Ad Sales Blog

Dedicated digital media reps versus all reps sell digital: the numbers are in

Should you hire dedicated digital media salespeople or train your legacy reps to sell new online media? At least for local media, Gordon Borrell, President of Borrell Associates, has the data and the answers. His organization maintains a database that measures how well 5,200 local media companies are progressing with their digital revenue.

When he surveyed these organizations on the make up of their sales force and thier performance he discovered the following: 

• There are about 80,500 media sales reps selling local media (local radio, TV, yellow pages, newspapers etc.).
• About 51,000 of them are "digital ready", meaning they are expected to sell some amount of digital advertising.  

Here's the kicker:

• Organizations with dedicated digital reps average 2.5x more digital revenue than those who have their traditional reps selling digital. 

Another interesting finding was that the percent of reps who are "digital ready" varied significantly by industry:

• Newspapers: 85% digital ready
• TV: 50-60% digital ready
• Radio: 15% digital ready

That is not a typo, for radio, 15%.

All this is reported in a video created by media consultant Mark Ramsey, President of Mark Ramsey Media, in which he interviews Borrell.

If you want to hear both Ramsey and Borrell speculate on the near comical failure of radio to capitalize on digital media, play the video. If you have anything to do with radio, it's a real eye opener.      

 

It is good media business to stand for something, and why so few do

I just read an amazingly insightful post by Mark Ramsey (left) of Mark Ramsey Media in which he nails the process of making media more profitable by making the content the media delivers more meaningful.

This is a big one folks. Solve this issue and a lot of media sales people on your staff will have a much easier time.   

Ultimately it is the content that your media delivers that sets the bar. Ramsey's post is about radio programming, but the issues and strategies he raises are universal to all media. If you want to know the secret sauce to making the content your media shares, read on:

"One of the media genres I work in regularly is Christian radio.

There is something different about a project with Christian format broadcasters from one with more conventional, let alone commercial, broadcasters. And what’s different isn’t simply the source of funding or the familiarity of the songs on the air.

What’s different – what’s palpable – is that everyone on staff knows the brand stands for something bigger.  And this feeling is generally lacking for most broadcasters in most formats.  But why?

Think about it, what does YOUR station stand for that’s bigger than the format itself?

Maybe you stand for maximizing revenue.  Maybe you stand for increasing ratings.  Okay those are outcomes, not objectives.  But outcomes of what?

Of playing the best music mix?  Sure, but that is increasingly easy to mimic nowadays on any number of platforms.  Of being ubiquitous and easy?  Sure, but that’s hardly defensible in a time of techno-revolution.

What about working to make your community a better place?  What about working to tangibly enrich the lives of the tens or hundred of thousands of ears and eyes who care enough about you to come back, again and again, day after day?  Show me the fan who affiliates with your brand for “higher ratings” or “more revenue” and I’ll show you the fan with a big title and the corner office at the station.

We talk a lot about social media in radio nowadays, yet how much of our social media efforts are directed towards anything with a social consequence?

Listeners – like you and me – are human beings.  And human beings always favor the call to something bigger.  If we in radio are guilty of anything, it’s not selling ourselves short, it’s selling short our audiences and their dreams and aspirations.  Once upon a time, Steve Jobs lured a Pepsi executive to run Apple with the admonition: “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?”  Guess what he did?  Who would do anything different?

Of course, our stations must be viable businesses – and growing ones, too. But are they successful because we relentlessly seek to increase ratings or are they successful because the audience places them near and dear to their hearts? I would argue that if it’s not the latter, then we risk losing the former.

Fans rave about the extraordinary, not the mundane.  The best way for any brand to be irreplaceable is for that brand to aspire to irreplaceability. And minimizing interruptions and tune-outs does not make you irreplaceable. The best way is to stand for something bigger and to prove it on an ongoing basis. That’s the way to motivate employees, audiences, consumers, investors, and management alike.

Standing for something bigger means solving bigger problems."

Great post Mark, Keep 'em coming! 

 Read Mark Ramsey's post: "Can Radio Save the World"

 

What the movie "Inception" tells us about selling with ideas

As a persuasive element in marketing, ideas are powerful, tangible, misunderstood, and underused. I loved the first few lines from Christopher Nolan's hit movie "Inception" because they dramatize just how influential ideas can be:  

What is the most resilient parasite?

 An idea.

 A single idea from the human mind can build cities.

 An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules.

See the trailer: 

 How do ideas actually sell? Here are the first few lines from the chapter on selling with ideas from my book "Presentations That Change Minds":

  On March 19, 1999, Steve Forbes entered the crowded field as a candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. There were nine candidates running and Forbes’ entry would made it a field of ten. The son of publishing magnate Malcolm Forbes, Steve was little known in national politics and most observers bet his only chance of winning on massive spending from his personal fortune.

But the unique advantage of personally bankrolling a campaign vanished when rival candidate Morry Taylor, a millionaire wheel magnate from Quincy, IL, spent about $1.5 million of his personal fortune on TV ads in the early days of the campaign.

Despite the odds, Forbes shot past eight of his rivals in the first few primaries to become the solid second place contender behind Bob Dole, the long-standing US Senator from Kansas.

Most credit the success of Forbes’ campaign to his ability to present new, compelling ideas that challenged his audiences. One idea, the flat tax, eventually took center stage and became almost synonymous with the Forbes campaign. USA Today reported, “Dole pokes fun at Forbes for being a one-note candidate: "You ask him about your headache, he gives you his flat tax message."
   
The story of how Steve Forbes, a virtual political unknown nationally, could enter a crowded field and have a solid shot at winning the Republican presidential nomination is the story of just how powerful an idea, skillfully delivered, can be.

The essence of using an idea to persuade is to sell an audience on a unique idea which, if accepted, gains acceptance for your candidate, product, or proposal. In short, buy my idea, buy what I am selling.

If you bought the idea of the flat tax back in 1999 you likely voted for Forbes. In the same year, if you bought the idea that the best value in computers was in buying direct from a manufacturer, you likely bought from Dell Computer. Before you start, ask, “If they buy my idea will they buy what I am selling?”
Consider these four ways an idea most often results in a sale:

1. Idea ownership. Steve Forbes “owned” the idea of the flat tax. If you wanted it as part of your future, he was the guy who could deliver and you had to vote for him.

2. Sell an idea as feature. In 2003 Seachange Technology introduced a new idea to structure video storage by using a ring pattern instead of the commonly used linear structure. If IT audiences bought the idea of the ring structure, they had to buy from Seachange, the only supplier who had it.   

3. Implementation. An ad agency recently proposed a new idea for a marketing campaign targeting senior citizens. Because the agency had extensive and unique knowledge and experience implementing programs like the one proposed, they felt confident they would get the contract if the client liked the idea.  The client might say, “OK we love the idea.  Who can make this happen?”  

4. Change that requires specific expertise. A technology company proposed using new digital technology to change the workflow at a radio stations. While many suppliers offered the equipment necessary, implementing the changes in workflow required specific expertise that only this company could provide.  

Ask yourself:

What idea can we advocate which, if accepted, generates preference for our product or service?

Have ideas been used to manipulate? 

Many times. In the 1960's Shell Oil sold the idea that an ingredient in their gasoline, platformate, gained cars extra mileage. Was it true? Yes. In the dramatic 60 second TV spot that follows Shell sells this idea.

  

Shell correctly assumed that most Americans have little understanding of petroleum products. In the ad Shell did not mention that all brands of gasoline had platformate.

 But if you bought the idea that an ingredient in Shell gasoline extended gas mileage would you buy your gas from Shell? Many did. That's a pretty resilient parasite.    

 

Song of change

Clever, accurate, funny, depressing...

Enjoy!

Sell more media by putting a price on brand equity

For media salespeople who struggle with the challenge of proving the dollar value of a branding campaign this study is a blessing. Millward Brown Optimor, the study creator, does the hard work for us as it examines the "brand value" of the worlds top 100 brands and ranks them.

According to this study, "Brand Value" is the financial value of a brand, "defined as the sum of all earnings that a brand is expected to generate." By isolating revenues only associated with a company brand, true brand value is laid bare. The study is also fun. These are companies we all know and it turns the potentially dull business of ranking brand equity into a horse race. Over previous the year brand equity at Home Depot is down 16%, Pepsi is up 15%, Starbucks down 25%, and BlackBerry up 390%. Goooo Blackberry!!

On a call.

 You can use this study to make a hard connection between brand building and revenue generation. You do not need to go into every detail of the study, use the study to sell the idea that brand value is revenue value. Find a page or two from the study where the well known companies are known to your client. Now turn that same line of thought to your clients business.

Ask: How much is your brand worth? What if it were worth more? How much more revenue would come in if it were? How could this happen? The answers to these questions could help you selling a branding program.

Download the FREE 2008 30 page report: http://www.brandz.com/upload/BrandZ-2008-RankingReport.pdf

 If one of your clients is actually in the report, you can have fun on the call by comparing 2008 results to 2007 report.

Download the FREE 2007 28 page report: http://www.millwardbrown.com/Sites/Optimor/Media/Pdfs/en/BrandZ/BrandZ-2007-RankingReport.pdf

Wisdom for free

Kevin Kelly, editor of Wired magazine in its early and truly great years wrote a book with a chapter I highly recommend to everyone in media. It's called, "Relationship Tech, Start With Technology End With Trust."

Kelly, being a "content should be free" Internet kind of guy has posted the entire contents of this book for free on the web. I recommend reading it. So many of the issues we face in media are touched by his vision.

The next time you have a dialogue with a client consider this from Kelly's book:

"Expertise now resides in fanatical customers. The world’s best experts on your product or service don’t work for your company. They are your customers, or a hobby tribe."

"Companies need user groups almost as much as users need them. User groups are better than advertising when customers are happy and worse than cancer when they are not. Used properly, aficionados can make or break products."

Good products and services are cocreated: The desires of customers grow out of what is possible, and what is possible is made real by companies following new customer desires. Because creation in a network is a cocreation, a prosumptive act, a multifaceted relationship must exist between the cocreators.

"...whoever has the smartest customers wins."

Read all of Chapter 9

Read the entire book on line for free

Become a marketing hero: talk about their web site

As more marketers see their website as the hub of their marketing efforts, reviewing that site before calling on them becomes essential. But you are not an expert on their business. What can you actually speak credibly about that a client will listen to? 

Simple. Talk about your readers, their site visitors. Look carefully at their home page and think about your magazine/brand's readers and how they would respond.

Never criticize your client’s website. The marketing manager you are calling on could be it's architect. But if you can engage your client in a dialog about trends effecting your readers and advocate prioritizing future content you can help advance their online marketing goals. 

 The sad truth is that many websites are not constructed with a company’s customers, your readers, in mind. Many websites first fulfill internal political goals, or are designed against the claims of competitors. Primary reader benefits can take a back seat. If you discover this sharing your readers point of view, in noncritical way by talking about future content, can make you a marketing hero.  

At the recent "Selling Online Subscriptions" conference put on by MarketingSherpa, Linda Ragano, from ThomasNet shared this a piece of research that documented a disconnect between what manufacturers posted on their websites, versus what the targeted buyers actually wanted to see. 

On a call.

If you sense this kind of disconnect on your client's site use Linda's slide as a third party example to make the point in a noncritical way. Say, "In some industries (read: not yours) there is disconnect between what readers/visitors want to see on a web site and what gets posted. Show the chart. Then share insights you have about your readers/their site visitors might like to see in the future. Focusing on the future is a good way to share your knowledge without being critical of the present. Your client can then go to management and say, "Look what we can do to improve things in the future." Both you and your client become marketing heros.   

From the ThomasNet presentation at the Selling Online
Subscriptions Summit 2008:

Are you good looking enough to be a rep?

You might not like this.

A recent poll of Cafepharma visitors, a website for salespeople in the Pharmaceutical industry, asked how a salesperson's physical attractiveness effects their selling. The survey was posted with a big helping of skeptical humor with the only three possible answers to the question, "Which type of rep gets the best results?" being:

1. An average looking rep that knows their products and can sell.

2. Doesn't matter. Too many other factors come into play regarding sales.

3. A super attractive rep that is an idiot and can't sell.

A bit over 17%, about one in six, picked #3.

.

Some may find this funny, some not. But it raises a serious question of how we as individual salespeople differentiate ourselves in the field. If what we sell and how we sell it becomes a commodity...what's left? 

Do you have to be attractive to be a media sales rep? I don't think so. But many may disagree.

 

 

See the study on Cafepharma and read responses to it 

RFPs from both sides now

RFPs are a game. As a best practice for buyers, RFPs simplify the buying process and weed out media that is off the mark allowing more time with more appropriate media. But with buyers under pressure to make decisions more quickly, RFPs get misused. When they become the primary tool of evaluation, insightful media buying sufferers.   

James Hering writing for The ClickZ Network back in 2003 posed this summation showing both sides of the sales desk.

From the seller side, we hear:

• "So I'm supposed to tell you why my site is better than the 180 other sites that received an RFP?"
• "Great, another 'we expect totally out-of-the-box thinking' proposal!"
• "Gee, we get a grand total of two hours to pull together a rock-solid proposal that nails the objective. How convenient."
• "We're honored to be invited to be a strategic partner and meet the client's long-term goals with the exciting test budget of $5,000?"

From the buyer side:

• "Why don't publishers respond to my requests in a timely manner?"
• "Ten seconds after emailing the RFP, I get a call with questions for the same information that's noted in it. Didn't he read it?"
• "I asked for a proposal with a limit of $20,000, yet I get a package for $50,000. What's up with that?"
• "I clearly asked for specific targeting criteria, yet 80 percent of what they're offering doesn't meet the stated objectives."

Hering makes the following suggestions for media sellers: 

Timing is key. Responding in a timely manner is fundamental to a buyer who is trying to wrangle several proposals. Always acknowledge when you get an RFP and note if you plan to participate. (Note to sales managers: Make sure you properly transition accounts. Nothing is more frustrating to a buyer than sending an important request to a dead email account or blank voicemail box.)

• Respond appropriately. If the RFP is not clear about where questions should be directed, find out how you can inquire, then provide questions in written form.
• Read the proposal from top to bottom at least twice before you ask your first question. You'll be amazed at how things can become clearer after a second reading.
• Meet the request. Sure, you've got sales goals, but be sure to totally address the request first. Then, provide additional options. Let's face it, almost everyone loves options. Still, we all get turned off if our initial request is overlooked. Nail the request (including the budget), then up-sell all you want.
• No rug-pulling, please. Make sure the inventory is there when you sell it. If it's perishable, just make sure the buyer knows the details and any corresponding restrictions. Nothing will drive a buyer insane faster than getting a client excited about an opportunity only to have to call back 10 minutes later with an "Oops, we didn't have all the details" apology.

Just keep in mind, every time you get an RFP someone is inviting you to do business with them!

Read Hering's post on Clickz

Flipping the fear card

Sales lessons from the campaign trail #4

In response to my last post that showed how  Hilary Clinton's "Red Phone" ad is based on a common media sales technique, I got a question, "What should I do when I am on the receiving end of the "fear card" or similar attack?"

When a competitor attacks...say. "Thank you!" Often they have handed you a gun to shoot them with. Whether the attack is the "fear card" or another approach the steps to respond are they same. The bigger and grander the attack, the bigger the advantage has been handed to you.   

First, get a document of the attack; a promotional brochure, email, web post etc. You will need it so you can go line by line as you counter it.

Second, Initially, you need to react emotionally. Why emotionally? Because if the "fear card" is emotional, and you cannot rationalized emotion away. If you respond without feeling, on some emotional level you are saying the fear or criticism is OK.

Also, at the heart of every successful media sale is the passion for what you sell. No passion, no sale. If you are passionate about your media and someone takes a shot at it, if you stay completely calm how genuine does that passion look? Don't display any anger that feels unnatural. Your reaction needs to be genuine you, no forced hysterics. I use a simple, "They said WHAT? Do you know how CRAZY that is? I can't believe they would tell you that!"

From the campaign trail, Bill Clinton has recently been ridiculed in the press for his "angry red faced finger wagging" responses to perceived attacks. He may look odd on on the news clips but his technique is sound. I fear that Barack Obama's cool response to some of Clinton's early attacks may not serve him well long term.

Third: ask about the damage. Ask if the "fear card" or criticism changed their attitude or raised concerns about your product. The "fear card" only sticks where they are doubts. Ask your client to share those doubts. Now, counter them.

Fourth: Now, respond to the doubts rationally. Take the print out of the attack and go line by line and show your side of the argument. You need to win over your client or, at the very least, prove that your side has at equal merit.

Fifth: Now, go offensive. Label your competitors approach as "sales technique" designed to manipulate feelings. No buyer likes to feel manipulated or played for a fool. Raise questions as to why a competitor might do this; desperation? Disrespect for the intelligence of the media buyer?

Sixth: Now, depending how well you have turned this around, see if you can't build some emotional resentment in your client from the attack. If you really have won over your client, ask, "Now that you can see the other point of view you can see how manipulative this was. (With a smile) How dumb to they think you must be to fall for this?"

No buyer likes to think of them selves as having been "had" by a manipulative sales attack. If you can win them back they will often harbor resentment for the competitor who initiated the attack and be suspicious of them for a long time.