Selling in the New Economy

Selling in the New Economy

 
          By the time your client tells you she’s going to cut back her advertising, she’s laid awake many nights considering other alternatives.
          Advertisers who have made this difficult decision are prepared to counter your standard comebacks and are ready to defend their position when they tell you the news.
          No business owner ever delights in cutting their advertising and every business wants what advertising can deliver; badly needed customers.
          When advertisers talk about cutting their advertising, tell them, “You are right.”   
          Say something like, “You do need to change your advertising in this economy.” What advertisers really want is increased sales, not cuts to the one expense they have that can actually bring them more sales. Opening dialogue to uncover changes in advertising strategies can save the business….yours and your clients’. Your empathy will melt their defensive position and help them reconsider the difficult decision they’ve made. Then substitute the word “cut” with the word “change”.
          The Conspicuous Consumption Economy is over. We are not merely in a recession, we are in a correction. Conspicuous Consumption won’t be displayed like a badge of honor in the new Safety And Security Economy.
          Mutual fund sales people, for example, who used to sell a fund to make their customers rich, now have to sell that same fund by persuading them they’ll be safe and secure in their investment.
          Focus your discussion on changing your clients’ copy to appeal to more nervous consumers or changing their marketing strategy to fit new consumer sentiments. Your prospects will welcome the opportunity to try something new to get a return on their advertising investment, rather than cutting it out of desperation.
          Our Selling In the New Economy sales workshop shows your account executives how to persuade advertisers not to cut their advertising, but to change their advertising to appeal to the new consumer sentiments and new business opportunities.
          We explore eight new strategies and four new business opportunities that are helping stations to increase their sales right now!
          Email Wayne if you would like a free, no-obligation demo of how Selling In The New Economy is helping stations across North America to increase their sales.
 
 
 

Sales Contest Success

 Three Keys to Sales Contest Success

 
          All good sales people are competitive by nature; not fiercely competitive, but in a fun and challenging way.
          Internal sales contests can add focus, fun and excitement to your sales team’s daily activity. Three keys to running successful sales contests are;
1.   Reward activities and effort. Your sales people are already rewarded with commissions and bonuses for results. Rewarding activity, such as written presentations or spec spots, ensures you’ll see more of the activities which you know will produce results.
Rewarding activities also ensures a level playing field where reps with smaller account lists have as much chance of winning as the fat cats do.
2.   Have a jump start prize. Contests that get off to a slow start are never as productive as contests which reward the first person off the mark. Some sales people don’t even get off the mark until they see others do so.
3.   Have visual reinforcements.  Have activity charts on your sales room wall which participants can proudly fill out in front of everyone every day, and make sure they know you are watching that chart and recognizing achievements throughout the campaign. 
 
And of course, always make your contest goals realistic, yet challenging.

 

 

 

 

Absence of Body Language

 © by Wayne Ens

            If you haven’t noticed, the skills required for selling and building customer relationships in the business-to-business world have changed dramatically in recent years.
            In a recent MarketingSherpa survey, buyers and sales people were asked, “Why do buyers leave?”
            Not surprisingly, the top answer with sales people was “price”. The top answer with buyers, however, was “service”.
            But multi-tasking, tighter deadlines and technology have redefined the world of selling, and how buyers define service.
            Service that was once measured by the amount of face-to-face time you dedicated to your prospects, is now measured by busy buyers based on how much face-to-face time you don’t occupy to achieve their objectives.
            Buyer styles that were read face-to-face through ‘body language’ or verbal tones, now often have to be assessed through ‘literature language’ received in hastilycrafted emails.
            Relationships that were once built exclusively on face-to-face communication and personality are now also impacted by your ability to communicate effectively with technology and to convey your personality, and read your prospects’ personalities, through the written word. 
            Your ability to write succinctly with empathy, and to read between the lines in client emails, are skills that are as important today as the questioning and negotiating skills you acquired when you were learning face-to-face selling. 

P.S. Our Customer-Focused Communications workshops will help you understand what’s behind the emails you receive and how to reach and influence your prospects with new technologies and the written word.   

Magic Formula

© by Wayne ENS

           My friend Bill Dawkins at Magic FM, told me about a ‘magic’ call formula the folks at Val Pak, the coupon envelope people, use when selling local advertisers.  
          Bill told me he had bought a Val Pak franchise a number of years ago, but did not believe their call formula.  He set out to prove they were wrong, but he could not.
          Since Bill told me about the ‘magic’ formula, we’ve used it at several of our stations, and it really does work!
          So here it is for you; 10/7/4/1……that’s the formula.
          If you make ten phone calls, you’ll reach seven decision-makers, confirm four appointments and make a minimum of one sale. It sounds too easy and too good to be true, doesn’t it?
          Well, there is a catch. You need to do your homework so that you have a Valid Business Reason for every call and every appointment. A Valid Business Reason is a reason for the call that benefits the prospect.
          That reason may be some local research about the prospect’s category, a proven marketing concept that has worked for that category in other markets, or anything else that establishes your intent to help your prospects increase sales from the very first appointment.
          We have worked with hundreds of media sales teams across North America and have discovered numerous ‘magic’ formulas which we have tested and proven to increase sales.
          Click here if you would like to talk about becoming one of our successful stations.

Pareto Principle

         © by Wayne ENS  

            I often encounter managers who confuse activity with productivity, especially managers thrust into a multi-tasking environment, wearing several hats with multiple mandates.
            Coaching them to employ the old 80/20 rule in their time management has been one of the most valuable tools I’ve been able to give them.
            The 80/20 rule was first revealed by Vilfredo Pareto when he discovered the importance of what he called “the vital few” economic activities versus the “the trivial many”. Also called the Pareto Principle, this rule dictates that 20 percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your results; 20 percent of your products will account for 80 percent of your profits; and 20 percent of your accounts will account for 80 percent of your revenue.
            When you have a list of ten things to do, the odds are that two of those ten tasks will be more valuable to your company, your customers and your career, than the other eight combined. In fact, one of those tasks may create results five or ten times the value of the other nine, even though each of the ten tasks require the same amount of time.
            It is that one or two highest-leverage tasks you need to tackle FIRST each day, even though they may be the toughest or most complex on your to-do list. The most successful managers, and sales people, refuse to focus on the bottom 80 percent of their tasks until the top 20 percent are successfully completed.
            Before you tackle the tasks on your to-do list, discipline yourself to ask, “Is this on the top 20 percent of my activities list, or the bottom 80 percent?”