Fishing is very much like advertising sales. First, we must prospect or fish in the right spots, use the right bait and equipment, and then we must know what we are fishing for. Are you fishing just to catch some fish, or are you trying to land the BIG ONE? And… how do you know when it’s a BIG ONE?
We know that furniture stores, car dealers, and grocery stores all have great potential, but they are not always the “big fish”. In fact, sometimes you would just as soon throw some of these back!
However, when you feel like you hooked on what you believe is a big one, there are a few lessons that we can learn from the fishermen.
First, you need to let them nibble a bit, don’t try to set the hook too quickly. Secondly, take your time reeling them in. Just like setting the hook, if you reel too hard and too fast your chance of losing them increases.
If you know you have a prospect with great potential (A BIG ONE), take your time, educate them on how you can help them, ask more questions, have additional meetings to make sure you have all the bases covered, and don’t try to get them in the boat before they are ready. A longer sales cycle typically reaps better success.
The biggest fish, like the biggest prospects, need to be handled with great care. Nearly every six-figure account that my sales teams landed took 3 to 6 months to get on the air, and in some cases, even longer.
Patience is a virtue! Once you have the hook set, guide them in with due diligence, but be prepared for sudden changes so you can adjust accordingly. If they should decide to swim upstream one more time, give them some line (more information) and then steer them back towards the boat. Your chances of getting them in the boat will greatly increase.
If you would like your team to become better prospectors and learn how to land the BIG ONES, click here and we can visit on how ENS Media can help train and motivate your team to have more success in 2021 and beyond.
Last week we suggested that there are nine steps in the advertising sales process and we provided our Media Rep Rating System.
Whether you are a manager or an individual media rep, we hope that you took the time to rate yourself or your sellers. If you did so in a very honest way, you discovered some areas that you or your reps are deficient in. You also learned that scoring enough points to be considered an excellent or elite media rep is difficult.
The goal of the process was not to show you that the reps you thought were “Excellent or Elite” are only “Above Average”. Instead, it was to get you to focus on the media sales process and areas where you can improve on.
We hope you did just that!
This week, we would like to look at the nine steps once again, only this time we would like you to rank them by order of importance. Understanding which steps are most important and giving additional attention and training to these areas will increase the rankings and ultimately help everyone become more successful.
Below are the 9 steps in the advertising sales process. Click here to take a quick survey to tell us how you would rank them by order of importance (1 being most important and 9 least important).
Advertising Sales Process
Step One: Prospecting
Step Two: Cold Calling / Asking for the Appointment
There is no right answer or right order, and the point of this topic was not to start a debate. However, some steps in the process have a greater impact on determining whether a media rep is successful or not.
Thank you for participating in our survey. We will share the results with you in upcoming issues.