I've been in meetings with media sales reps who've taken the dreaded "show up and throw up" approach to sales. The reps who employ this style show up for client meetings and start a very one-sided monologue about their magazine and/or site, it's benefits and advantages over the competition, and why that particular client should be advertising with them.
Whatever happened to asking the client questions? Perhaps even having a two-sided, intelligent business discussion? Hopefully you remember the E.F. Hutton television ad campaign from the early 80s (http://www.80stvthemes.com/ra/121999/EFHUTTON.ra) in which they use the tagline, "When EF Hutton speaks, people listen." It's a classic campaign and fits in well with what I believe should be the media sales pros' approach: "When clients speak, you should listen."- and if you do, you'll sell a heck of a lot more media to them.
On a recent sales trip to the New England area, I had prepared a presentation and proposal for a meeting with three marketing executives from a prospective advertiser. This company was a manufacturer who was targeting markets served by a number of the media properties that I represented, and I'd already had a phone conversation with the Marketing Director about some advertising ideas. Thus, I'd created a proposal for them based on the phone call that I wanted to present.
Upon arriving at the company's offices, it turned out that a new executive would be attending our meeting and- after a few introductory questions from me to the group- it was quickly evident that this person was the actual decision-maker. This changed the entire dynamics of my approach to the remainder of the meeting, let's quickly examine my options:
- Show Up & Throw Up Approach: If I were to use the show-up style, I would have stopped asking questions and jumped into throw-up mode: presented the proposal I had nicely prepared, but that was based upon my conversation with someone I now know is not the decision-maker. Basically, shove my ideas down the prospective clients' throats and see what happens.
- EF Hutton Approach: The other option is to continue an intelligent, two-way business discussion and ask the decision-maker qualifying questions to determine how to best position my media solutions to help reach their 2007 goals. This may lead to completely ignoring the prepared proposal, and actually presenting nothing at the meeting.
So, does listening to clients in meetings actually work? Shockingly, it does. In this example, I chose the EF Hutton approach and never did present my proposal ideas I had with me. Why? After 45 minutes of discussion, it was clear that the marketing decision-maker was embarking on a strategy to move virtually all communications dollars online, and was targeting different audiences in regions around the world. This was all new information for me.
My proposal included nothing of value to the "new" client strategy, and by using the show-up/throw-up approach, I would have accomplished very little. However, by actually listening to the clients, I eventually came back to them with a customized proposal based on our meeting. The results: A fairly significant online campaign using three media properties, two of which were new for the client. It included geo-targeted online advertising focused on Asia, a custom branded email newsletter campaign, and exclusive digital magazine sponsorships. None of these ideas were included in the "first" proposal.
I've written before about how important customized media solutions are in today's b2b media world for sales pros. Its quite hard to create and sell custom media ideas to clients without first truly understanding what their goals are. There is a distinct difference between listening to a client, and just hearing what they're saying- link here for an interesting article about those differences and how to make it work for sales (http://gmj.gallup.com/content/12511/A-Knack-for-Listening.aspx).
As a media sales pro in today's ever integrated market, listening to customers is a talent you'll need to develop. If you already have, use it to differentiate you and your media properties to more closely partner with clients. When you successfully listen in meetings, create ideas that fit client goals, and clearly communicate the benefits, you leave little room for the competition.
No comments:
Post a Comment