Charles Warner - Media Selling

On every account contact, always present customers with ideas that will lead to an increased investment and will reinforce the value of their current investment. Remember that advertising is an intangible product that requires more reinforcement, servicing, and reassurance than a tangible product would. Partners require constant attention if you are going to retain and increase current business.

If you are going to put customers first, get results for them, and get all‐important renewals, then you are going to have to woo, wow, and delight them, as described in Tom Stewart and Patricia O’Connell’s Woo, Wow, and Win: Service Design, Strategy and the Art of Customer Delight . 25 When Steve Jobs was CEO of Apple, he made delighting customers his mantra and, in his book The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management , Steve Denning states the first principle of radical management: “The goal of work is to delight clients.” 26 More and more sales organizations of major companies are evaluating and compensating their salespeople based on levels of customer satisfaction, service, success, and, in effect, delight. That means that salespeople must not only make a sale, but also delight customers and partners by means of excellent service after the sale. Chapter 14: Customer Success covers the techniques of delighting customers and partners.

In some smaller organizations with a limited sales staff, all four of the above objectives might be assigned to a single salesperson. However, in larger media organizations such as Facebook, CBS, or iHeart Media some of the above objectives might be divided into separate and discrete functions. For example, getting results for partners might be the overall objective of all sales job functions, but developing new business might be the objective given to a business development or partnership staff, retaining and increasing current business might be the objective of an agency sales staff, and delighting partners might be the objective of an account management or customer success staff.

Strategies are long‐term, overall operating concepts and principles that guide actions toward stated objectives. In order to achieve the above sales objectives, salespeople should follow these sales strategies:

1 Create value

2 Research and develop insights into prospects’ and customers’ problems, challenges, pain points, and competitive positioning

3 Become an expert about how your medium works and solves marketing and advertising problems

4 Become the preferred supplier

5 Innovate

A salesperson’s most important sales strategy is to create value for their product, to create a perception of a differential competitive advantage of their product in prospects’, buyers’, and customers’ minds. Creating value means telling a compelling story and educating your prospects, buyers, and customers about your product and medium. Here’s an example of creating value with a sales story:

1 A new kids’ toothpaste is blue and tastes like bubble gum.

2 A revolutionary new product that is a glistening, bright, cool, deep blue color that shimmers with flecks of silver, making it interesting, exciting, and fun for children to push out of a dispenser that is easy for small hands to manipulate. Its foaming action in the mouth is new and different; it is thicker and foamier, as if something important is really working in kids' mouths to fight cavities and to make their breath smell great so their mommies will know they really did brush their teeth. When the kids first taste their very own type of new toothpaste that is not for adults, they experience a taste sensation unlike any other. It is not toothpaste; it is bubble gum! Kids cannot wait to brush their teeth several times a day. They are likely to say after lunch, “Well, I think I’d better go brush my teeth.”

Which of the above two sales stories about a new kids’ toothpaste creates more value for the product? Which sales story is better? Which story is more likely to make the sale? The second description tells a story and creates value for the product, which is positioned according to its benefits to the kids.

You must become a brand evangelist for your product. 27 You will find a much more thorough discussion of the many ways to create value in Chapter 7: Influence and Creating Value.

Potential advertisers do not care about a website or app’s underlying code, a broadcast station’s power or antenna height, a cable system’s type of commercial insert equipment, or a magazine or newspaper’s press size or color‐separation ability – these are all features. What prospects care about is how advertising is going to help them solve marketing or advertising problems and challenges. Solutions to these problems are benefits. Therefore, salespeople must learn to position their offerings in such a way that they always answer prospects’ question, “What’s in it for me (WIIFM),” as is covered in depth in Chapter 10: Researching Insights and Solutions and Chapter 11: Educating.

Effective selling is a lot more than just building and managing relationships; it requires being an expert about how your medium or product works and solves marketing and advertising problems. Effective selling requires being an expert in teaching prospects how to use your medium, tailoring your proposals to the needs of your prospects, and taking control of the sales conversation in order to give insights into how your solutions work.

Salespeople must create so much value for their medium or product that they become the preferred supplier with both a partner and that partner’s advertising agency if they have one. It is highly probable that clients will eventually change advertising agencies, so salespeople should create value and establish relationships at the client level. In order to become the preferred supplier, or preferred partner, salespeople must provide more and better information and service than any other salesperson from any other medium so the customer will think of them first when they need information or want to invest in advertising.

In the Harvard Business Review article titled “The best salespeople do what the best brands do,” author Denise Lee Yohn writes that “the best brands ignore trends. Great salespeople don’t imitate, they innovate…[they] offer their customers unique perspectives and often seek to push their thinking. They present a differentiated sales experience by challenging customers’ status quo and teaching them something new and valuable.” 28 Every product and medium must also continually innovate: new packages, new ad formats, new promotions and contests, new content, new special sections, new functionality, new ways to access information, and new events. New products and opportunities such as those mentioned give salespeople a reason to make another call on a customer or agency, they create excitement, and they provide new ways to solve marketing and advertising problems.

A salesperson has three key tactics to use on a day‐to‐day basis to help them carry out their broader strategies:

1 To create a differential competitive advantage

2 To build relationships

3 To solve problems