The Drift

The Drift

Better than the Market.

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.


More Posts

The Trading Desk is Dead: Long Live the Trade!

The great thing about writing 500 words about our business every week is that occasionally you end up looking smart in hindsight. Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then. Last Friday afternoon…


The Great Ones.

On Sunday night I had the honor of speaking on opening night of the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Scottsdale about the future of digital media sales. After addressing 'the big lie' that hangs over our…


Lies My CEO Told Me.

When the announcement came down last week that Aol was eliminating 150 sales jobs and consolidating several brands I immediately got a half-dozen emails and calls asking the same question: "Did programmatic…


Selling the Exception.

People in the business ask me all the time about my position in The Great Debate on Viewability. Truth is, I don't have one. That doesn't mean I don't think it's important; it most certainly is. But it's…


Strategy, 101.

Stop Waiting. If things are not closing because you're constantly waiting on something - a product feature, a call back, a change in the budgeting process - then you're not making a difference. You can wait till things calm down, till you get through your inbox, till the weather changes. Or you can simply act. Take chances, try one new thing each day. Ask forgiveness, not permission.


You Bet Your Career.

It's a dirty little secret that this is the time of year that a lot of things start to shake loose. The end of the year means that year end compensation checks come through, and those who've been thinking about making a job change are likely to start moving in the next 4-6 weeks. While this is by no means the only period of intensive recruiting, interviewing and hiring - it's a year-round phenomenon - it's certainly peak season. While I have an iron-clad rule against ever sourcing talent, I do get a lot of calls from sellers and sales leaders thinking about their next career move. Since I end up giving the same advice, I'm putting it out into the public sphere via this post.


Bridge or Parachute?

An Objection of Interest is a (1) legitimate question or issue that's (2) raised by a customer genuinely interested in a commercial relationship with you and (3) has the authority and means to advance the deal. An Objection of Interest is like the bridge to a sale: if you can cross this, we can continue down the path together. The Scarecrow Objection, on the other hand, is not a bridge at all. It's a parachute that allows a disinterested or non-qualified buyer to eject from the conversation. They're not going to volunteer the fact that they're not really interested: why would they?


Getting Quiet Again.

In a 2012 post, I recommended Susan's Cain's "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking." It's no less relevant today -- probably even more so. So take a little quiet time, soak…


The Unmanaged.

Last month 55 sales leaders joined us at the top of the Hearst building for the final Upstream Seller Forum of 2014. Since the session focused on leadership, we thought it would be a good idea to bring…


Serving.

Today is veteran's day and we're using The Drift to send a message that is at once both personal and universal. The nature of military service in our country today means that the vast majority of us and…


Outta Time.

When I work with managers and sellers in our business there's one issue that almost always comes up: Time. Finding it, managing it, understanding where it goes. Our business may not necessarily be more intense or frenetic than many others, but it can seem that way. And the very tools that are supposed to help us control time and manage productivity often have just the opposite effect.


Six Questions for Louis Rossetto, Father of Web Advertising

Yesterday, 10/27/14, marked exactly 20 years since Louis Rossetto and Wired Ventures launched the HotWired site, and with it created the first ads on the World Wide Web. I was honored to have been part…