Category: Phil Bernstein

Your Clients’ Competitors Are Your Leads

Are you avoiding a great source of new business?
 

If you’re not talking to your clients’ competitors, you’re wasting a big opportunity.
 

Competitors are a great sales opportunity
Photo by Andy Dean

It’s One You May Have Created

About a year ago, a Midwest optometry practice started a television and digital advertising campaign, using a creative idea my company gave them. It worked really well — their practice grew by over 30% over the next year.
 
Where did that business come from?
 
Recently, I met with one of that practice’s rivals. As the meeting progressed, it became clear he was in pain — his business was down almost 40% over the same period .
 
He constantly saw his competition — our partner station’s client — on the air, taking money out of his pocket. He wanted to start his own television and digital campaign.
 

Your Customers’ Competitors
Are Great Sales Leads

 
When you put a new advertiser on the air, and the campaign works, it affects the rest of the market.
 
Advertising ripples through the water of the marketplace
Photo by Mark Ross
 
Sometimes advertising creates new demand for a product or service, but in many cases existing demand shifts from one vendor to another.
 
When your client gains revenue, some of that money would have otherwise gone to a competitor down the street. 
 
The guys down the street now need help. You can help them.
 
Should you call?
 
Yes.
 

Is It Ethical to Work With
Competing Businesses?

[shareable]If advertisers can work with your competitors, you can work with theirs. It’s only fair.[/shareable]

 
If you’re doing your job right, you’re building good relationships with your clients. They may share confidential business information with you. You get to know the office staff, and sometimes their families. 
 
Would it be right to start working with their enemies?
 
Yes, it would. Here’s why:
 
Every day, your customers are talking with your competitors.
 
They meet with radio reps, TV reps, billboard salespeople, advertising agencies — the people trying to take money out of your pocket.
 
Every day, your clients share their information with these people, and review proposals from them.
 
They have every right to do this. And here’s the corollary:
 
If they can work with your competitors, you can work with theirs. 
 
Fair is fair.
 

 

But You Have to Do It Ethically

 
Never lie about what you’re doing. There’s no need to volunteer the information, but if an auto dealer asks you if you’re working with any other auto dealers, answer honestly. If you lie, they’ll find out eventually.
 
Keep everything you learn confidential. Your customers trust you, and will share proprietary information with you — revenue figures, business challenges, promotional plans.
 
If they know that you’re working with the other guys, they may ask about the other guys’ plans. Never give that information up. The correct answer to the question is, “I’d never tell them anything about you, and I can’t tell you anything about them.”
 
Don’t give the same creative or promotional idea to both of them. If two competitors run identical ads on your station, it will not turn out well for you.
 
If one of them turns the idea down, feel free to bring it to the other one.  Before you do, give the first one a final chance with this line:
 
This is a great idea, and that’s why we gave you an exclusive first shot at it. Just so you know… now that you’ve turned it down, we’re going to be showing it to the competition. It’s too good to go to waste.”
  

Sometimes You Just Can’t

 
In the vast majority of cases, it’s your right and your responsibility — to your company and to your own bank account — to work with anyone you choose.
 
There are, however, a few exceptions:
 
  • When you’ve spent a great deal of time and energy on specific strategies to go after a particular competitor, it may not feel right to work with that company, too. 
  • When you’ve built an exceedingly close relationship with one major client, and that company represents a major part of your income, the opportunity may not be worth the risk.
 
If you just can’t bring yourself to call on the competitor, don’t let the opportunity evaporate. Pass the lead to a co-worker, along with any information you can ethically give them.
 
You’ll be making a deposit in the Karma Bank, and one of these days it’ll pay you back with interest.
 
[reminder]

You Don’t Know What Happened Before You Got There

There’s a lot going on in your prospect’s world.

Salespeople should learn, not argue
Photo by DW Labs Incorporated

It pays to withhold judgment.

That Time I Got Mad at a Virginia Lawyer

Three members of the law firm were on time for our presentation, but the managing partner showed up 20 minutes late.

Once we got underway, he kept checking his smartphone, reading and sending texts. Midway through the meeting his phone rang. He answered it, and without even a glance at me he got up and left the room. His assistant signaled me to keep going, so I continued.

A few minutes later the managing partner came back in, sat down, and resumed texting. I did my best to conceal my growing frustration with his rude behavior.

Eventually we got to the part where it was time to ask for a commitment.

That’s when when he dropped the bomb:

“I’m not sure when I can take a look at this,” he said. “My wife is out of town, and she was in a car wreck this morning. She’s in the hospital; we’re hoping she’ll be released tomorrow. As soon as this meeting’s over, I’ve got a six-hour drive to go see her.”

He showed us some pictures of his wife’s car she had emailed to him – the entire front end smashed in, and the air bags deployed.

At that moment, all my irritation went away, replaced by a strong sense of guilt. He hadn’t been disrespecting us – the fact that he showed up for the meeting at all was a powerful sign of how strongly he believed in keeping his commitment to me and the station.

Under the circumstances, his lateness and divided attention were more than understandable.

Here’s the Sales Lesson

We don’t know what we don’t know.

When we sit down with a customer, we may not have any idea what else is going on in their world. They may have just been chewed out by their boss; a family member may be ill or injured.

The advertising plan we’re offering may be the most important thing on our mind… but there might be a much bigger problem on their mind.

How to Deal With a Sales Call Going South

If a client’s not reacting the way you expected them to, here are some steps you can take:

  • Double check at the beginning: “It’s been a couple of weeks since we last talked. Has anything changed since then?” This simple question, which I’ve learned (the hard way) to ask before every presentation, can prevent much heartache.
  • Slow down. Rather than plunging headlong into whatever you prepared in advance, check in with the client first. “Are you ready to hear my idea?” and “Am I on the right track with this?” give them a chance to express concerns before you get in too deep.
  • Use the direct approach — ask what’s going on. “You seem a little preoccupied today. Is something going on?” or “Is this still a good day to do this?” invite them to share a hidden issue.
  • Offer to come back another time. This is a tough one for us, since we may have put in hours of preparation in the days leading up to the appointment. But occasionally it’s necessary.

Sometimes your client is just not in the right frame of mind to process your proposal. They’ll be grateful if you conduct a strategic retreat, and your professionalism will pay off later.

[reminder]

How to SHOW Instead of Tell…and Why It Matters

Most people don’t want to go first.

Salespeople should show others climbing the mountain

  Photo by Alphaspirit
 
Dave Trott recently recounted  the launch of world’s first underground railway — and the “mechanical staircase” that would bring people up and down. It was 1911 in London.
Today everyone knows what an escalator is. You’ve probably ridden one in the last few days. But in 1911 this was a scary new concept for most people…and they didn’t want to ride it.
 
The railway operators posted signs promising that the ride would be safe, but nobody believed the signs.
 
So the authorities decided to show people how safe it was.
 
William ‘Bumper’ Harris was an employee who’d lost a leg in an accident.
 
He was told to come to Earls Court station and ride up and down on the escalator.
 
Just that, ride up and down, nothing else.
 
People at the bottom would see a one-legged man with crutches nonchalantly hop onto the escalator and ride it to the top.
 
Then he’d turn around, and people at the top would see a one-legged man with crutches nonchalantly hop onto the other escalator and ride it to the bottom.
 
‘Bumper’ Harris just did that all day.
When frightened passengers saw him do it they were reassured and ashamed.
 
Reassured that if a one-legged man could do it anyone could.
 
And ashamed that they were ever frightened in the first place.
 
So they stopped worrying and hopped on.
 
After a day of ‘Bumper’ riding up and down, everyone was using the escalator as if it was the most normal thing.
 
And once that happened, the problem disappeared.”
 
When you call on a new prospect — one who’s never used your medium before — you’re selling an escalator. The client is wondering:
 
  • If I advertise with you, what’s it going to look like? What’s it going to sound like?
  • How do I know it’s going to work?

You can answer those questions with words… or you can show ’em.

Sales advice: put the prospect behind the wheel
Photo by Africa Studio

If they’re wondering whether it’ll work, the best thing to show them is a success story — the story of someone like them who’s advertised with you (or your company) and made money.

Your prospect won’t be the first advertiser your station’s ever had — it’s been on the air a long time. Even if you’ve only been there a few months, your station’s got a track record.

There are lots of happy advertisers — “Bumpers” —  getting good results right now. 

  • A Good Idea: tell the stories.
  • Better: Let your clients tell the stories, with letters or emails.
  • Best: Let your clients tell the story on video.

Your production department may be able to do the recording and editing, but it’s not necessary. All you need is a smartphone, and you’re a videographer.

For a little extra money, you can improve the video quality with an inexpensive tripod  and an external microphone . If you work in radio or TV, you might be able to borrow a mic from the production department or the newsroom. I travel with this one.

I’ve got dozens of advertiser testimonials from all over the country in my library — car dealers, attorneys, doctors, home improvement contractors, and more — talking about how broadcast and digital advertising, using the right creative and high frequency, has helped them grow their business. 

These videos are usually two to three minutes in length, and they go a long way in convincing a prospect it’s both safe and beneficial to follow my advice.

I recently put three of them together on a “testimonial reel” — three advertisers I’ve worked with who have gotten great results. It looks like this:

How will the ad look or sound? You can answer that with a spec ad. After a solid needs analysis meeting, write a script and have your production department produce a basic version of the commercial.
 

Why do spec ads work so well? One of the best explanations comes from an old radio sales training recording by Jim Williams*:

What we’re doing is a thing called demonstration selling… it ranges from the tiny nibble of peach at your outdoor farmers market by the peach vendor to the one-ounce tube of shampoo they hang on your doorknob to the showy exhibition of all the uses from slicing and dicing of those famous knives on TV.
When you test drive a car, slip on new shoes and walk about or study the floor plan of an unbuilt home, you are involved in one of the many forms of demonstration selling.
 
When you enter your client’s office and play a cassette tape as part of your presentation you are doing demonstration selling. The words and sound that come from your tape recorder, regardless of content, are a demonstration of how radio works.
 
Thoughts come out of a small electric box and into the brain of the listener. That is the essence of radio. You are using radio to sell radio.
The tools have changed since Williams recorded those words. Cassettes are gone, replaced by digital files you can play for your client on an iPhone.
 
While the technology is different, human nature is not. Show your prospects what’ll happen, and they’re much more likely to get on your escalator.
 
* A tip of the hat to my friend Rod Schwartz for introducing me to Jim Williams, whose work has held up quite well in the decades since it was recorded. Rod has digitized some of Williams’ material, and you can listen to it here.
 
[reminder]
 

Converting Call-Ins: Don’t Miss The Lay-up

Converting a call-in to a sale is harder than it looks.

Converting a call-in to a sale
Photo by Mario Beauregard

During a Breakthrough Prospecting training session not long ago, a radio group Market Manager shared a frustration with me:

“Why aren’t we closing call-ins?” she said. “When they call us, it should be an easy sale, but we don’t get them on the air.”
 
There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip” — Old English Proverb
 Sometimes the best players in the world miss an easy shot.
 

Like those seemingly routine plays, handling a call-in comes down to getting the fundamentals right. Even the best account executives can get lazy.

 When a customer calls in, it’s tempting to just answer the questions they ask. 
 
If they called for rates, or for the price of a sports sponsorship, maybe you should just give them the price and email them a package.
 
Maybe you had a short phone or email conversation with them, learned a little about what they wanted to do, and sent them a proposal…

…and the client ran with your competitor instead.

What did you miss?  

Think about the last complex sale you took from a cold call to a successful close. You had to:
 
  • Build rapport and trust with the prospect.
  • Research the prospect online.
  • Conduct a thorough needs analysis.
  • Learn who the decision-makers were and what the decision-making process was.
  • Customize a proposal that met the prospect’s needs and desires.
  • Handle objections, and adjust the proposal based on client feedback.
  • Work through the process and move the sale to a close.
  
When a prospect calls your office out of the blue, it may feel like you’re already 2/3 of the way to a sale already. It’s tempting to skip some of the steps. After all, they called you — do you really have to do all this work?
 

 
Only if you want the money.
 
If you haven’t followed all the steps you’d follow if you’d called them, you’re taking a huge risk. You may not know:
 
  • What prompted them to call you.
  • What problems, they’re trying to solve by advertising.
  • The implications of those problems.
  • How much money they’re prepared to invest to solve those problems — it may be a lot more than the “budget” they gave you on the phone.
  • What other options they have for solving the problems, and who else they’re talking to.
  • Who the stakeholders are, and how the decision will be made.
In a particularly vexing scenario, the client calls for information, gets the information, and then disappears. What’s going on there?
 
According to James Muir, author of The Perfect Close, the client is convinced that further interactions will not have value. 
 
The primary cause of a prospect going silent is that the sales agent has not been adding enough value throughout the sales process. Often, the salesperson has only been providing information about their products and services, and when we fail to provide any form of additional value, buyers assume this is all we’re good for. As a consequence, once they receive all the information about our solution that they need, they have no reason to continue engaging with us.
 In this scenario, typically the final piece of information a prospect receives before going silent is our proposal – the price. Thus having received what they perceive to be the last useful piece of information from the salesperson, they cease communicating because they have no further use for us.
 
How do you deal with this?
 
Pretend you called them. Handle a call-in the way you would if you’ve developed the prospect from scratch.
 
  • Insist on a meeting — in person if at all possible.
  • Do your online research in advance of the meeting. My book Breakthrough Prospecting offers a method for that.
  • Conduct a thorough needs analysis at that meeting, so you know exactly what they’re trying to accomplish and why.
  • Customize a proposal that meets their needs exactly.
  • Insist on the opportunity to present the proposal rather than just sending it.
 
Following these steps takes more time and more effort. But it increases the odds your shot will go through the net, and the points will go on the board.
 
[reminder]What’s the most unusual call-in you ever received?[/reminder]

How to Penetrate Your Target’s Mind

 “A bed with a single nail sticking up will penetrate you the second you lie down. But a thousand nails can’t penetrate anything. The pressure of each nail is completely diffused by all the others around it.” — Bill Schley
 
Laundry list advertising is like a bed of nails
Photo by Полина Выдумчик

 

If you spend any time watching television or listening to the radio, you won’t have to wait long to encounter a “laundry list” commercial — a 30- or 60-second recitation of claims:

  •  A law firm lists every single area of practice, in the hope that one of them will interest a potential client.
  • A restaurant attempts to cram the entire menu into the commercial.
  • A dental practice wants the public to know that “we do it all!” — so checkups, implants, and laser treatments all get a mention.
 When I meet an advertiser who’s running a campaign like this, I’ll ask how this “bed of nails” approach is working. In almost all occasions, it’s not working.  The sales message is lost in the clutter.
 
[shareable]The best way to penetrate your target’s mind with a sales message is to pick a single nail.[/shareable]
 
 
For six years during my radio sales days, my biggest client was a Portland auto dealer. I wrote all of the commercials for all seven of his stores. And for most of the time during our relationship, we fought about the copy.
 
The dealer wanted lots of information in each commercial. He wanted a used car offer, and a new car offer, a mention of his service department, and, of course, the friendly staff.
 
I wanted one offer and a call to action. 
 
To penetrate the target's mind with advertising, pound a single nail
Photo by ashumsky
 
For six years, the auto dealer fought to put more into the copy, and I fought to take details out. One day he got fed up with me and said, “Why don’t you just have the announcer talk faster?”
 
I said, “Joe, with our software I can make the announcer talk faster by pressing a button. But I can’t make the audience listen any faster.”
 
When you write a script for radio, television, or online video, think of each detail as if it’s a tennis ball.
 
If you toss one ball to a listener or viewer, they can probably catch it.
 
But if you fling a whole bucket of balls at your audience, they’ll miss ’em all.
 
Details are like tennis balls in advertising
Photo by WavebreakMediaMicro
 
When too much stuff flies at their heads, their minds shut down. It’s too much work.
 
Advertising’s the same way. Your targets are busy, tired, and distracted. They don’t have the energy or desire to wade through a bunch of details to find the one that matters to them. Too much detail makes the mind shut down. 
 
Want an example of one-tennis-ball marketing? Think of McDonald’s.
 
As a restaurant, you may love it or hate it. But as a marketing company, McDonald’s has a brilliant, long-term track record of success. They know how to motivate a customer to get off the couch, drive past Burger King, Wendy’s and Taco Bell, and spend their money with them.
 
McDonald’s has a lot on their menu. Big Macs. Quarter Pounders.  Chicken McNuggets. Egg McMuffins. Fries. Coffee.
 
But when you see a McDonald’s ad, it won’t be about the Bic Mac and the Quarter Pounder and the Chicken McNuggets and the Egg McNuggets.
 
It’ll be 30 seconds about a single product. One thought per commercial. Like this:
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg69z2k9a9c

 Bill Schley calls it the Positioning Paradox:
 
“The narrower you focus, the wider your message goes.” 
 
“The more features you show, the less you are seen.  The more details you provide, the more vaguely you communicate…
 

By capturing undisputed leadership in a single important benefit, you are most likely to be noticed, remembered, and associated with a series of other great benefits, made all the more credible because you have reached prominence in one meaningful specialty.” 

 

— Bill Schley, Why Johnny Can’t Brand
 
Tom Ray, Author of Branding Is Out, Results Are In! Lessons for the Local Advertiser, recommends picking one thing to focus your message on:
 
 
 

Your goal, as an advertiser, as a business, is to determine what your one thing is…

Try to be as specific as possible. Think about your business, your company, and what separates you from the competition. For some of you reading this, the answer is obvious. Your company has some distinct advantage that makes you the better choice. For most reading this, the answer isn’t so obvious. You will struggle trying to pinpoint your ‘one thing.’

Answering these types of question should help you:

  • What do we do that no one else in our category does?
  • What can we claim that no one else can claim (or hasn’t yet)?
  • What special skill do we possess?
  • What piece of equipment do we have that no one else in our competitive landscape has?
  • What line do we carry exclusively in our market?
  • What’s our singular focus?
  • What’s our special offer?
  • What major designation have we achieved that none of our competitors have?

Simply put, why should someone come see you vs. anyone else in your competitive landscape?”

With so many things on their minds and so many distractions, your target won’t search the bed for the nail they’re interested in. Pick a single nail, and start pounding.

[reminder]