What Is Selling?

Basic Assumptions

People are complex and basically trustworthy.– Can’t have a peaceful society if you believe

the opposite. Selling is a worthy craft. The media are highly visible, important for

an informed society, and under attack, especially from the right.

What Is Selling?

Selling is about getting customers and keeping them.

It involves a process of helping customers get what they need. Often they don’t know what they need.

It is not a manipulative process in which salespeople get prospects to do things they don’t want to do.

Selling is about helping prospects, and is guided by three basic relationship rules.

Basic Relationship Rules1. Do unto others as they would have others

do unto them.– Treat them the way they want to be treated.– Slight update of the Golden Rule.

– They may want to be treated differently from they way you want to be treated – the focus is on them.

2. People like and trust people exactly like themselves.– In their family or tribe

3. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

But relationships are not necessarily the key to success.– Insights are the key to success.– Research from the Corporate Executive Board,

as indicated in The Challenger Sale, shows that in the current business environment, customers don’t always know what they don’t know and crave insights that can help them run their businesses more effectively and efficiently.

Thus, the most powerful sales approach is based on:1. Teaching2. Tailoring3. Taking control of the customer conversation

What Is the Purpose of Your Business?

To “create a customer” Peter Drucker “To bring our audience and advertisers

together” - KOMC/KRZK, Branson, MO “To help people sell more Fords,” Lowry

Mays, former CEO Clear Channel Communications

What Are Your Sales Goals?

1. To get results for customers2. To develop new business3. To retain and increase current business

– Presell– Upsell

4. Increase customer loyalty– Teach (give insights)– Tailor

Not one size fits all

– Easy to buy

What Are Your Sales Strategies?

1. To sell solutions to marketing and advertising problems (“challenges”)

− Complete customer focus

2. To reinforce the value of advertising and of your medium’s benefits

− Understand the ecosystem

Strategies

3. To create value for your product4. To become the preferred supplier

− To establish, maintain, and improve relationships at all levels of the client and agency (keep agency informed)

− To provide insights and ideas

Strategies

5. To manage expectations− Underpromise and overdeliver

6. To innovate− New insights− New packages, new products, new

promotions− New creative approaches− New technology− “The only functions of an enterprise:

marketing and innovation.” Peter Drucker

What Are a Salesperson’s Key Functions?

1. To position your product to have a differential competitive advantage

2. To align the features and advantages of your medium and you offer with an advertiser’s objectives

3. To manage relationships and build trust− To create rapport− To empathize− To persuade− To develop partnerships

Key Functions

4. To educate5. To create a sense of urgency6. To communicate effectively internally –

up, down, and across4. Keep your management and coordinator

informed5. From the street, bring back market and

competitor information

Biggest Problem

People do what they are paid to do. Wrong incentives lead to wrong, counter-

productive behavior.– Wall Street and bankers had the wrong

incentives, and the sub-prime mortgage debacle led to The Great Recession

– Paying salespeople based solely on commissions on their revenue makes them focus on their interests not customers’.

How Do You Start Doing It Right?

1. With an ethical, non-manipulative, insight-oriented, solutions-based sales approach

2. With the attitude that you are helping your customers get results, as they define results

3. With an ethical, well-organized, analytics-based, strategic, disciplined sales system

– The right process (an excellent sales experience)

– The right approach (The Challenger Sale)