Great Gains From Savvy Sales Team Investing

I know you’ve heard the expression, “You have to spend money to make money.” It’s not new. In fact, it originated more than 2,000 years ago with Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus who said: “He who seeks for gain, must be at some expense.”

While the saying has certainly met the test of time, humankind has never stopped trying to figure out how to do more with less. It’s certainly true for advertisers. You can also see it being played out in media companies’ investments, including those in ad sales operations.

When it comes to investing hard-earned dollars, both advertisers and media companies have the same goal. They want to know where to spend to insure the greatest return.

It makes sense that focusing on information that’s critical to the client, information that will help insure the greatest return, is the best way for sales reps to work with their clients. The current issue of MFM’s member magazine, The Financial Manager – TFM, includes an article that will get you thinking about how to implement this approach in your company. It was written by Matt Sunshine who is managing partner of both the LeadG2 lead generation firm and The Center for Sales Strategy, which focuses on sales development.

Sunshine says that successful sales organizations have a strategic focus on sales that begins at the top. This focus includes “establishing not just the fundamental sales principle of repeatable sales, but also the right key performance indicators (KPIs) to track, so you always know how well you are doing with each step.”

Shifting Sales Presentations From Why To How

Repeatable sales, according to Sunshine, occur when salespeople switch from “why” to “how.” When a seller talks about “‘why’ their product is so great, so big or so important,” the “clients tend to sit back and listen.” A “how” presentation can get the client to “lean forward, engage and begin to ask questions about how the product or service could work for them.”

This is particularly true in today’s market, where the Internet has already armed ad sales clients with demographic data and other statistics pertaining to audiences served by media providers. As that great American statesman, Ben Franklin, observed: “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

The Seven Sales Steps

Sunshine says there are seven critical steps in a “how” selling sales system:

• Find — A good sales department has a steady flow of leads or prospects that they are constantly able to evaluate and nurture.

• Select — Sales teams must adhere to the same criteria when separating the good prospects from the not-so-good ones.

• Approach — Today’s technology makes it easy to avoid a sales call. Salespeople need to use solid, valid business reasons to earn an appointment.

• Define — The primary goal of the “define” step is to discover the opportunity and confirm that it would be of value to the client. It requires “doing your homework” and being ready to share valuable insights and discussion topics.

• Solve — With a clear understanding of the client’s challenge, sales people are ready to “go back to the client with confidence that their idea will work and garner results.”

• Confirm — If the salesperson has completed every step the right way, closing the deal will involve having the client sign off on a proposal rather than a hard sell.

• Deliver — The best way to decrease client attrition is by ensuring the advertising is actually working and your clients are getting the results they expected.

Sales KPIs

To ensure sales teams deliver the predictable revenue their organizations require, Sunshine recommends tracking these KPIs:

• The number of quality appointments per week for each salesperson. Quality is determined by such factors as: the meeting is scheduled in advance, it’s held with a decision maker, and the meeting involved discovering needs or presenting solutions.

• The number of proposals presented each week. “In manufacturing, companies always know exactly how many products are produced, and they would be certain that each one met quality standards. Your business should be no different.”

• The number of orders booked. “Salespeople need to see that while we are looking at the process, we are also measuring the outcome of that process.”

• The amount of business that’s pending over 30 days. Sellers should focus on the business pending that is less than 30 days old. “If the older stuff comes through, consider it a bonus.”

Training Isn’t An Event

“One of the biggest mistakes that sales operations make is to view training as an event,” says Sunshine. These events typically cascade down from a management retreat where a session touches on sales, and the management team agrees some sales training is needed. In response, sales leadership recruits a sales consultant and their sales reps are “taken off the street” for one or two days of sales training.

While everyone initially feels good about the training, research shows the failure to follow up with ongoing coaching, skill development demonstrations, and one-on-one guidance will result in losing 80% of what was taught in the training. Instead, according to Sunshine, “The real world, in-the-trenches way to find huge success is to make a commitment to the training concepts, reinforce them regularly and stick to it. It’s the only way you will achieve the results you need.”

As Sunshine reminds readers, organizations can either improves their sales strategies or make the mistake of continuing to do things the same old way while expecting different results.

If you would like to gain more of the knowledge that can help your organization to achieve a greater gain from your investments in sales, a digital copy of the issue of TFM containing his article, “Building a Bigger Bonfire,” will be available on our website for several more weeks.

MFM’s upcoming 2016 CFO Summit will include presentations on sales from two industry experts, which is consistent with Sunshine’s observations about such programs. In addition to a presentation on what advertising clients want from programmatic advertising by Forrester Group senior analyst Susan Bidel, Gordon Borrell, CEO, Borrell Associates will discuss the outlook for local ad sales and what he sees as the local media company of the future.

My experience tells me that MFM members, who have participated in Borrell’s research, aren’t likely to fall into the “sales training as an event” trap. As their support for educational programs designed to improve their company’s financial performance demonstrates, they are true believers that “(S)he who seeks for gain, must be at some expense.” We at MFM are pleased that they have chosen us to help them provide that education.

From all of us at MFM and BCCA — we wish you, your family and all those important to you all the best during this holiday season along with health and prosperity in the coming year.

Mary M. Collins is president and CEO of the Media Financial Management Association and its BCCA subsidiary. She can be reached at [email protected]. Her column appears in TVNewsCheck every other week. You can read her earlier columns here.