Sales – Page 4 – Phil Bernstein's Advertising, Marketing, and Sales Training Blog

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.

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.

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.

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]

Find a Problem to Solve: A Sales and Marketing Lesson From Ford

Every business exists to solve someone else’s problem.

A mattress store can solve the “my back hurts” problem.
An HVAC dealer can solve the “it’s too cold in the house!” problem.
A restaurant can solve the “I’m hungry and don’t want to cook” problem.

As media salespeople, we can solve problems, too. The key is offering to solve a problem your client cares about. Sometimes that takes a little research and thought.

We can learn a great deal from Ford’s efforts to position their soon-to-be-released F-150 Hybrid. In the passenger car market, many buyers choose a hybrid to save money on gasoline, or to help protect the environment.

According to a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article, that doesn’t resonate with F-150 buyers:

People who buy F-150s don’t much care about fuel economy. It ranks No. 28 on their list of priorities, way below pickup essentials like durability and reliability, even the roominess of the cab.

According to Bloomberg, environmental concerns don’t drive buying behavior in this group, either. So Ford had to come up with another problem to solve.

By spending a lot of time with their customers, they learned about an unmet need for portable power:

“We would see our customers just literally buying generators from Home Depot and strapping them down in their truck beds,” [Ford product development chief] Hau Thai-Tang said.

There was the welder in Texas who lugged his generator in and out of the bed whenever he needed it for work. Then there was the builder in Denver who didn’t own one, relying on a jumble of extension cords that he stretched to an outlet to operate his saw. “He told us, ‘Access to power in any shape or form would absolutely help me do my job,’ ” [Ford research team leader Nadia] Preston said…

…To coax devotees into the greener future, the company won’t be stressing the benefits of cutting back on carbon-dioxide emissions or the costs of tanking up. Instead, the marketing will go something like this: The battery in the hybrid F-150 not only feeds the electric motor, it’s a mobile generator that can keep the beer cool at a tailgate party, charge your miter saw and run the coffee maker on a camping trip.

There are two lessons for those of us in the persuasion industry:

For copywriters: What problems can the client solve for its customers? Which of those problems is most important to new customers? You need to make an effort to find out before you start writing — the answer may not be the first one that comes to mind.

For media salespeople: What problems do your clients have that advertising with you can solve? Unless you’re dealing with an advertising agency media buyer, it’s probably not the “I want to buy a cheap spot package” problem, or the “I want to see an 18-49 ranker” problem.

Here are some of the more common business problems you can solve:

“I don’t have enough traffic at my south side location.”
“My prices are great, but everyone thinks the big box stores are cheaper.”
“We’ve got the best Philly Cheesesteak in town, and nobody knows it.”

The best way to find out what problems are on a prospective advertiser’s mind? Ask.

What questions should you ask? My book, Breakthrough Prospecting, can help you solve that problem — Chapter 14’s got a whole bunch of thoughtful questions to ask.

Each week, as my boss and mentor Jim Doyle points out, thousands of Americans go to a hardware store to buy a 1/4-inch drill bit. But they don’t want a drill bit — what they want is a 1/4-inch hole.

So take Jim’s advice — sell the hole, not the drill bit.

[reminder]

Another Hotel Story, With a Quick Sales Lesson

There’s one sales approach more effective than a phone call.

Sales lesson: a human body gets attention — Photo by Viacheslav Iakobchuk

Not long ago I told the story of my attempts to book a hotel room near the airport in Lexington, Kentucky. You can read the full tale here, and you should.

The sales lesson of the story was that a phone call is often much more effective than an online effort when you want to get a target’s attention and compel action.

After I put up the post, I heard from fellow road warrior and consultant Don Davis of Gabriel Media. Don is Senior Market Manager at Gabriel and a subscriber to this blog.

He pointed out that when a phone call fails, there’s an even more effective option:

Many years ago I was stuck in a small airport in Alexandria, LA after delays then cancellation of a flight. This was before being able to book a room via internet.

I made some calls to the few local hotels and was told they were full. I decided I might have a better shot if I stood in front of them asking for a room.

I took a taxi to the biggest hotel and went in and told them of my plight and asked if they had anything available. Somehow they found me a room even though they were “full” when I called.

In each case, there’s a trade-off: efficiency for effectiveness.

It’s faster and easier to look up hotel vacancies online than it is to call each hotel on the phone. But my phone call got results when online attempts failed.

It’s faster and easier to make phone calls than it is to take a taxi to one hotel. Don Davis found that an in-person attempt got him the room.

When you consider your prospecting options, you’ve got the same choices: the efficiency of a social media post versus the enhanced effectiveness of a series of phone calls.

And when the phone and keyboard aren’t getting it done, remember this:

There’s nothing more effective in getting a target’s attention than a human body on the other side of the desk.