Category: Sales

Sales Advice: How To Get Past The Put-Off

“I’m tired of getting put off — I’d rather they just say no.”

salespeople can't wait for the put-off
Photo by MNStudio/dpc

 

Jane has been selling broadcast for about a year, and is finding her sales efforts blocked by clients who either can’t or won’t commit. In her post on TV Sales Cafe, she writes

I’ll meet with someone and they’ll ask for a proposal. When I bring it back they usually react well, but they don’t sign. Sometimes they’ll tell me to call them in a week, but when I call a week later they tell me they can’t do anything yet, and I should call in three months. Three months later, same thing. It’s not the right time and I should call back in three months.

This is not an uncommon occurrence in the world of sales. Customers buy when they want to buy — not when we want to sell. And sometimes there are perfectly good reasons why now is just not the right time.

But if you’re hearing the same refrain over and over again, it’s time to take a good look at why this might be happening.

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Before each contact with your customer, you should have a planned objective for the interaction. Ideally, you want to be looking for an advance – defined by Neil Rackham in the classic Spin Selling as an event “either in a call or after it, which moves the sale forward toward a decision.”

An advance can be something like:

  1. Scheduling a follow-up meeting to present requested changes for the proposal
  2. Arranging for you to meet with the committee that will actually make the decision.
  3. Requesting production of a spec ad – and scheduling the meeting for the right people to watch or listen to the commercial.

Each of these advances has potential… as long as you and the client agree on what the result will be.

Anthony Iannarino says that“the first reason deals stall is that the salesperson doesn’t ask for or obtain an advance during the sales call.”

As the process moves forward, you should be asking questions like:

  1. “Once I make the changes you requested to the proposal, will you be ready to go ahead with the plan?” If the answer’s not yes, make sure you understand what else has to happen to get the client ready to buy.
  1. If the committee likes what I present to them, can they sign for it at the meeting?” If not, you should fully understand how the committee comes to a decision… and how long it should take.
  1. “If you like the sample ad we produce, can we formalize the plan and get started?” Spec ads may not be perfect, but they do take a significant amount of work. In return for that work, the client should be willing to make a tentative commitment to move forward.

TV advertising people should be on TV Sales Cafe

Sales expert Michael Boyette offers these tips on interpreting a stall:

Prospects who stall are sending you a message. And you will never make the sale unless you figure out what that message is.

Here are some possibilities:

“I don’t really have the authority to say yes … but I like feeling important.”

“You’re not really hitting my hot button … but I’m too polite to say so.”

“There’s something that’s making me hesitate … but if I tell you what it is, I won’t be in a strong negotiating position”

“I’m afraid to make a decision … but I’ll never admit it.”

“If I keep putting you off, you might offer me a better deal.”

There’s one more possibility: a legitimate reason for the delay.

Sometimes there’s a reason why three months from now is better than right now:

  • A new product will be launched, but they’re not sure exactly when.
  • A new location is opening, but it’s weeks away.
  • The new fiscal year starts, and they’re waiting for someone to tell them what their budget will be.
  • A corporate reorganization is underway, and nobody knows what that means yet.

How do you find out whether “call me in three months” really means they want to talk to you in three months?

Ask.

“Of course, Mr. Client. I’d be happy to call you then… but could I ask you one question? What’s going to be different in three months?”

The answer you get back should tell you whether there’s truly something to talk about.

Finally, if you’re on your second or third “3 months” with the same client, Michael Boyette recommends a very direct approach.

Don’t be afraid to pin buyers down when they keep putting you off: “Gee, Ms. Buyer, we’ve been at this for a while now and we don’t seem to making progress. Can you tell me why?”

That may sound blunt, but if you’ve invested the time and effort, you’ve earned the right to ask. And chances are, a real prospect will respect you for asking.

Should you keep chasing the business, or tear up their business cards? Ask the right questions, and it’ll be much easier to turn your selling time into money.

[reminder]What’s your best tip for jump-starting a stalled sale?[/reminder]

 

Do You Work In TV Advertising  Sales?

If you’re not already signed up for TV Sales Cafe, you’re missing out on a great source of information, sales advice, and connections. Membership is free.

If you’re already a member and haven’t been there in a while, you should take a look — there are a bunch of new discussions by an increasingly active group of Account Executives, Sales Managers, and agency folk.

Go check it out right now by clicking here.

How Should New TV Salespeople Be Compensated?

How were you paid when you started out in sales?

Piggybank Dollarphotoclub_97845617
Photo by Comugnero Silvana/dpc

I began my radio sales career with a three-month guarantee. My manager extended it an extra month because he felt I was doing everything right. After that it was straight commission.

There are lively discussions happening now at TV Sales Cafe and Radio Sales Cafe about commission structures. Straight commission? Salary plus commission? Straight salary?

How were you compensated when you started out in sales? What do you think is the best approach?

You can post your answer and opinions on TV Sales Cafe by clicking right here.

 

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What Have You Used, and How Did It Work?

Adults learn by doing, not by hearing how the trainer did it.  — Chris Lytle

sales tip: learn by doing
Photo by iQoncept/dpc

 

A Quick Question for Salespeople and Sales Managers:
What Have You Used?

 

Over the past year or so since I brought this blog back from hiatus, I’ve published a lot of advice.

I’ve given you tips on

I often get emails  from TV and radio advertising salespeople who tell me that they plan to use something they read on the blog — but it’s rare that anyone tells me how things turned out.

If you’ve used some of the advice you’ve read here, what happened?

  • What technique did you use?
  • Did you modify it to fit the circumstances, and if so, how?
  • Did it work?
  • What else are you still struggling with?

Please let me know — you can email me here.

 

Television salespeople: sign up for TV Sales Cafe

How to Get Your Boss to Give You Better Accounts

There’s an old joke about a man who beseeches God: “Please let me win the lottery”.

Sales Tip: have you earned what you're asking for?

Photo by Bacho Foto/dpc

He goes through all his troubles — business failures, medical problems, the loss of his house and car. Again and again he begs for God’s help in winning the lottery.

Finally, God speaks:

“Joe, meet me halfway. Buy a ticket.”

I was reminded of this story the other day after hearing from yet another AE about how unfair her station’s management is.

It was the usual story: Other reps have all the good accounts, and the sales manager never gives her anything. After 18 months at the station, she felt she deserved more.

At the end of the week I sat down with the sales manager to review the staff. I did not mention my conversation with this particular AE, but the manager had plenty to say about her:

“I’ve handed her leads, and found out later that she hadn’t followed up. I gave her a great book on sales, and she didn’t read it. When I give her advice, she doesn’t use it. She keeps saying I should give her a better list, but she hasn’t done anything to deserve it!”

Here was a salesperson who wanted the reward without taking the steps necessary to earn them. She wanted to win the lottery without buying a ticket.

Television salespeople: sign up for TV Sales Cafe

This phenomenon isn’t confined to media sales.

Investor Daniel Mumby, CEO of the Startup Foundation, has money to invest rather than accounts to give out, but he has some of the same frustrations as a sales manager.

In his essay Why I Can’t Invest In You If You Won’t Invest In Yourself, Mumby says that he hears 25 new pitches for funding every week and rarely invests in any of them.

The problem, he says, is that the people seeking his money haven’t done the work necessary to show they deserve it:

One of the key elements that is often not talked about, and therefore often ignored by founders (but rarely ignored by investors), is your propensity to invest in yourself. What effort have you put.. into actually learning your trade or craft?

How much

  • effort have you put into research, preparation, learning, delivery?
  • did you prepare for difficult questions during the Q&A section of your pitch.
  • research have you done in targeting the right types of investors?
  • actual researching, testing and learning have you done in your target product market?
  • have you progressed in building a prototype, testing actual paths to market, or in creating partnerships?
  • ‘skin in the game’ do have (in cash & labour) on your own venture?
  • have you invested in your professional learning for the market in question?

Because if your answer to any of these is “not much”, let me be frank – (in the words of Darryl Kerrigan from “the Castle”) – “tell him he’s dreamin’ “. You are not just unlikely to get investment – you just won’t. And I don’t mean from me; I mean almost no investor.

Here’s the question:

If you want your manager to give you some good accounts, or direct call-ins your way, send you to a conference, or pay for a training course, what have you done to earn it…and how visibly have you done it?

If you want your company to invest in you, what have you done to invest in yourself, and how can you demonstrate that?

5 Ways Salespeople Can Put This Into Action

  1. The next time your manager hands you a lead, drop everything and follow up on that lead immediately. Make the phone call as soon as you get back to your desk. As soon as you’ve made it, send your manager a short email letting them know what you did. “Jim, I just left a message for Dana at Johnson Heating. I’ll let you know when we connect. Thanks for the lead.” Do this even if you’re really busy, and even if you think it’s not a great prospect. The next lead might be a great one, and you want the manager to think of you first.
  2. If your manager hands you a book, read the book. Find something nice to say even if you don’t like it, and work that into a conversation with your boss. If it’s a job-related book, implement something you learned, and work that into a conversation to your boss.
  3. Buy your own books on sales, marketing, and advertising. Keep them on a shelf on your desk, where your manager can see them — it sends a message. Read them, in case your boss asks you about them, and because you just might learn something.
  4. If there’s an in-town seminar coming up on sales or marketing, and you can afford the entrance fee, ask for the time off to attend — without asking for the money. Your manager just might volunteer to pay for the ticket. If not, pay for it yourself (it’s tax-deductible) and go anyway. Once you’ve made your own financial investment in getting better at your job, you’re in a better position to ask your boss to make the next financial investment.
  5. If your company brings in a trainer or consultant, keep an open mind about the project, participate, and implement something you learned. (Yes, I have a dog in this fight.)It’s simple reciprocity — if you want your boss to pay for a course or conference you’re interested in, it will greatly help your cause if you support the projects they’re interested in.  Even the bad trainers can teach you something — one of the worst consultants I ever saw used a closing line that I loved, and I still use that line fifteen years later.

 You’re not just selling on the street… you’re selling in the office. Your manager is the prospect, and you’re asking for an investment. Just like on the street, you have to earn the right to ask for the business.

Buy a ticket.

[reminder]What’s the best thing you’ve done to convince your bosses you’re worth something extra?[/reminder]

5 Important Media Sales Lessons From 1200 Business Owners

The great thing about sales is that there are lessons every day. Sometimes they’re new ones, and sometimes they’re painful reminders of lessons we’ve forgotten.

sales lessons from skeptical businesspeople
photo by Kurhan/dpc

In the past six years as a consultant and sales trainer, I’ve met with about 1200 business owners and managers all over the United States.

Because I’m not “the salesman” anymore, businesspeople are now willing to tell me exactly how they feel about the television, radio, digital, print, outdoor, and transit salespeople who call on them every day… and sometimes how they feel about me!

Here are five things I’ve learned from 1200 business owners:

1. They don’t like it when you haven’t done your homework. This lesson was driven home in 2011 when an HVAC dealer chewed me out, in front of an AE and her sales manager, because I hadn’t looked the store up online before the meeting. “You could’ve found out the answers to your last three questions by looking at our website. Why should I waste my time with you when you couldn’t be bothered to do a little basic research?”

I haven’t made that mistake since, and I now emphasize it in my training. If you haven’t spent some time with their website before your first meeting with them, there isn’t going to be a second meeting.

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There’s more to pre-call research than just the business’ website. I’ve written an e-book on how to prepare for a sales call in 15 minutes or less. You should download it and read it.

2. They don’t expect perfection, but they expect you to make things right. Customers understand that things can go wrong, and they are willing to give you some slack — but only if you pro-actively take responsibility. This means notifying the client immediately when something goes wrong, and quickly offering a well-thought-out solution. The best way, by far, to deliver bad news is in person. The second best way is the telephone.

The worst way to deliver bad news? Email.

3. They will answer your questions… but it’s up to you to ask. In any given week I will ask 20 different business owners how much they spend on advertising and exactly where they spend it. On average, 16 will give me the information without any resistance, and another two will do so after some prompting. There are always going to be a couple of soreheads. The same goes for things like gross sales, average transaction, closing percentage, and margin.

Sometimes they have to look the information up — I’ve seen people leave the room and come back with big notebooks filled with spreadsheets. But they’ll do it if you ask. Here’s a powerful 3-question method for getting at the advertising budget.

 

Television salespeople: sign up for TV Sales Cafe

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4. Rankers do not belong in a presentation to a direct client. Rankers breed cynicism — many clients have seen dozens of rankers from the dozens of salespeople who have been in before you (see Lesson #1 above), and they have figured out that the seller’s radio or TV station is always Number One on the list.

Rankers also create the risk that the conversation will turn toward a property that’s not yours. Even if you’re at the top of the list, the client may love a show on Station #3… and the ranker will remind the customer that he meant to call the rep from that station back. Leave the rankers in your desk for agency pitches.

5.  A hard close might get you a signature… but it can kill a relationship.

I learned this first as a salesperson for the New York Mets when the owner of a sanitation company scrawled “Cancelled” across his luxury suite contract, sent it to me by registered mail, and refused to take my calls.

I learned it again as a radio seller when, under pressure from my boss to hit my “Indy Race” sponsorship package quota, I leaned hard on the local manager of a wireless company. He signed the contract, ran the ads, paid the bill, and never talked to me again.

A couple of years ago a television sales manager told me I wasn’t closing hard enough. I agreed to let her “show me how it’s done”. For two days she browbeat each customer at the end of my presentations. Several were visibly offended, but four of them signed in the room. The following week two of them canceled the deals. One of them told the AE, “I just signed so you’d let me leave.”

Should you ask for the order, probe for objections, and address concerns? Absolutely.

But think about how you’ve felt when an aggressive salesperson tried to pressure you into a decision you weren’t ready to make.

A decision made by a client who is ready to decide is much more likely to stick… and so is the relationship.

[reminder]What’s the most important sales lesson you’ve learned from your customers?[/reminder]