asking you to memorize our annual report. We don’t - why should you? But please know the basics. If a client is in health care, what part? Services, pharmaceutical, devices, etc.? Your approach should show some knowledge of what is important to the specific industry and client. Think: What types of market research needs would a big established pharmaceutical firm with a good pipeline have vs. a one-product medical device startup?

3. Talking about your products instead of addressing my needs

Despite the hours of sales training that some suppliers receive, this still happens with great regularity. Sure you’ve got your higher-profit, canned research tools you’d like to sell me, but you should be prepared to show me their relevancy to my precise need or business before you inundate me with their catchy trademarked names and colorful brochures. Yes, I’d like an introduction to your firm before you go nosing around in my plans for the year but remember: If you are doing all of the talking you probably aren’t gaining enough information to make a sale.

4. Quickly categorizing the complex business issue my company has as a standard type of research

This undermines the credibility you’ve hopefully established in the initial pitch. “What you’ve got is a satisfaction problem; we have just the thing for that” you say. That is fantastic if your assessment included the proper questions to determine what the researchable problem is. But don’t be so eager to answer the client need that you jump the gun. If you take a bit of time to ask me the proper questions, I’m more confident that you are the person who can design an appropriate project and that you will be able to ask my target audience good questions in an IDI or on a questionnaire. My perception of your ability to conduct research is enhanced when you listen and you are less likely to have client conflict on the path you choose.

5. Not demonstrating why I should trust you with my reputation

As a client-side research broker and manager, that is what is at stake when I trust you with an assignment. You are my designated project expert, but the responsibility remains with me. Convincing internal clients to spend dollars on market research vs. operations or marketing isn’t always easy. We “end users” have a lot at risk, so supply me with what I need to know. References from clients who are like me, either in my industry or who have done a similar project are good. So are blinded writing samples so I can see if you can make a recommendation or if you leave your analysis at “Column A says 10 percent.” If you are presenting data, can you handle conflict? What type of in-house experts support your work? Are they smart and experienced?

6. Not figuring out the peculiarities of the person in front of you

Is the person you are pitching to a hands-on editor or a just-give-me-the-report type? Will they review every single crosstab or none? You are likely to have both as clients so save headaches all the way around and figure this out up front. Include the cost and timing of major edits, changes, etc., as a line item in your proposals so you don’t get blind sided by a hands-on client.

7. Over-working the organization

Want to permanently burn a bridge? Then by all means, go around the in-house market research or marketing staff who brought you in, to a contact, say, a couple of levels up. Don’t ask marketing if it is okay or tell them what you are doing; let them hear about it through the grapevine. Misrepresent your relationship to the organization, then sell the big guy something pricey he doesn’t really need, which he will probably bill marketing for. When people in the company talk about how stupid the project is, let marketing deal with the fallout. After all, it isn’t as if marketers talk to marketers at other companies who also need research…or do they? Of course we expect you to work your relationship. Just do it the right way.

8. Resting on your laurels

There are many suppliers who take their clients for granted. Are you sitting on three years of my data, waiting for me to call you to give you a year-four contract that you’ve made no effort to acquire? Providing three years of good data is indeed an effort, but it may not be enough for you to keep a contract. Year four or year two wouldn’t be at risk if the supplier would think, on occasion, about what patterns they’ve seen over the years and what they’d recommend I need to investigate next. A good up-sell works in my interest and in yours. Stay on top of your clients, occasionally spending some unbilled time actually reviewing projects we’ve done, looking for patterns in our needs, thinking of some aspects maybe we couldn’t afford to do the first time around but still might need in a different project. Clients would welcome an informed call such as, “Remember when we did that ad testing for you and uncovered that problem communicating to your target? Were you able to resolve that? We have a new, even more refined way of looking at this now that might be helpful for your next ad test. Call me back if you are interested.”

9. Thinking of in-house research management staff as something less than a researcher

Calling us “end users” is a good example of that. We are likely to have the same education as you, we may have worked your side of the fence and we can provide you with what you need to know to do the best job for a specific client. A good research relationship is largely collaborative with great ideas, designs and reporting hammered out in a partnership.

10. Never following up

To many of you, a project ends when you e-mail a report. Unless there are competitive issues, on a major study a good supplier wants to know what happened next. How was the information received? Was it used as intended? Could anything have been improved? Are there any next steps the supplier can help with? This behavior is what elevates a supplier to a trusted partner.