Great ad-sales people never rest. When it comes to prospecting and engaging with customers, they seek an edge every day; rising earlier, making more calls, and gathering more information that will be useful to their prospects. While the days of cold-calling are not over, the Masters of Media Selling use […]
Sales people lose sales when they are not trusted and respected, and they can’t communicate effectively with senior executives who have the final say. That is why tops ad-sales people need to bring value to the call; not about their media, but new information or new perspective about the prospects market.
Many senior managers, without experience in sales, try to increase sales by setting deadlines and adding bonuses that hurt sales and hurt business. According to Ken Krogue, writing in the Harvard Business Review, “It is a vicious cycle. And companies know it. Yet they continue the practice, month after month and year after year, perhaps unaware of how much it’s really costing them.”
Your opening lines, whether your prospect answers the phone or you leave a phone message, must be smartly specific to that prospect and that business. When you can cite a specific data point about that business, the prospects ears immediately perk up. It’s a data-driven version of a warm call.
The top sales professionals ranked the effectiveness of five sales strategies. The top-ranked strategies were “Getting customers to emotionally connect with you” followed by “Tailoring your sales pitch to the customer’s needs” and then “Asking questions that show your expertise.” The two lowest ranked strategies were “Showing the value of your solution” and “Driving the topics of conversation.”
The question about ROI that should be applied to sales training investments is this: What percentage increase in sales productivity can be reasonably anticipated from sales training? I encourage my clients to think of a minimum of 10% increase in sales.
We help digital publishers and advertising sales executives learn to configure their strategy and sales tactics to take advantage of programmatic media selling and buying functionality.
As a media company manager, you talk all the time about how fast the media business is changing around you. Do you spend enough on helping your sales force stay up-to-date with new media, and new tactics to win in todays hyper-competitive advertising sales market? US companies spend 1.75% of sales compensation on training. That would translate to $1,750 annually for a $100,000 a year sales executive.
Research shows that persistence pays. Research targets were more likely to respond to requests affirmatively than expected by the requesters, and being told “no” by a target may increase their likelihood to say “yes” to the same request later.
What is Masters of Media Selling about?
Getting more of the right appointments at the right time
Being more persuasive
Closing more successfully
