Category: Phil Bernstein

Do you use jargon in your sales presentations? Industry terms that, while understood by your  colleagues, mean nothing to your customers? Jargon can scare your prospects away without your even knowing it.

Plain talk makes sales. Fancy talk makes you sound lame. – Jeffrey Gitomer

I once watched a TV salesperson present some online marketing ideas to the owner of an insurance agency. One of the items in the proposal was labeled “PPC”, and the AE referred to “PPC” several times during his remarks.

Finally, the exasperated client raised his hand to stop the presentation and said, “What the heck is PPC?'”

Only then did the rep explain that it stood for “Pay Per Click” — the text ads on Google (advertisers only pay Google when someone clicks on the ad).

We were lucky our prospect asked. In many cases, customers are afraid to speak up because they don’t want to look foolish. The result can be a lost sale — people won’t buy what they don’t understand.

[shareable]If they don’t understand it, they won’t buy it.[/shareable]

It’s time to eliminate jargon from your vocabulary.  Your “inside” expressions — the ones you use every day with co-workers and advertising agencies — don’t belong in the sales conversations you have with your direct clients.

Here are some terms your co-workers understand but your customers may not:

• Demo — the furniture store owner doesn’t have a demo. She has customers.
• DMA — the PI attorney doesn’t know what your DMA is, and doesn’t care. He might be interested in how far your signal goes, or what counties you’re carried in.
• “8a-10a” — the real estate agent you’re calling on doesn’t get to the office at 8a. She arrives at 8am, or 8 in the morning.
• OTT — the newest addition to the industry gobbledygook list. The auto body shop owner has no idea what “OTT” is. He’s never heard of “over the top media”. But he’s got a millennial daughter who watches Hulu on her phone every night.
• SEO — the insurance broker has no idea what “SEO” is, but he wants to show up higher when people are searching online.
• PPC or SEM — same as the above. Talk about the text ads people click on when they go to Google.

Sales expert Jill Konrath summed it up this way:

“Our goal should always be to ensure clear communications. That means we need to speak like we’re talking to normal human beings. Sometimes that’s harder than it sounds. But, by keeping things simple, we all benefit.”

Whether you’re talking to customers online, on paper or in person, ditch the jargon. Your sales numbers will be glad you did.

“If I advertise, I won’t be able to handle the business. I can’t find employees!”

Smart salespeople handle this objection by turning the conversation to recruitment advertising. If the client goes for it, how do you structure the campaign?

The strongest campaigns use the “tradigital” strategy Tom Ray recommends in his book, Branding Is OUT, Results Are IN: Lessons For The LOCAL Advertiser.

I recently encountered a very good recruiting campaign in a Southeast market.

Hiller Plumbing, Heating, Cooling and Electrical is a major force in Tennessee and Alabama. Like many in the industry, they are constantly in need of employees. They use a “tradigital” strategy to get them.

The traditional portion includes television (note: it’s possible they use other media as well). Here’s the TV commercial, which ran recently in the local morning news:

What can you learn — and borrow — from this?

• They use an custom web address. Interested viewers are sent to HillerIsHiring.com. The URL reinforces the core message, and is easy to remember. In addition to TV, the URL is simple enough to work on radio, a billboard, or a transit sign. You can deploy this technique, too: go to GoDaddy and buy “[name of your client] Is Hiring dot com.”
• Hiller doesn’t make the mistake of sending people to their home page. HillerIsHiring.com redirects to a custom landing page that’s about one thing, and one thing only: getting a job at Hiller. If your media company builds landing pages, this is a digital revenue opportunity for you. If not, recommend that the client build a page and host it on their site.
• Take a good look at the landing page at HillerIsHiring.com, It’s very simple and clean. The page doesn’t discuss anything other than job opportunities. There are three easy-to-understand CTA (call-to-action) buttons. “AVAILABLE OPPORTUNITIES” and “STOP BY AN OPEN HOUSE TODAY” are near the top, with one final request for action – “APPLY TODAY” – at the very bottom. It’s a good model to use when you build one for a local client.
• They use branding elements, such as the jingle, from their “regular” advertising. Thousands of people who see the ad might not be candidates for employment…but they could turn into customers. Consistency helps the recruitment campaign reinforce the company’s selling message.

 If a prospect can’t handle any more business, make recruitment part of the conversation. It can bring new clients on board, and help keep existing advertisers on the air.

Do you have an advertiser who just can’t get you their copy on time? You might be able to change their behavior with a creative pricing strategy.

My Client From Hell
A Story From My Radio Sales Days

In my iHeart Radio days, I worked with a car dealer who constantly missed deadlines.

I wrote all of his copy for the market; I needed information from him in order to get it done.  

• Manufacturer incentives.
• Interest rates.
• Goals for the month — were his new cars a priority this month, or was this a time to push used?

I needed time to get a high-quality script written.

Matt Jones, my Production Director, needed to schedule a recording session, which usually involved the dealer reciting some lines.

Without a script, we couldn’t schedule the session.

Without a recording session, there’d be no commercial. 

As each new month approached, the dealer would stop returning my calls.

Eventually, with enough pleading and pestering, he’d send me something.

I’d write as fast as I could, we’d rush the client in to read his lines, and Matt would somehow turn our efforts into something special — a skill he continues to exhibit to this day.

How could I convince a recalcitrant client to get me the copy points on time? I never came up with a good answer.

This went on for years. 

Since I’ve become a media sales trainer, dozens of AE’s have told me similar stories.

Is A Rush Discount The Answer?

Josh Bernoff, author of Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career By Saying What You Mean,  has a method he calls the rush discount. He explains:

“We’ll agree on the deadlines. I’ll go as fast as I can. And if you get me everything I need in the time frame I need it to meet those deadlines, you get the work for 10% off.”

This is not a completely new invention. 

“Added value” incentives for signing by a certain date are not uncommon. Some companies allow discounts to clients who pay for several months’ worth of advertising in advance.

A “Rush Discount” is a new way of using this old concept to influence another kind of behavior.

How to Implement This*

Here’s one way to do a Rush Discount:

• The campaign is scheduled to begin on August 6.
• Your Production Department wants at least two weeks to produce a spot (this is just an example —- your mileage may vary).
• The client is a well-known serial procrastinator.
• The campaign investment you’re proposing is $5000 per month.

You would put two numbers on the agreement:

• $5000 per month.
• $4500 for July if all necessary materials are turned in by COB on July 15.

*You’ll want to check with your company’s business department before implementing this strategy.

Would it work? Maybe, maybe not. 

Is it worth a three-month experiment to see if it restores sanity to the process? I submit it is.

If you try it, let me know how it works! You can email me at phil@philbernstein.com.

[reminder]What’s the most creative way you’ve gotten a client to meet a deadline?[/reminder]

How long has it been since you did a full needs analysis with your best long-term client? You might be surprised at how much has changed.

It’s easy to let that sort of thing slip.

• You negotiate “the annual”.
• You take the client to lunch once a quarter.
• You bring them concert tickets every now and then.
• You call periodically to “check in.”
• A year later, it’s time to negotiate “the annual” again.

If you haven’t been paying attention, you may get an unpleasant surprise — a lot can change in a year.

Recently I had an opportunity to find out exactly how much could change. I presented an advertising plan to a roofing company…more than a year after the needs analysis meeting. 

I’ll explain.

In the spring of 2017, I met with the roofers for about an hour. They gave me a lot of information on their history, their customers, their business model, and their goals. We scheduled a presentation for two weeks later, and I got to work on an advertising plan.

The day of the presentation, the roofers canceled the meeting. We rescheduled it and they canceled again. I left town, we scheduled a webinar, and they canceled again.

We gave up. A year went by.

I came back to the market to work with the TV station again.

On a whim, the Account Executive called the roofing company and told them I was coming back. They wanted to meet with me. But they only had time for one meeting.

No new needs analysis — we had to work with the year-old data from the last one. We decided it was better than no opportunity at all. 

Our plan: dust off our old presentation, update the rates, and give it our best shot. How much could change in a year?

I opened the meeting by saying, “Gentlemen, everything I’m about to present to you is based on year-old information. If I say something that no longer applies, raise your hand and correct me, and we’ll make adjustments as necessary.”

They stopped me on the first slide.

A year earlier, 90% of their installations were foam roofs. Now foam was less than 50% — since our last meeting, they had diversified into TPO, metal and shingle roofs. 

In the spring of 2017, they’d wanted to dominate foam. Now, they didn’t want to be known as a foam roof company anymore.

So… completely new business model.

This was a problem, since the creative concept I’d put together was focused on selling foam. 

As we moved on, more change became evident.

A year earlier they’d been at the bottom of Page 2 on Google for general roofing. Their big priority then was to get onto Google’s Page 1. As a result, a big part of our recommended strategy involved SEO.

This no longer applied, either — since then they’d put a lot of money and effort into SEO and were ranking well now.

At this point, we stopped presenting and started asking questions. It was clear the whole basis for our presentation was obsolete.

We asked for a few days to re-write the TV script and the entire advertising plan.

We wound up getting the money… but we had to dance to get it.

Lesson learned.

The Sales Lesson:
Do a Deep Needs Analysis Regularly

If you’ve been working with a client for a long time, it’s easy to assume that you’ve got a handle on their business. 

But you don’t know what you don’t know.

• Market conditions change.
• Budgets change.
• Departments reorganize.
• Goals change.

Maybe the client will actively keep you up to date on all the changes. But it really helps to ask.

For a significant advertiser, you should take the time to do a full needs analysis at least once a year. With a year-round customer (keep in mind that an “annual” can be longer than a year) the six-month mark is a good time to do it.

When you do that quarterly lunch, make a point of asking if there are any new developments. 

Finally, it doesn’t hurt to double-check once more at renewal time:

I’ve learned to open every meeting in which I ask for money this way:

“Before we begin, I need to ask a quick question. Has anything changed since our last meeting?”

A lot can change in a year if you’re not paying attention. Make a point of asking often.

[reminder]

How long are the schedules you propose? You may be leaving money on the table.

Most of the radio and television salespeople I encounter default to one of these:

• Three months
• Through December of this year
• 12 months

When I ask how they arrived at the proposed length, it turns out there’s no formula. Sometimes the terms are set by an RFP, or a specific client request. Most of the time the salesperson just decides.

• “I didn’t want to ask for less than three months.”
• “December’s the end of the year, and that seemed like a logical time to end it.”
• “I always ask for an annual, and that’s 12 months.”

There’s logic behind each of these answers. But the one thing they have in common is that the proposed length of most proposals is completely arbitrary.

In other words, we make it up. 

As long as we’re making it up, why not go longer?

I’ve been experimenting with longer asks. With some coaxing, I’ve convinced AE’s and sales managers that they can, and should, ask for longer commitments.

Early in the year, we went for 13-month deals. For example: instead of a “March 2018 through February 2019” agreement, we wrote each proposal to run March 2018 through March 2019. 

What we found: if a client is willing to commit to 12 months, they’ll commit to 13. Rarely did we encounter an objection.

Recently, I helped some AE’s become even more ambitious. We wrote a series of proposals that began in the middle of this year and went through the end of next year.

June 2018-December 2019. 19 months.

There was nothing deceptive in our approach. We made it clear to each client exactly what we were asking for.

Out of 15 proposals in this particular market, 12 of them were for 19 months (the other three clients could only consider schedules that ran during their fiscal year.)

So far, seven clients have signed, and five of those signed for the full 19 months. 

5 proposals x 7 extra months per proposal = 35 months of additional advertising sold. That’s almost three full years’ worth of additional revenue, with virtually no additional effort expended. 

Note well: if the station doesn’t provide good service, or the advertising doesn’t work, or the marketing director gets fired, the usual cancellation policy applies. The money is not guaranteed.

But that risk applies to every schedule the station sells. These things are never final until the money’s in the bank.

For now, we’ve got five new clients who fully expect to run on our station until December, 2019.

Why? Because we asked them to.

The next time you’re preparing an “annual” presentation, raise your expectations. There’s no law limiting you to 12 months.

[reminder]What’s the longest plan you’ve ever sold?[/reminder]