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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but hope is not a strategy. Unfortunately, there are too many sellers in the media space who have very little strategy or who do not want to do the whole job. That is what we are going to address in this week’s sales meeting.
As a GM or Sales Manager, I would constantly repeat to my teams that there are six main responsibilities in this job. You have to prospect, you need to reach out to decision makers to set appointments, you need to do a needs analysis, make a presentation, close the deal and then service the accounts.
As a manager, it is your job to figure out which of the six steps your sellers are struggling with. And, of course, you are going to have different members of your team who are struggling with different steps of the process.
There are other things media sales reps have to do but most everything ties back to one of those six things. And the key here is this, you have to do ALL six things in order to really be doing the job.
If you have worked for me, sorry you have to hear this for the thousandth time, but if you are a cook at McDonalds, you cannot say you are going to make burgers, shakes and coffees but refuse to make the fries. It doesn’t work that way. You either do the whole job or you should do none of it.
Now, I have always also said that if you can handle steps one and two, I can help do all of the rest for you as your manager. However, it would be impossible for one person to prospect and set appointments for everyone, so at the very minimum, someone needs to have the skills to do those two things. If they do, I can teach them the rest.
There are two steps which get failed the most, one of course is setting appointments because it is the hardest step. The other part is the close, also known as THE SELLING PART!
You can do a great job prospecting and even getting meetings. You can be someone who asks all the right questions and makes killer presentations. You’re incredibly organized and thoughtful and you take care of your clients. But, what about that fifth step, the close?
Too many of our brethren will pitch an idea and if objections come or the buy gets turned down, they walk away with their tail between their legs and think they just wasted their time. Perhaps, the client or agency just needed to be sold.
Sales, that is our business. Sometimes it does actually require selling and not just marketing. As I am sure many of you were taught, objections are generally buying signs, not necessarily the prospect not wanting to do business. Some people have a natural tendency to not want to buy anything unless you have talked them into it.
What is in it for them? That should be the focus when trying to talk through selling something to someone. It isn’t about your station being No. 3 in mornings with left-handed women or that last great ratings book you had. It is about how it will help their business grow and if you truly believe you have put something together that will make a noticeable difference in their business, tell them that and show them the research you have to back it up.
Ask yourself, have you ever turned a ‘No’ into a ‘Yes’? I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you haven’t you are probably not coming anywhere near reaching your financial potential. You are leaving too many deals on the table because someone has pushed back. If you cower anytime someone brings up something negative about what you have pitched, that is not selling. That was pitching something and just hoping they didn’t have any objections.
A strategy a friend used to use was when an objection came up, he would always ask them to tell him more about that or to give him an example. Mostly, he was doing it to buy himself some more time to think of an answer, but he also said that many times, the more the client keeps talking about the objection, you end up getting to the real objection, which had nothing to do with that they brought up in the first place.
Another tip is to have the presentation always refer back to what the client or prospect told you in the needs analysis. I like to have it on paper in the presentation. You told me this was a problem, so I am presenting this as the solution to that problem. Now, it becomes easier for the client to see why you chose that product as you have related it to their own words. Hopefully, you ended the needs analysis meeting or in a follow up email, you made clear what you heard the challenges were. Without those, it is hard to come up with solutions.
This job is hard. Really hard. It is made even harder by skipping steps or not being willing to challenge objections thrown your way. No’s can become Yes’s, it does happen. I know you hate role-playing, but this is a skill that many need to work on and figuring out a way to do that together can be helpful.
Figure out what the main objections are and talk through what the best responses are for each. Make sure it isn’t just something you recite, but something you know like the back of your hand. Practice it, practice it again, and practice it until you can answer the objection, you can explain your reasoning and you can continue conversing with the person until you get to the next objection.
Sell, don’t just hope.
Dave Greene is a former Editor and Columnist for Barrett Media. His background includes over 25 years in media and content creation. A former sports talk host and play-by-play broadcaster, Dave transitioned to station and sales management, co-founded and created a monthly sports publication and led an ownership group as the operating partner. He has managed stations and sales teams for Townsquare Media, Cumulus Media and Audacy. Upon leaving broadcast media he co-founded Podcast Heat, a sports and entertainment podcasting network specializing in pro wrestling nostalgia. To interact, find him on Twitter @mr_podcasting.
