It is a busy period in the cultural heritage industry and forecasts are that it is going to get busier. It's not really a problem for firms to acquire work right now; the problem is finding the resources, particularly the labor resources, to get it...
It happened again. I was listening to a great panel discussion on cultural resource management (CRM) sponsored by the University of California Berkeley’s Archaeological Research Facility. One of the panelists self-introduced themselves as working for the largest CRM firm in the U.S. Not only was...
Five years ago, HBI’s Christopher Dore gave a lecture to the Federation of Archaeological Managers and Employers (FAME). The U.K. was on the verge of an archaeological labor shortage and Dore was asked to talk about the lessons learned from the U.S. archaeological/CRM labor shortage...
In their book titled Sales Management: Analysis and Decision Making, Thomas Ingram et al. establish trust-building as a foundation of effective salespeople. Trust-building has five components: client orientation, competence, dependability, candor, and compatibility. The most important, and the one that heritage professionals have the greatest...
One of the largest obstacles holding back heritage organization growth is centralized authority. Many owners and CEOs will assign responsibility, but not authority. If you are a heritage executive, push true decision-making authority as deep as you can into your organization. To be successful, though,...
Many heritage professionals aren’t motivated by money. To incentivize performance, figure out what they really want: a week off to write, a trip to a conference, a chance to take a class or seminar, work-at-home flexibility. Bonuses are important, but make them the right kind of...
Take your most profitable client to lunch this week. Your most profitable client may not be your largest client. We tend to focus on revenue in the heritage industry and give lots of attention to the biggest clients. However, these clients may not be the...
Become the Uber of the heritage industry! Set a goal to innovate just one “disruptive” product or service this year. It’s much harder than you think, but if you are successful, you are set to dominate the industry. ...
Client retention is one of the most important overlooked aspects of heritage organizations. It can be demonstrated mathematically that retaining an existing client is far more valuable than winning a new client. You must track your retention rate. The formula is easy, but most heritage organizations...
For sales effectiveness, don’t chase jobs, build relationships. With strong relationships you will have a career of steady work. Without strong relationships, when you win a job, that’s all you get...