Perhaps you’re freshly back from Cannes or already have a half dozen industry conferences behind you this year. In those environments you’re trying to make the market better for your sales team: Frictionless buying, data standards, uniform measurement and making sure your offerings fit in with the most recent agency/holding company data/buying mousetraps. Over time, if you’re successful, demand will improve: the market will get better, and budgets will grow.
But there remains an unanswered question: how will your team be better than the market?
In the dozens of sales team workshops and scores of manager coaching calls I’ve done this year, I consistently hear they cut the budget, they’re only buying lower funnel,
and they’re not buying our category right now. I’ve heard economic trends, oil prices and even crop yield as justifications for missing numbers. Seller energy is spent on lobbying for new accounts or smaller numbers, because the market just won’t allow them to sell what’s expected.
Completely unreasonable goals and unreasonable management are, of course not OK. But questioning the premise above is quite reasonable. Selling is about the strategies, efforts and execution to be better than the rest of the market.
Some ideas:
6-6-12: Every seller should have a strong six-week agenda for competing for already-budgeted campaigns. But she should also spend time every day on her six-month agenda: how she’ll proactively drive unique demand for your products and services. And some time every week on the structural and long-range stuff that will play out over 12 months with key accounts.
Diversification: If you only ever talk to investment and media – on the agency or client side – you’ll only ever discuss price/value and features. Brand, strategy, planning, centers-of-excellence, shopper marketing, regional and local spending… these are the seedbeds for incremental demand, ideation and budgets.
Depth: Don’t go to the people noted above with the same case you bring to the investment team. Learn something about the customer’s calendar and what geography they need to support. What are they doing in local broadcast? What new products or line extensions are they launching? Who is their chief competitor? If your only expertise and knowledge are about the ad sales business, you are a sitting duck.
Diagnosis: Always have a solvable customer problem at the top of every customer conversation, every meeting, every
time. In our foundational sales training program, Leading with Needs, we call this the diagnosis, and it challenges us to make it about them, not just the stuff we have to sell.
The next time a seller says They’re not buying us or The budget parameters have changed, I hope you’ll ask, So what’s your plan? Where else do you plan to look? Who else can we approach on the business? Or What else might you try?
If you’re collectively unsure where to start, I know a group that can be of help.
Interviews are Not about Fact-finding: Make your minimum standards on skills and experience clear to your HR team or recruiter. Then leave the candidate's resume in your desk. Too many interviews end up being about the facts on the page ("...so you worked at AOL?") You're wasting a lot of time confirming data points, which could be better spent on higher order discussion. Focus Instead on Understanding the Candidate's Process.
It's not often that I've used this space to review or comment on business books. But the blend of industry perspective and salacious beach reading found in Ken Auletta's Frenemies: The Epic Disruption…
The best meetings are sometimes the ones we don't have at all. Many of your meetings are automatic: the weekly update, the kickoff meeting for the project and so on. Before hitting send on that calendar invite, ask the question: can we accomplish what we need to do without bringing everyone into the same physical or virtual space? You'll be surprised how often the answer is yes.
If swapping out just a single word in your vocabulary would create enormous positive change in you and those around you - massively shift attitudes and perspective for the better - would you do it? It will take discipline and consistency to normalize the new word, and it will feel awkward at first. So...would you make the change? You just need to start using the word for in place of other prepositions like in and to.
A consistent thread connects hundreds of workshop discussions I've had with sales teams over the past 20 years: how to generate and foster a sense of urgency in a channel where there are no closing- or…
The RFO - request-for-opportunity - isn't an incremental change to the RFP; it is its complete opposite. In the RFP process the seller reacts. In the RFO process, the seller drives. Where the RFP is based on a bunch of issues and qualifications that were agreed upon by various committees, the RFO is disruptive and driven by a strong POV.
In our industry, we tend to think of innovation almost exclusively in terms of technology: it's always about a new algorithm or bidding engine or streaming solution that's going to change everything. But there are two major problems with this narrative. First, it disempowers the rest of us. The second problem with this fixation on "the next big thing" is that it's not even true. The next big thing is usually NOT a thing at all.
Your client - that elusive marketer you've been trying to access -- is taking a meeting with you today. Are you sure you're ready? And are you certain you even deserve it? This week's Drift is proudly…
Most interpersonal conflict occurs because of how we react immediately in the moment. We read an email or hear a comment...we feel slighted or hurt...and we immediately lash back. A destructive cycle thus begins and rapidly escalates. We are only very rarely responding to what others do or say. We instead are responding to the story our ego is telling us about what's been done or said. Someone seems distracted and not paying attention to you in a meeting: your ego says They don't respect you! How arrogant! But your ego may be an unreliable narrator. What if that person was dealing with a very ill child or parent? Someone else chimes in on an email string and seems to dismiss the concern you've raised. Out to get you? Undermining your value? Or is she attempting to calm everything down but her note loses context as an email?
You may be a business man or some high-degree thief They may call you doctor or they may call you chief Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But you're gonna have to serve somebody - Bob Dylan There…
Indulge me. I've been at this since the very beginning of web advertising (1994) and I'm seeing patterns. Each massive, tectonic shift in our business has been preceded by an equally massive economic or…
Controlling your controllables is no mere cliché; it's the recipe for a satisfying, effective and full life in sales (not to mention a truly satisfying life overall). Focusing on factors and events you don't control burns precious hours and energy and leaves you with nothing to show for it. What will the boss decide? How will the budget shake out? How will the markets react to the latest world news? What can you do about any of these? Just worry and wait... the two least productive and most frustrating options available. So let's take a quick look at four things you absolutely control every single day.