Upcoming Events & Presentations
OMMA Publish in NYC June 17th in New York City. Join me to learn about and discuss the burning questions around publshing profitably. Don't miss my panel "Making Data Work For Readers, Advertisers, and the Bottom Line" w/ Cella Irvine of About.com, Jodi Kahn of iVillage, Dave Evans of Rainbow Media, and Dominic Venuto of Razorfish. Check the agenda here and register now!.
Horse publications unite! Don't miss our definitive Internet Sales and Hybrid Media seminars, two full half-days of strategy, tactics and your questions answered at the American Horse Publications Annual Meeting June 25-27 in New Orleans.
Florida Magazine Association, Annual Meeting: August 7th, Orlando, FL. Don't miss the back-by-popular-demand 2-hour seminar on Internet and Hybrid Media Publishing Strategy and Tactics presented by ambro.com Associate David Fales. |
Sales Tip:
Are Your Sales Calls Like a Bad Blind Date?
Are your sales calls like a bad blind date? I mean for the client. Have you noticed that if you talk about yourself too much you won't get another date? Hello!? This is what many sales people do. They talk too much and listen too little. They show little knowledge of and interest in their client. While the client is nice during the call, they never return the salesperson's follow-up calls afterward. Duh!
Selling is so easy, and yet it's so hard. Selling is easy when you know a lot about the prospect. You can show prospects how well you understand their situation in a polite and caring way, and can then engage them in a discussion of what their issues and needs are. This allows you to sell the client what they want rather than convince them to change.
But selling is hard if you are focused on telling clients about your company, or media, and why it's great, and why it's perfect for them. Many sales people are so anxious to "sell" they never get the chance to truly engage, and hear from their clients.
The idea that I would be giving dating advice makes my wife laugh. But bear with me.
Imagine a dating scenario where I (a skier) am introduced by a friend to a woman who also likes to ski. I sit down to dinner with my blind date and say: "So I understand that you ski. That's nice I love to ski, too! I've been skiing since I was a kid and have skied in the east a lot, at Park City, Jackson Hole, and Zermatt, Switzerland. These days I ski a lot out here in Oregon at Mt. Bachelor. I'd love to take you some time. But enough about me. Tell me what you think about my skiing."
Yikes! Yeah, I know, no one with a clue would be so overbearing on a blind date. But how often do you or your sales people unleash their presentation about your magazine or Internet site and then, upon realizing they have talked too much, have words to the effect of "so tell me what you think about my magazine?"
Even worse, without asking questions about her love of skiing - first - I might have gone on that rant only to find out it is cross-country skiing she likes!
How much better would it be if I had opened the conversation like this: "So I understand that you ski. That's nice - I love to ski, too! How long have you skied? Where is your favorite place to ski? (I don't need to go on here, right?) I think we can say for certain that this scenario is much more likely to produce a second date.
The point here is that engaging the client is critical in every sales call. The skills to do so are not difficult. But it really does help if you train sales people and give them resources to establish rapport at the onset by telling the prospect something they know about the client and situation and then immediately asking for feedback. Focusing the conversation on the experiences, interests and needs of the prospect will keep the conversation focused on what they care about. Only after getting a clear understanding about where the client is coming from should sales people then begin to tell them about how their media solutions can help resolve this prospect's challenges
Sales people with the drive to overcome obstacles and who believe in their property are very valuable. But sometimes the more belief they have and the more drive they have, the more they need to be trained to hold back, to engage, and to probe, in order to learn to get the client to tell them what they want. Your sales people will have more success in making presentations, and their proposals will be well received. And it will win more business for management.
(Next issue: Your Sales Story Needs Drama) |
 continued from:
It represents the attention of your readers who are most engaged in looking for information (or entertainment) and who are most poised to buy something. It can be sold to only a few advertisers - one or two or three ads per page-view. So you can leverage that shortage to create demand. Tell your best advertisers they can have first crack, but if they don't commit, you have to take the opportunity to their competitor. And offer them category exclusivity and right-of-first-refusal to renew, so that the advertiser that pays your rates can get a genuine business advantage.
At most publishers, the sales staff is intimidated by the idea that its online audience isn't big enough. Perhaps you've have even been told that by a customer. And of course you'd like to grow it. That is axiomatic. But we should be clear that the audience you DO have is valuable to advertisers. You only have enough audience attention to be shared by few advertisers. But when you get them started paying the CPMs that make sense in your targeted market you can turn around and re-invest some of that revenue in growing the audience. That way, today, you can accommodate 3 advertisers with meaningful packages, and after re-investing some of that revenue in content or marketing in order to grow, next quarter you'll be able to sell 6 packages, and next year a dozen at a time.
But it all requires that sales people be taught to sell what you do have...not fret about what you don't. You DO have the attention of potential buyers who are valuable to an advertiser. You DO have the power to make it even more valuable with exclusivity and renewal terms.
If you are unsure about how to implement such a strategy, contact us. We'll help you achieve success like our leading clients. When you are ready to train your sales staff to operate with confidence in this new world of advertising sales, call us for a quote on customized training seminars.
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