Category: Phil Bernstein

When the Client Just Won’t Make a Decision

When I sold advertising for the New York Mets, my efforts were aided by some built-in urgency: every advertiser wanted their fence sign to be up by Opening Day.

Photo by Michael Flippo
 
Opening Day was fixed on the calendar, in early April every year. Clients had to have their copy turned in by mid-February. 
 
Before the painter would even start work, we required a signed advertising contract. This hard deadline forced clients to make a decision. 
 
Advertising sales in the “real world” doesn’t generally work that way.
 
With the exception of some special programs and events like Valentine’s Day or political season, there’s no natural deadline.
 
Clients can start their radio, television, print, outdoor, or digital campaigns whenever they want. This week, next week, next month, six months from now. 
 
This can make it tough to close business.
 
 
 
                   Photo by Boyan Dimitrov
 
A TV sales manager recently wrote to me looking for ideas to create urgency and close business faster. 
 
I replied that this isn’t always possible, or even desirable. Customers will buy when they’re ready to buy, not when you’re ready to sell.
 
As Kevin Davis put it in his book Slow Down, Sell Faster,
 
Every sales leader wants fast sales; the trouble is, there aren’t many fast buyers…They are unlikely to change their buying process to match your selling process, so your only option is to be the one who switches.”
 
A further complicating factor is that if there are multiple decision-makers, each one may be at a different point in the sales cycle. Pushing a client faster than they’re ready to go can result in a shut-down of the whole process.
 
That said, sometimes a client is just about ready to go, but needs a push to take action. Here are some ways to create a little urgency when appropriate:
 
  1. End every meeting with an agreement to move forward somehow.
  • Has the client asked you to re-work the creative or the broadcast/digital plan? Set a face-to-face meeting where you can bring the revised plan in person. If the advertiser asks you to email it, ask them to commit to reviewing it by a certain date, and schedule a meeting or at least a phone call to discuss it. 
  • Does the client need to talk with his accountant? Ask when that will happen, and make an appointment for a face-to-face meeting the day after that conversation is to take place. This requires the client to put something on his calendar, which will force him to either talk to his accountant or admit that he hasn’t.
  • One note: “Why don’t you call me some time next week?” is not an appointment. An appointment has a date, time, and location — recorded in the client’s calendar.
  1. Put an expiration date on every proposal. Nothing fancy — it can be as simple as “Proposal valid through 5pm Friday, December 9.” Not in small print — in big print where the client can’t miss it. What happens on December 10 is up to you, but to protect your credibility the deal needs to change somehow. Rates might rise; sponsorship mentions could be pared back. 
  1. A variation on this: for the right piece of business, a “sign by Friday” bonus can be very effective. Extra commercials or sponsorship mentions; free production if you normally charge for it. They only get the bonus if they sign by the deadline.
  1. If the idea’s strong enough, and the client likes it enough, tell them that the idea’s too good to go to waste, and you’re going to have to take it to a competitor if they don’t sign on by a certain date. Then… take it to a competitor. 

None of this will work if the client’s just not ready to buy. But if they’re on the edge of doing something and need a push, these things may help.

The key is to have your pipeline full enough with clients in all phases of the sales cycle that you don’t need any one deal to close right now.

 

Are You Maximizing This Free Source of Prospect Intelligence?

There’s an easy-to-find source of marketing data about your clients… and many salespeople don’t bother to use it.

Salespeople should check client social media every time.
Photo by Octavus

It’s your client’s Facebook page.

Before you roll your eyes, take a moment to ask yourself — are you looking at those Facebook pages before every meeting?

In my travels as a broadcast and digital sales trainer, it’s been my experience that less than half of the salespeople I work with look at the client’s Facebook page before a call.

If you’re one who does, congratulations. If you aren’t, you’re missing opportunities.

Here’s what I found during pre-visit prep for one Midwestern market:

  1. “Check out our brand-new TV commercial — it starts next week on Channel 4!”  The prospect was about to start a campaign on a competitor, and had posted the ad on social media for everyone to see. 
  2. Photos of a brand-new location for a multi-store retailer, with information on an upcoming Grand Opening Sale.
  3. “Come meet the wacky Z95 Morning Crew — they’ll be at our Sherwood store this Saturday from 9 to 11!” That’s how we found out the client was advertising on the radio.
  4. A Facebook page with no posts since July of 2015. When I asked the client about that, she told me she wanted to do something with social media but really didn’t know what or how. 

All of these things were in plain sight on the customers’ Facebook pages — and all came as a complete surprise when I mentioned them to the AE’s.

Many clients update their social media feeds much more often than their own websites. They do this because Facebook is easier and faster to change, and because they are more comfortable on that platform — they are spending a lot of their personal time there anyway.

For this reason, you should be checking Facebook and the client website before every meeting. 

Things to look for:

  • How many “likes” do they have? If you’ve been to the page before, how does this compare to the last time you looked?
  • How often do they post?
  • Scroll down the page — what are they talking about? Is it mostly sales pitches? Employee profiles? Photos of happy customers? Invitations to events they’re putting on — or radio remotes put on by your competitors?
  • How long has it been since the last post? If it’s been more than a month or two, they may need help — and your digital team may be able to help them.
  • Click on the “Videos” tab — are there any commercials?

Although Facebook is the most common channel advertisers are using, many companies you call on are also using Twitter. And, of course, the people you meet with are likely tohave profiles on LinkedIn.

Check ’em all.

If you go through this exercise every time, you’ll learn things about your clients and prospects that they might never tell you, even as they’re telling the rest of the world.

From there, you can turn that knowledge into money.

Why You Should Run Hard Through The Tape

You never know how the final few yards of the race are going to go. Just ask Tanguy Pepiot, a University of Oregon distance runner:

Direct link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38fffcRexi4 

As Geoffrey C. Arnold of The Oregonian described it:

Pepiot was leading the steeplechase event by a wide margin and started celebrating his anticipated win with less than 100 meters remaining. Pepiot started waving his hands as he coasted toward the finish line.

He never saw Washington runner Meron Simon closing fast. Simon blew past Pepiot to win the race by a tenth of a second.

After the race, most of the chatter centered on Pepiot’s behavior. If he’d focused on running instead of celebrating, he might have held off the challenge.

But much credit should go to Simon, who launched a frantic kick when it looked like he had no chance of winning.

I thought of Pepiot and Simon when Donald Trump was declared the winner of the Presidential Election early on the morning of November 9.

Here’s the track-election parallel

On Sunday before the vote, Donald Trump made appearances in five different states: he flew to Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

He did this even though Barack Obama had won all five of those states in 2012.

The following day, he held rallies in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Michigan.

Yes, he had a private plane and a full staff. Regardless, ten states in two days is a brutal schedule for anyone — especially for a 70-year-old man.

While he was doing this, almost every single poll showed him losing the race. He did it anyway.

You know the result. Barring a big surprise from the Electoral College in December, Donald Trump will be taking the oath of office on January 20, 2017.

Why did Trump push himself so hard? Here’s what he told another North Carolina audience:

I always say I don’t want to think back if only I had did one more rally I would have won North Carolina by 500 votes instead of losing it by 200 votes. 

For the record, I didn’t vote for the guy. And it’s worth noting that Clinton campaigned hard until the end. 

But as a sales trainer I see a big sales lesson in the track race and the election race, and feel compelled to pass it along here. 

The Sales Lesson:
Always Run Hard Through the Tape

When you make your case to a potential customer, you’ll often have fierce competition. Sometimes it will look like you’ve got no shot at winning. 

  • Your ratings are down. 
  • The competition is undercutting you on price
  • Your prospect has always preferred another medium, or another station.
  • Your competitor is the client’s best golf buddy.

But as Donald Trump and Meron Simon have demonstrated, you never know what conversations your prospects are having behind closed doors.

You never know when your competition might be celebrating just a little early. 

How to Turn Sales Opportunity Into Defiance

“I keep trying to tell him how dumb his radio buy is, and he just won’t listen.”

insulting a client chhoice won't make you a sale
Photo by pathdoc

So said a television account executive as we prepared for a sales call with a window retailer. The owner was a long-time radio user, and my job was to convince him to start using TV and digital. The AE had been calling on him for more than a year.

“I’ve shown him all the research from TVB — people just don’t listen to the radio anymore, and he really needs to move over to television.”

“What does he tell you?” I asked.

“He gets defensive, and he tells me his radio’s working fine.”

Whatever medium we work in — television, radio, newspaper, outdoor, digital, — we see “research.” Some of it is independently done, but much of what we see is produced by our industry association. It can be helpful, but it’s designed in part to convince our customers that our medium works better than the other guys.

Television has TVB, the Television Bureau of Advertising. TVB has studies to show advertisers that TV works better than radio.

The radio industry has RAB — the Radio Advertising Bureau. RAB has charts and graphs to show advertisers that radio works better than TV.

When you’re new to the business, and all you see is your own industry’s research, it’s easy to convince yourself that you’ve got the only medium, or the only station within that medium, that works. From there, you can leap to the conclusion that anyone who uses the other guys is either misinformed or stupid.

But as Gregg Easterbrook once put it, “Torture numbers, and they’ll confess to anything.” Advertisers who have seen charts and graphs from competing media reps are inclined to believe none of them.

Trying to use those numbers to convince a prospect that the decision he’s made is a bad one is unlikely to have the desired effect. Even if you’re right, you’re wrong.

Anthony Iannarino, author of The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need, puts it this way:

The weakest choice available when trying to create a compelling reason for your dream client to consider leaving their existing supplier (or partner, as the case may be) is to directly attack your competitor. This approach creates resistance, and you cause your prospective client to defend their existing supplier—and their choice.”

A much better approach is to carefully ask a question to see if there might be any doubt in the prospect’s mind already. The question I like to use for an advertiser who’s been using a competitor for a long time is this:

“Is [name of medium] working as well for you as it did five years ago?”

You can then tailor your approach to the answer.

I asked the window retailer that question. He thought about it for a few seconds, and then told me that his radio was still getting results, but there’d been a bit of a drop-off in the past couple of years.

I then asked him which of the four radio stations he was using worked best, and he told me that he thought that two were producing good results and two were not.
 
I advised him to stay with the two that were working and drop the other two. We came back with a plan to use that money on a television/digital strategy, and he agreed to do it.

Some prospects will insist that their advertising is working just as well as ever. No chart or graph will convince them otherwise, and they’re not going to cancel something they believe is making money for them. It can be very difficult to convince them to change.

But it’s not impossible — sometimes you can persuade them that using your products can open additional doors for them.

In formal PowerPoint presentations, I set aside a slide that commends them for their success. In big red letters, I say this:

You’re doing really well already without me.

Here’s how to make a strong campaign even stronger.  

From there, I detail a strategy that either adjusts their messaging slightly, or demonstrate that we can put that message in front of desirable consumers who aren’t seeing it now.

Does this work every time? No. There are plenty of times the client decides not to take action.

But it works much better than a direct attack, which will only alienate the client. Respecting your customer’s decision leaves the door open to further conversations… and business when they’re ready.

How To Blow The Sale: Lack of Rehearsal May Cost Trump the Presidency

The biggest buy of your career is up. You are one of two finalists.

The two of you will be presenting to a committee of 20.

Seven of them are solidly in your corner. Seven of them are determined to vote for your opponent no matter what.

The other six will decide who gets the business.

Are you going to rehearse your presentation, or just wing it?

No rehearsal means no sale in a presentation.
Photo by razihusin

Update, early morning 11/9/16: Never mind. 

“The wing-it days are over” — Jim Doyle

A quick disclaimer:  I am making no (public) judgments on which of them should be President of the United States. You go ahead and vote for your candidate, and I’ll vote for mine.

Going into the very first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the 2016 Presidential race was very close to a dead heat. As Nate Silver put it on his poll-tracking 538 Blog,

Our models have been on the move toward Trump for roughly six weeks. But with dozens of polls coming out over the past few days, he’s no longer much of an underdog at all. Hillary Clinton leads narrowly — by 1.5 percentage points — in our projection of the popular vote. But polling weakness in states that Clinton probably needs to win, particularly Colorado andPennsylvania, makes the Electoral College almost even.

The debate began at 9pm Eastern Time on September 26. 90 minutes later, the momentum had shifted from Trump to Clinton, and has stayed that way since.

The difference? Preparation.

Clinton and her team created a plan, and rehearsed that plan to a fault. Trump, according to multiple reports, decided to wing it.

Here is a snippet from one post-first-debate review, typical of many:

It was a commanding performance from the Democratic nominee. Clinton delivered a series of detailed answers on subjects ranging from race to the Middle East to tax policy…The Republican, on the other hand, was erratic, vague, and frequently appeared rude.

A “buying committee” of 80 million Americans was watching that night. It was Trump’s best chance to convince them that he was qualified to be President of the United States — to move them closer to buying his plan instead of his opponent’s.

He blew it.

Trump’s campaign went into a spiral that night, and has not recovered since. While there have certainly been several other unfortunate events for him, we can look back at September 26 as the night Donald Trump turned potential victory into probable defeat.

Barring a huge surprise in the next three weeks, the odds are overwhelming that Hillary Clinton is going to earn the business.

The Sales Lesson
You’ve Gotta Rehearse

Public speaking coach Michael Port, author of Steal the Show: From Speeches to Job Interviews to Deal-Closing Pitches, How to Guarantee a Standing Ovation for All the Performances in Your Life, contends that rehearsing your material actually allows you to be more spontaneous:

When you prepare for a pitch, meeting, speech, or negotiation, the goal is to know your material so well that you are free to be in the moment. This is an important condition for listening because it’s hard to allow yourself to improvise if you don’t know your material right down to the core.

Rehearsing gives you the confidence to respond to the events and reactions of the moment, knowing you can come back to where you want to go with your planned content.”

  • You need to say every single word of your presentation out loud. It will sound different coming out of your mouth than it does in your head. Once you hear how it sounds out loud, you can make adjustments, long before your client hears anything.
  • You need to know your material well enough that if the client challenges any of the points you’re making, you can back them up.

For major presentations, role-play with your managers or peers, running through potential questions, objections, and holes in your arguments.

I know, I know. You hate to role-play. So do I.

Do it anyway.

The military role-plays constantly, performing hundreds of drills so that soldiers know how to cope with unexpected situations.

NFL teams role-play all week long before games. They practice all sorts of scenarios so that the quarterback has some experience with a game situation in which his first and second passing options don’t work out.

You should be role-playing, too. If it’s good enough for the New England Patriots and the United States Army, it’s good enough for you.

No Preparation = No Sale

The nation got a terrific sales lesson over the course of three Presidential debates this year.

For the biggest sales presentation of their lives, one candidate did the research, established her plan, and role-played for weeks, making adjustments along the way.

The other one…didn’t.

We’ll see the result on November 8.