If you’re flummoxed by how to sell or market through COVID-19, you’re not alone. That said, it doesn’t mean we should stop trying to figure it out. As with any major disruption, “business as usual” is likely to result in tone deaf outreach. I find that companies are in 1 of 3 modes right now.

As we roll into Spring conference season, New Year’s resolutions often go out the window... hijacked by time zone changes, cocktail hours, and conference programs that are jammed from early in the morning to late in the night.

Are you dreaming of your summer break? Counting down to unplugging from it all? What if we worked in companies we didn’t need to take a summer vacation or holiday from? What if we didn’t push ourselves to the brink of mental exhaustion with the expectation we’d be able to recharge over a long weekend or a week off? If we are physically unable to work (i.e., illness, injury) the expectation is we’ll log off for the day or until we’re well enough to work. But what if it’s our mental wellness that’s out of whack? What are the expectations then?

I’ve read a fair number of articles on growth over the course of my career and I can tell you, firsthand, how easy it is to get distracted by the newest, shiniest bauble of advice. Just like the latest tech device or a cool new app, it’s easy to grab on to new ideas and hope for the best— without really having an understanding of how impactful a new strategy or tip or trick might truly be.

At ESOMAR Congress in September we hosted a main stage panel discussion with industry leaders driving M&A activity in the marketing insights and technology vertical on “Key Drivers of Investment and M&A Activity in Market Research.”

"I'm so busy!" As summer (for many of us) winds down and conference season and Q4 ramps up, this mantra will echo louder and louder.  We trade stories of miles flown, cities visited, sleepless nights counted, deals saved, speeches given. The tally of these items becomes a proxy score for our value as an employee, our stature as a professional. “She must have a very important job,” we think, “she is always so busy!”  We’ve come to equate busyness with professional status and we’ve come to equate professional status with self-identity. That combination equates to… burnout.

In any discussion about team building these days, the D-word is sure to come up… diversity.

A growing number of studies show that diversity isn’t just the right thing to do from a people perspective, it’s also the right thing to do for a company’s bottom line. According to BCG, diverse companies report 19% higher revenue rates. Forbes reported diverse companies are 1.4 times more likely to have sustained profitable growth. The key to realizing those benefits is ensuring you’re addressing diversity holistically and not equating it to inherent traits only.

I’m often asked how to create more diverse sales teams and frequently hear from hiring managers lamenting the lack of female sales talent applying for their positions. Although sales has traditionally been perceived as a male-dominated profession, in truth, there are MANY female sales leaders— your job posting just likely isn’t appealing to them.

Although we like to think of starting a business as an intentional practice, for many founders, it’s quite the opposite. Often times, founders fall into a new business idea and excitedly plow ahead with it, taking on business partners or key employees and verbally agreeing to sort out the legal and financial partnership components somewhere down the line. Unfortunately, these types of loose business agreements often wreak havoc on partnerships. Why? Because, as a wise business advisor once told me, “money makes people do crazy shit.” Learn from my mistakes... get your business and partnership structure documented - in writing.

I launched my first business, OTX, in June of 2000. As it turns out, nearly the worst time to start a business, as in 2001 the “dot com” bubble burst. Fortunately, we had a diverse client base and a technology platform that was literally revolutionizing the way movie studios and CPG firms conducted research, and we not only survived the recession, we thrived. In 2003, OTX was ranked the fastest growing research company in the world. But it wasn’t just a strong product and good fortune.