What, indeed, makes the world go around? The immutable forces of physics would be one answer. In our more prosaic world, and something I know more about, it’s the creative and destructive forces of the economy. Every day the sun comes up, it’s a new day of opportunity. New products […]
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.
Challenger Selling is simply the re-booted and re-packaged Structured Selling process that made Ziff-Davis famous. By presenting a “challenge” that the customer is facing, like losing market share or missing sales, providing important information about that challenge, the sales person can better capture the attention of any prospect to engage them in a sales conversation that leads from the challenge — read their needs — to the solution being sold.
You might think that a super-star like Heismen Trophy winner Johnny Rodgers would just go to a meeting and clients would through money at him. But as the group discussed how to break new accounts and build the relationships and trust that leads to business, Johnny pointed out that in his experience it takes 7 “touches” to build a relationship to be ready to do business.
When it comes to publisher ad-sales strategy for programmatic, the objective is to realize the greatest portion of the “value” of an impression that it can. For programmatic ad-buyers their goal is to pay the lowest price they can for a higher “value” impression. Lets keep in mind that if the impression isn’t worth more than an advertiser pays, they wouldn’t buy it.
In our world of ad-sales, the important stuff is how well you understand your customers and how you can help them compete better by delivering perspective and solutions that will drive their sales.
Data is sexy when it drives profits. Publishers can profit most by bringing their own data to the point of sale. Sales people can learn to develop custom data sets for advertisers that adds value to the publisher’s impressions, driving greater advertiser loyalty and revenue.
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.
