Peady’s Selling Engagement
Are You Prepared to Change Two Things?
Today, customers aren’t looking for salespeople who know their products and want to do business, they are looking for specialists who can talk the language of business, engage with them, uncover challenges and find the right fit or solution to solve those challenges or take advantage of a market gap.
Welcome to this week’s post on sales and selling success.
Apart from the changes in selling, the media industry is also struggling to hold onto advertisers while attempting to build out their digital offerings. Unfortunately, many media sales people (and their sales managers) still see their job as selling mainstream advertising with digital as a sideline. And those that do get involved in digital are heavily reliant on banner ads on their sites or posts on their Facebook and Instagram page. Something that is not in high demand by advertisers.
To be relevant in todays changed selling environment and to grow digital revenue, media sales people need to offer other digital services that more directly complement their current offerings.
In my opinion it’s time for media companies to rethink their businesses model and focus on harnessing the ‘best’ of what they do and the full range of digital offerings to ensure the solution work for advertisers.
The training challenge
What skills do sales people need to address the two scenarios I have outlined?
- Mastery of a proven sales process designed to uncover business needs via a strong questioning technique
- A clear understanding of digital and social media – what good looks like and how to demonstrate that to customers
Instigating a business conversation that includes meaningful questions will provoke thought and help to engage prospects in what is relevant to them and their business.
I believe the sales manager should have a very active role in the area of training and development.
- formal training
- informal training
- personalised coaching
There’s always the option to use a third-party specialist trainer to deliver the formalised training and then the sales manager can support the team via formal and informal reinforcement together with in-field coaching.
Advertising plus
To grow and thrive, a company needs to understand that its role isn’t to just sell advertising but to leverage all the tools at its disposal – advertising, events, digital, social and promotional activities. In effect become a ‘one stop shop’.
If they’re successful at that, they’ll capture business from every flat-footed competitor and those that won’t change their business model. The result? Seizing emerging revenue opportunities.
The ‘solution providers’ of the selling world are much less at the mercy of specific products – they have the expertise to recommend and are believed. That’s where true success lies.
So, back to my headline question. Are you prepared to change two things?
Until next week good selling!
About the author
Stephen Pead is a media industry veteran of 30 years with significant experience in direct sales, sales management and general management. He is based in Sydney and specialises in helping SME’s market their businesses more effectively and providing training for salespeople and sales managers.
He can be contacted at [email protected]