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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.

Monday Jun 24 - Doug Weaver

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Stay In.

Right now, there’s an awful lot of showing up. There have been some immediate moves on diversity hiring, and a whole lot of public statements being made — including my own. But showing up is one thing: staying in is entirely another.

Everybody Knows.

The now-famous New Yorker cartoon told us “On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog.” On Zoom, everybody knows.

The New Story.

I do not know what it’s like to navigate life and business as a woman or an African American or an immigrant. I never will. I probably can’t ever really understand the micro-aggressions – the small acts of humiliation – that people who don’t look like me suffer every week. But I can and must take account of the micro-opportunities that have been there for me all along.

If I Only Had the Time.

Not obsessing about time is one thing: re-imagining how we use it is entirely another. What can I say yes to, today? Non-traditional scheduling options. Re-imagining your relationship with the calendar and the clock won't just happen. It all starts with you choosing your own narrative about possibility.

Alone in Space.

You're not alone if you're feeling overwhelmed and broken by the perceived enormity of the challenges. Indeed, if you find yourself struggling intellectually with the entire issue it will, in fact, break you. But the best managers and sellers - the best executives of every stripe - all seem to have the same rhythm. They slow it down. They break it down. They solve one problem and then the next. And if you solve enough problems, you get to come home.

Inside the Box.

At the end of this stage there won’t be a return to normal or anything close: there will be a transition to a brand-new era. And none of us will ever say, "I wish I’d waited longer to change."

We Can Do This.

Here at Upstream Group, it’s day 50 of The Siege. Having looked back over these weeks of recovery, reinvention and writing, I’m sharing my bullet list of ideas that have sustained and invigorated me. Hope you find them helpful.

Stopping the Clock.

Stopping the Clock breaks the tyranny of the calendar. It allows us to start living again in the present… to focus on the next hour. We can now start visualizing what productivity and joy and excellence look like in our altered world. We have only now. Stopping the Clock let's us make the most of it.

The Plan.

Dwight Eisenhower famously said "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything." Today I think rather the opposite is true. As we navigate the disconnection, isolation, disruption and anxiety of today’s pandemic and tomorrow’s shattered economy, I think The Plan is what matters. Let me explain.

The Broken Scoreboard.

The smart managers and evolved sellers are adapting by building new scoreboards. They’re not basing them on sales numbers: with no idea where the curve tops out or the market bottoms, that would be folly. They’re building scoreboards around excellence. They’re creating internal competition around learning, and service, and empathy. Understanding that this is not a time to reap, they are choosing to keep track of what’s being sown.

Bring Something.

The five percent we remember from rough times are those who showed up and brought something. They didn’t wait for the struggling party to define the need and ask for help. They were the five percent who said I’m doing this for you and then did it. They anticipated what could be helpful and then acted – not because there would be any payback, but because it was the right thing to do. They could have chosen to be polite: instead, they chose to be useful.

Walking the Floor.

Great sales managers have always understood the power of Walking the Floor… being a physical presence in the office by walking from workstation to workstation. These managers understood that looking in someone’s eyes and getting a sense of their mood and energy was vital. It told them I’m here, I see you, and I’m paying attention. It’s the time that a hidden concern could emerge or a spontaneous coaching opportunity arise. So how do we walk the floor today when we’re all on different floors in different dwellings in different cities? How does each of us reinvent and extend our presence to show our employees that I’m here, I see you, and I’m paying attention? I have ideas.

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