2

The Sales Process

“The man in the chair”—that poster I described in the first chapter—jogged me out of my mindset as a programmer and turned me into a salesperson. The more time I spent with sellers, the more I realized that selling was not actually new to me; it was what I did every day.

Selling had already been a valuable tool for me. I used selling to convince a woman to marry me. I received a commission on performance of my radio station because I had sold the boss on my abilities. I had sold an auto dealer on a better price for that green Pontiac with the white racing stripes. (Don’t laugh; it was the 1960s. Racing stripes were groovy. Pontiacs were, too.)

Who sells? Once again, here are the words of one of the nation’s leading sales motivators, Zig Ziglar: “Everyone sells and everything is selling.”

To demonstrate, Zig uses the story of a shoe-shine stand at Lambert Field in St. Louis. One man called himself a “shoeologist” because he was so proud of the work he did. When Zig stopped by the stand, he knew that Johnny (the “shoeologist”) could convince Zig to buy the best shine.¹

“Nice shoes,” Johnny would say, and he’d get Zig into conversation about how comfortable they were. Then Johnny would brush against Zig’s pants leg. “This is one of the most unusual pieces of cloth I’ve ever felt,” he’d say, and Zig explained about the rare fabric in his suit.

“You know, it just seems like a shame!” Johnny told Zig. “A man will spend over a hundred dollars for a pair of shoes; he’ll spend several hundred dollars for a suit of clothes, and all he’s trying to do is look his best. And then he won’t spend another dollar to get the best shine in the world to top everything off!” Zig, of course, upgraded his shine.

But selling is more than shoe shines or advertising messages. Selling is involved in all of human activity. Your first date was a sale: making a presentation, showing the benefits of the evening, delivering what was promised, and building the relationship beyond the first sale.

Ask your boss for a day off, and you’re making a sale. You’re presenting the facts (“It’s been a long time. …”), explaining the benefits (“Boss, you’ll get a renewed, energized employee. …”), and asking for the order (“Is Friday good for you, boss?”). After the payoff, you as the salesperson are obligated to deliver on the promises made so that the relationship grows.

Who Should Sell?

Even though everybody sells, not everybody has the temperament needed to be successful at selling. All of the electronic media sellers I talked to in preparation for this book had a similar response when I asked them what makes a successful salesperson: drive and desire. More than money, it’s that desire to win on a personal level.

Some salespeople put their emphasis on researching their customers. Others make lots of calls, increasing their opportunities for more sales. Still others are closing specialists who know how to ask for the order and get it. Whatever their individual strengths in the selling process, the common thread among successful sellers is a belief in themselves and the will to win. If you don’t have it, you can’t be successful in selling.

Most lists of attributes for winning salespeople begin with the word “attitude.” Make that “positive attitude,” and you’ve found an essential quality for any salesperson. There are so many variables in selling—distractions and disappointments on the road from prospecting to closing—a positive frame of mind is essential.

Call the Dallas-based offices of the Ziglar Corporation, and you’ll hear nothing but positive remarks and can-do attitudes. Ask “How are you today?” and Zig’s assistant Laurie Magers bubbles, “I’m terrific and getting better.” That upbeat attitude is infectious.

Ziglar associate Jim Savage was a scout for the Washington Redskins in the 1970s, looking for football superstars, in his words, “someone who can play immediately and can be a great player in the league.” To make his scouting job easier, he created a ratings sheet to score each player. For the Ziglar Corporation, Savage adapted his scorecard for sales “superstars.”²

The first score on Savage’s list is attitude. You’ll hear from most successful sales trainers and recruiters that attitude is the little thing that makes the big difference. Other attributes of the effective seller are discipline, attention to detail, organizational skills, ability to listen, and persistence. See Figure 2–1.

“Most people are under the impression that knowledge will lead directly to success or that to have the ‘better mousetrap’ is tantamount to having a lock on the market,” says television sales trainer Martin Antonelli. When he cites attributes needed for selling, discipline is at the top of his list.³ Persistence and positive attitude are not far behind:

On discipline: “Without it, especially self-discipline, there can never be a maximization of potential. There are too many variables and distractions to make success likely without the aid of a plan of action and execution of that plan.”

On persistence: “Winners look for ways to get the job done. If one approach doesn’t work, another will. The loser looks for reasons to rationalize failure to him/herself and to superiors.”

On positive mental attitude: “This involves the individual suggesting to him/herself that things are going to go well. It is a frame of mind, an attitude. It sets the stage for success.”

The Antonelli Media Training Center in New York conducts 8-week courses to prepare salespeople to sell spot advertising for national television and cable networks and for the syndication marketplace.

You read Lee Masters’ comments in Chapter 1 that sales of a national network like E! Entertainment Television requires analytical skills to present schedules to buyers who are “highly sophisticated.”⁴ Sellers at that level need all the attributes you’ll read about in this chapter and then some: tenacity, flexibility, exacting preparation. In addition, they need a thorough knowledge of the national network business and of advertising nuances like pricing and scheduling. And of course they need to be skilled negotiators.

Putting Customers First

New selling strategies make us redefine phrases like “product knowledge,” which used to mean “knowledge of the product being sold” but in the new selling environment means, “the advertiser’s product.”

The new message of selling is that the customer is the center of the selling relationship. The newest sales and motivation books have less to say about clever closing techniques than they do about mutual respect, collaboration, trust, and honor. Words like “partnering” and phrases like “Zen selling” make it clear that there’s a new mindset to selling. The “ask for the order” paradigm is a thing of the past. No longer is sales a matter of coercion, manipulation, or out-thinking the prospect.

That philosophy underscores the definition of sales that I’m using as the theme of this book: Selling must be profitable for both the seller and the buyer.

Sharon Drew Morgen’s Selling with Integrity adds a step to the selling process, suggesting that salespeople should act as “buying facilitators.” Morgen urges salespeople to carry their personal values—including spiritual values—to work with them. In the buyer facilitation method, the seller takes responsibility for supporting the buyer in discovering the best solution to his or her problem, whether or not that solution is what the seller is selling.⁵

In a now-classic 1964 article in the Harvard Business Review, “What Makes A Good Salesman,” David Mayer and Herbert Greenberg call “empathy” and “drive” the two essential qualities for a salesperson.⁶ Empathy is the ability to feel what another person feels. As Mayer and Greenberg explain, “A salesman simply cannot sell well without the invaluable and irreplaceable ability to get powerful feedback from his client through empathy.” Zig Ziglar calls this moving “from your side of the table to the prospect’s side. Realistically that is where the sale is going to be made.”

FIGURE 2-1  The words in these four classified ads indicate what it takes to be a seller: “Born salespeople.” “Highly motivated.” “Makes things happen.” “Entrepreneur.” Is it you? You’ll find out in this chapter. Courtesy WBEB, One On One Sports, WXYV, and WRCX. Used with permission.

In his book The Radio Station, Michael Keith quotes radio sales manager Charles Friedman on the subject of empathy:

You really must be adept at psychology. Selling really is a matter of anticipating what the prospect is thinking and knowing how best to address his concerns. It’s not so much a matter of out-thinking the prospective client, but rather being cognizant of the things that play a significant role in his life. Empathy requires the ability to appreciate the experiences of others. A salesperson who is insensitive to a client’s moods or states of mind usually will come away empty-handed.⁷

Is It You?

With these thoughts in mind about the qualities that make a winning salesperson, are you the person? Can you identify enough of these attributes in yourself to achieve success selling electronic media?

The good news, as Zig Ziglar says, is that everyone has every one of the qualities to be successful. How much of each quality you have will determine how much success you’ll meet in selling (or any field, for that matter).

Just to make sure you’re right for the job, the company that hires you is likely to give you a test that yields a psychological profile. Some of the tests yield catchy, even silly, marketing department-generated names for the high-performance sellers they identify:

•  One company uses a list of 60 words and phrases to separate “power runners” (good sales candidates) from “walkers” (not so good).

•  Another developed a “Comprehensive Personality Profile” to separate “race horses” from “plow horses.” “Race horses,” they claim, make nearly three times the average monthly sales commissions.

There are so many testing services, it’s not practical to list them all. I’ve encountered sales organizations that used handwriting analysis as a testing procedure, with pretty good results. All the testing systems have merit because they help the employer know how well suited you are for the job.

Wilson Learning, of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, was the first service I became familiar with, thanks to radio’s master seller, Ken Greenwood. Wilson Learning pioneered consultant selling for the insurance industry with its “Counselor Salesperson” program. The success of that approach enabled Wilson Learning to profile and train sellers in many fields. Greenwood added dimensions to the Wilson Learning concept and applied the systems to electronic media.

To give you a feel for the testing procedure, I’ve chosen two profiling tests, one from the Omnia Group of Tampa, Florida; the other from the H. R. Chally Group of Dayton, Ohio.

The Omnia Profile

The Omnia profiling system has been adopted by electronic media companies such as Cox Television and Saga Communications. Omnia has processed more than 150,000 profiles for industries of all kinds, and they claim 93% accuracy. The service rates 14 behavioral characteristics and displays the results as a graph and as text. See Figure 2–2.

Using the data, Omnia separates sellers into two easily definable groups and then further subdivides each group (again using catchy names).

True Sales Personalities

1. The Persuasive, also known as the Entrepreneur, is an aggressive competitor who sells through relationship-building, persuasion, and charm. (See Figure 2–3).

FIGURE 2-2  “Check all the words you think other people at work use to describe you” is the first instruction in the test that yields these Omnia profiles. The candidate chooses from 82 words, then faces another list of 82 for self description. There are more than three types of sellers, but you can see that the scores for each of these three examples are radically different. ©1997, The Omnia Group, Inc. Used with permission.

2. The Problem Solver, also known as the Operations Personality, is an aggressor who needs to win (like the Persuasive), but who sells by providing a practical solution to a client’s technical problem.

3. The Persistent, also called Patient, has the qualities found in Persuasives and Problem Solvers, but adds superior listening skills, team orientation, and the patience that gives this title its alternate name.

Faux Sales Personalities

1. The Passive Charmer, also known as the Professional Interviewer, has all the friendly, outgoing charm that a salesperson needs, but is too cautious and security-conscious.

2. The Technician, also known as the Researcher, is well-informed but needs to have things right more than to win.

Mary Ruth Austin, Omnia’s vice president for marketing and communication, claims that a third of sellers in broadcasting lack the need to win that defines the true sales personality. When the best salespeople are profiled, she says, the results show high marks in the need-to-win column and low marks for needing security.⁹

“The most common ‘faux sales person’ on the job today is the Passive Charmer,” Austin says in a report that Omnia uses as a sales tool. “Poised, articulate, impatient, independent, and impressive, the Passive Charmer looks and sounds exactly like your best billers during the interview. The sales director becomes convinced that this candidate can sell airtime to aliens.” But it won’t happen, she says.

The problem? Austin explains that the Passive Charmer “loves making calls and meeting new people but just can’t ask for the order.” Passive Charmers fear that customers won’t like them if they try to make the sale. “No” is a personal affront to the Passive Charmer.

In Austin’s words, “There are only two ways to tell whether that glib, good-looking guy in your office is a Passive Charmer or a real salesperson—profile him before you hire him or hire him and see if he can sell.”

The H. R. Chally Group

The H. R. Chally Group is unique because they were established through a 1973 U.S. Justice Department grant to measure candidates for law enforcement. Early in their work, they realized that the same testing could be applied to sales and management people.

Every three years, Chally compiles a “World Class Sales Benchmarking Study” to document what customers want from sellers and what skills are critical for salespeople to possess. They use the database of their own clients (AC Delco, Johnson & Johnson, Pepsi, UPS, and an impressive list of more than 250 others) to classify sales types and to develop measurable standards for improvement.

In 1991, Chally chairman Howard Stevens and writer Jeff Cox published The Quadrant Solution, a “business novel” based on customer and sales types uncovered by H. R. Chally testing.¹⁰ As the title suggests, there are four quadrants that customers and sellers fit into. A customer from a specific quadrant is best served by a salesperson who fits the same profile.

The novel’s central character, David Kepler, is manager of product development for a company in sales trouble. In a classic use of the fictional device, Kepler unfolds a cocktail napkin to demonstrate his quadrants. On the left is a measure of complexity of the customer from “low touch” at the lower left to “high touch” at the upper left. See Figure 2–4.

At the bottom is a measure of customer experience. On the left is “high tech” (a customer with less experience with the product or service) and on the right is “low tech” (more experience). Using the cocktail napkin as a visual aid, the hero explains customer orientation, marketing, and, of course, how to turn the fictional company around.

While the novel is an interesting and refreshing approach to the business book, a better source for our purposes is Chally’s How to Select a Sales Force That Sells.¹¹ It demonstrates more clearly than the novel how the purchase quadrant, the customer quadrant, and the seller quadrant relate to each other.

Truly new products are typically purchased by technical experts who need the newest technology to remain expert or by what Chally calls “gateswingers” who have never used the product. The gateswinger needs the product to be simple to understand yet exciting enough to be on the cutting edge. New product buyers are in the lower left quadrant. See Figure 2–5.

FIGURE 2-3  “Pat Smith” is not her real name, but the profile reproduced here is real. This is how The Omnia Group reports on sales candidates after their testing. ©1997 the Omnia Group, Inc. Used with permission.

FIGURE 2-4  This is the first in a series of quadrant diagrams that actually should be overlaid. Read the text and check the next few figures and may be you can do the overlay mentally. From The Quadrant Solution by Howard Stevens et al. ©1991 H. R. Chally Group. Published by AMACOM, a division of American Management Association (www.amanet.org). All rights reserved. Excerpted by permission of the publisher.

A “new system buyer” is a real user but an inexperienced buyer. Once this buyer becomes knowledgeable, the buyer moves from the upper-left quadrant to the upper-right quadrant of the purchaser matrices.

Commodities buyers are in the lower right quadrant. These customers are so totally experienced with a product or service that purchase and usage are standardized and routine. The example the H. R. Chally Group uses is: “When was the last time you asked how to use an electric pencil sharpener?”

Combine the complexity/experience chart (Figure 2–4) with the purchase type chart (Figure 2–5), and you have Figure 2–6.

Finally, the seller is matched to the individual needs of the customer. In a section on understanding the four types of salespeople, Chally reminds us that there is no “universal” salesperson. “Every pro baseball player must throw, catch, and hit. Yet what it takes to be a great hitter or a 20-game-winning pitcher are dramatically different.”

Matching the right salesperson to the right customer requires four types of sellers, and Chally divides them this way: closer, consultative, relationship, and display sellers.

•  Closer. All salespeople must use closing techniques. But the “closer” term used here describes a personality type, not closing skills. The closer must quickly establish a prospect’s emotional desire and need for the product or service. Closers are good at demonstration sales and hightech vanity sales, according to Chally.

•  Consultative. Some people call this “IBM selling” because it’s the approach taken by big-ticket and high-technology sellers. It also works best for intangibles like media. The sales environment requires patient, interpersonal contact, or “consultation,” with the customer.

FIGURE 2-5  Now you see the purchaser type and how each relates to the “complexity” and “experience” matrices in Figure 2–4. The dotted line through the middle represents the product life cycle from introduction to maturity. From How to Select A Sales Force That Sells, ©1997, The H. R. Chally Group. Used with permission.

FIGURE 2-6  A pattern begins to emerge as you look at these quadrants. The “customer needs” are outlined on the same matrices used in Figures 2-4 and 2-5. ©1997, The H. R. Chally Group. Used with permission.

•  Relationship. The sale is largely dependent on the relationship between the seller and the customer. A “good” relationship will generate some business eventually. This type of seller can move to a competitor and take a client list along. Stock brokers are good examples.

•  Display. There’s little personal involvement in display selling. Most display sellers (retail clerks, bank tellers, catalog order takers) get paid even if they don’t make the sale.

Figure 2–7 shows how the four sales types match the purchase types and customer needs in quadrant segmentation. You can imagine overlaying each chart on the previous one to arrive at how certain types of sellers match with customers. An outline of the personal characteristics of each type of seller appears in Figure 2–8. The profile from testing by the H. R. Chally Group is several pages long. You’ll find a sample in Appendix C.

What’s Expected of You?

As a seller of electronic media, your primary objectives are

1. Developing new business

2. Maximizing revenues

3. Retaining current business

That’s not a job description, but an overview of your job goals.

There’s no simple list of duties that will cover every sales job, but here are typical examples:¹²

•  To prospect for potential advertisers

•  To provide solutions to advertisers

•  To create value for your medium

•  To create a competitive advantage for your medium

•  To process orders

•  To assure schedules are run as ordered

•  To assure that billing is handled properly

•  To monitor other media in your marketplace

•  To understand customers’ industries and their goals

•  To execute your organization’s sales strategies

•  To answer to management

•  To set personal goals as well as company goals

•  To work on goal-getting as well as goal-setting

You’ll work within a sales department under a person whose title may be sales manager, director of sales, or marketing manager. There are other titles you’ll encounter, depending on the organization you’re working for. Your manager will outline your job specifically and set the strategies for your selling effort. Those decisions may be made as part of a team that includes corporate leaders, or with you and your colleagues in the sales department. Often it’s a two-step process: first, corporate management and local sales managers set strategy, then the selling staff adds plans for tactical implementation of the strategy.

FIGURE 2-7  Matching the right salesperson to the needs of the customer requires understanding of the four types of sellers identified by the H. R. Chally system. ©1997, The H. R. Chally Group. Used with permission.

FIGURE 2-8  Here’s a quick overview of each of the four basic sales types profiled by the H. R. Chally Group. It’s from How to Select a Sales Force That Sells, ©1997, The H. R. Chally Group. Used with permission.

There is no single structure that works for every electronic media selling team, so you’ll find each sales department is slightly different. Structural differences are based on a variety of factors: the medium itself, the company that owns the facility, specific needs of the advertising community, the size of the market, and choices made by local sales management. (We will further discuss sales management in Chapter 4.)

The Stages of Selling

Writing in High Performance Selling, sales trainer Ken Greenwood outlines four stages of a salesperson’s career:

1. The Novice. New sellers are faced with learning their own product and the industry in general. This is the point at which presenting, planning, and prospecting are most important. Novices learn to keep good records, to set a high activity level, and to believe in what they sell. “All basic, fundamental things,” Greenwood says.

2. The Learner. This is the level at which salespeople begin to listen rather than talk, to explain the presentation rather than simply make it. They understand buying criteria. They gain confidence and a better understanding of the selling process.

3. The Competent. Sellers at this level become less product-oriented and more aware of solving problems for the buyer. They are able to find options and alternatives. They begin to negotiate. This is also the point at which their versatility becomes more apparent.

4. The Professional. The account is a customer, not just a sale. Salespeople at this level know their accounts well enough to forecast buyer needs and to combine accounts in promotional activity. They have a commitment to being professional and a deep belief that their services are needed. At this stage, the salesperson thinks like an independent contractor or a private business person.¹³

“Someplace between the learner stage and the competent stage,” Greenwood says, “high performers make a transition. At first they are very much like the fiddler on the roof, scratching out a living and balancing on the ridgepole. On one side are their ego and their ego strength—what they want. On the other side are empathy and an understanding for what the buyer wants.”

There’s that word “empathy” again. Understanding what the buyer wants makes the customer the center of the selling process. As we saw in Chapter 1, focusing on the customer blurs the traditional lines between selling and marketing.

Personal Marketing Plan

“Dear Ed Shane: One of the secrets of doing business profitably—and doing more of it—is selling yourself first.” The letter was designed to introduce me to a special price on Hewlett Packard printers. The premise was that my letters have to look good in order for me to sell myself. When I saw “sell yourself first” at the top of the letter, I thought how ironic it was that such a message would arrive as I was writing this chapter on personal marketing, which is, in effect, selling you as a product.

Before you sell any product, you have to sell yourself. You sell yourself as a product when you pitch the sales job. You sell yourself as product when you make the appointment with a prospect to show that big presentation. Politicians do it. Entertainers do it. CEOs do it. No matter what business is involved, everybody can take advantage of a personal marketing plan.

Today’s customer-oriented, service-driven marketplace demands personal marketing—positioning yourself the way you’d position a product. That means attention to packaging and sampling, just like a product. Being good at selling your product and being good at selling yourself are two different aspects of selling. You need to master both.

Your public image will be either enhanced or diminished in everything you do, whether you’re on a golf course, at a restaurant, in a meeting, or doing charity work. In Personal Marketing Strategies, Mike McCaffrey writes that by actively participating in a charitable organization, you will be perceived as a doer, and that will transfer to your image as a seller. “Having already ‘established’ yourself in their minds as competent and easy to work with, their perception of you can easily be transferred over into business concerns.”¹⁵

McCaffrey suggests that a seller becomes an activist or a doer in charitable, civic, social, or political organizations. From my own experience, it’s important to find activities or outlets you enjoy. If you’re giving your time, you’ll want to be with pleasant people and working for an organization you truly believe in, something in line with your personal values. Once you’ve found the right fit, you can look for people who can help—contacts to enhance your selling.

Goal-Setting

One of the pioneers of electronic media, David Sarnoff, founder of RCA, left us a powerful quotation about the effects of goal-setting: “A life that hasn’t a definite plan is likely to become driftwood.”

If you want to succeed in any endeavor, you must have a plan. You need to know what you want to accomplish so you’ll know you’ve done it. That’s what goal-setting is all about. Most people spend more time planning their vacations than they do their lives. When it comes to life goals, they substitute wishes instead. “I want to be happy” or “I want to be rich” is as close as many get to the idea.

For the seller, only the most specific goal-setting works. Goals that are vague or poorly developed yield vague or poorly developed results. Break your broad view into short-term goals—daily, weekly, monthly, yearly—to provide benchmarks of your successes.

“If it’s not in writing, it’s not a goal,” says Tom Hopkins. “The day you put your goal in writing is the day it becomes a commitment that will change your life.”

Hopkins calls the sellers who take his training “champions.” For his sales Champions, he outlines these rules for goal-setting:

1. Put your goals in writing. “An unwritten want is a wish, a dream, a never-happen.”

2. Make your goals specific. “If it’s not specific it’s not a goal,” Hopkins says, “Broad desires and lofty aims have no effect. Until you translate your vague wishes into concrete goals and plans, you aren’t going to make much progress.”

3. Goals must be believable. Hopkins quotes his mentor, sales trainer Doug Edwards: “If you don’t believe that you can achieve a goal, you won’t pay the price for it.” Let me take that a step further: If you don’t believe you can achieve a goal, then you won’t.

4. An effective goal is an exciting challenge. If your goal doesn’t push you beyond where you’ve been before, it isn’t going to provide a challenge or change your lifestyle.

5. Adjust your goals to new information. “Set your goals quickly and adjust them later if you’ve aimed too high or too low,” Hopkins advises. Goals are often set in unfamiliar territory. As we learn more about realities, we adjust goals down if they’re unbelievable or up if they’re too easy.

6. Dynamic goals guide your choices. If you’ve set your goals properly, they’ll show you which way to go on most decisions.

7. Don’t set short-term goals for more than 90 days. Once you’ve developed experience in setting short-term goals, you might set them for a longer or shorter time. To begin, use 90 days as the limit so you can keep your interest high and see measurable results in just three months.

8. Balance long-term and short-term goals. Create enough short-term goals so you can measure progress while waiting for the payoff period of the long-term goal.

9. Include your loved ones. Let the family know what you’re trying to achieve so they can cheer you on.

10. Set goals in all areas of your life. Goals are not just about money and new cars. Set goals for your health, for your exercise plan, for your family life, and for your spiritual life. Goals work when they’re used, so make good use of them in all areas of your life.

11. Goals must harmonize. If your goals fight with each other, you lose. As Hopkins says, “Use your goals program to get rid of frustration, not to create it.”

12. Review your goals regularly. Long-term goals can only be achieved if they are the culmination of your short-term goals. New goals should rise out of previous goals that you’ve achieved.

13. Set vivid goals. I like Hopkins’ use of the word “vivid,” because it conjures a clear and concise picture of something concrete. He tells the story of seeing a corporate jet parked next to the commercial airliner he was on, so he wrote in his book, “Ten-year goal—jet.” Sure enough he achieved the goal, ten years to the day.

14. Don’t chisel your goals in granite. Be ready to change if you have to. Hopkins followed the story of the jet with a story of his first fuel bill, for $882.00. At that rate, his jet would cost him $30,000 a month, so he sold it immediately.

15. Reach into the future. “The whole idea of setting goals is to plan your life rather than to go on bumbling along, muddling through, taking it as it comes,” Hopkins says.

16. Have a set goal for every day and review results every night. This discipline will save you a lot of frustration. You’ll find yourself able to feel good about little events. My wife, Pam, attended a seminar whose leader suggested using a Post-It® note to write one key accomplishment each day, then stick it on the mirror so it’ll be there to motivate you the next morning.

17. Train yourself to crave your goals, which reinforces the earlier point about making goals vivid. By visualizing what you want, you make the possibility real and motivate yourself to achieve it.

18. Set activity goals, not production goals. “How many prospecting calls will I make today?” not “How many packages will I sell?” Even if your sales slump, your activity will be stimulated by your goal-setting.

19. Make luck work for you. “Winners understand that luck is a manufactured article,” Hopkins writes. “They think in terms of good things happening to them and make themselves good-luck-prone.”

20. Start now. The only way to elaborate on those two important words is to repeat them: start now.

Hopkins recommends setting aside 10 minutes a day for 21 days to work on goals and to revise them. After that, he says, “Two minutes a day plus one hour a week will keep you flying toward the immensely greater and richer future that the goal-setting system will deliver.”¹⁷

Goal setting is a process: setting, reaching, and revising goals. Dennis Conner, the skipper of several U.S. entries in the America’s Cup sailing race, says, “I don’t know if this process ever becomes automatic. You have to keep working it out. When you get good at the process of setting goals and meeting them, you get good at the art of winning.”

In The Art of Winning, Conner advises, “Make your goals central to everything you do, so everything else shapes itself around them. You become so committed to your goals that, finally, you become committed to the commitment itself.”¹⁸

Time Management

If “time management” is a misleading title, I apologize. We cannot actually manage time; we can only manage ourselves and, therefore, use the time at our disposal effectively. Effective self-management enhances relationships and achieves results. We tend to call it “time management” anyway, most likely to give us the sense of controlling time.

No one has enough time, yet every one of us has as much as there is. It’s the one resource that is distributed equally no matter who you are. The great paradox is that I can’t think of one of my friends or acquaintances who hasn’t said, “Where does the time go?”

Steven Covey captures time management with one phrase: “Organize and execute around priorities.” That’s in line with the third of Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”: “Put first things first.”

There are four generations of time management, according to Covey, each building on the one that came before. First, there were notes and checklists, an effort to recognize the many demands placed on our time and energy. Second came calendars and appointment books, an attempt to look ahead and schedule the future. Third was adding priorities, clarifying values, and comparing the relative worth of activities to those values.²⁰

“While the third generation has made a significant contribution,” Covey writes, “people have begun to realize that ‘efficient’ scheduling and control of time are often counterproductive. As a result, many people have become turned off by time management programs and planners that make them feel too scheduled, too restricted …”

That led Covey to the fourth generation of time management, which focuses on results, not on time. He developed the time management matrix I’ve adapted for Figure 2–9. The two factors that define any activity are urgency and importance. “We react to urgent matters,” Covey says. “Important matters that are not urgent require more initiative, more proactivity. We must act to seize opportunity, to make things happen.”

His point, of course, is that we are easily diverted into responding to the urgent, not the important. As long as you focus on the urgent and important matters in Quadrant I, they dominate your life.

Covey notes that people overwhelmed by Quadrant I often escape to Quadrant IV: “That’s how people who manage their lives by crisis live.” Others spend time in the “urgent, but not important” activities of Quadrant III. Covey concludes that people who spend time almost exclusively in Quadrants III and IV “basically lead irresponsible lives.”

In Covey’s mind, Quadrant II is the heart of effective personal management: things that are not urgent, but are important. “It deals with things like building relationships, writing a personal mission statement, long-range planning, exercising, preventive maintenance, preparation—all those things we know we need to do, but somehow seldom get around to doing, because they aren’t urgent.” The things that make a difference in your life will most likely fit into Quadrant II.

One of my favorite remarks in management literature is Peter Drucker’s categorization of activities into “priorities and posteriorities.” Priorities are generally set by pressures to get things done. Drucker says that pressures favor yesterday. “They always favor what has happened over the future, the crisis over the opportunity, the immediate and visible over the real, and the urgent over the relevant.” He advises, that in addition to setting priorities, you set “posteriorities,” that is, decisions about what not to do.²¹

Drucker reminds us of the circus juggler who keeps many balls in the air, but for only 10 minutes at a time. Most people can do two tasks at once, but few, he says, can do three tasks simultaneously. (He calls Mozart the only exception.)

Your System

There are a number of time management systems that contain day planners, calendars, priority lists, and other aids to assist the seller in keeping first things first. Most started as paper-based calendar books like Franklin Planner,™ Day-Timer,® and Day Runner.® Many have been adapted to computer software. (Franklin and Covey Leadership merged their companies to offer “life leadership products” as opposed to “time management systems.”)

One thing I’ve noticed is that no one system fits every need. Some sellers use the Franklin system with a fervor approaching religion. They begin with seminars on time management and follow with a ritualized use of Franklin planners, note pads, and reminder cards to capture ideas and check off accomplishments. Others can’t stand the Franklin system and opt instead for the Day-Timer system.

I found that neither of those suited me personally, but somehow portions of the Day Runner system did, so I mixed and matched to suit my airplane and briefcase lifestyle. There are a few systems that are designed specifically for media and advertising professionals, but that’s still no guarantee they’ll fit your specific needs.

Most of the prepackaged time management systems available offer a variety of formats, from pocket-sized to binders. They also allow you to mix and match to accommodate your specific needs. Some add touches like pictures of polar bears, mountains, beaches, and golf courses that not only personalize the planner but also remind the user of goals or motivators.

FIGURE 2-9  “We react to urgent matters,” says Steven Covey. That’s why most people tend to live in Quadrant I. If you don’t have important and urgent matters nagging you, then you might live in Quadrant III, because urgency will get you. The ideal is life in Quadrant II, taking care of long-term, important issues.

It comes down to personal taste. The key is to use some system and make it your one-stop reference for goal-setting, goal-getting, scheduling, and personal record keeping.

Psychology

“There is no fool who is happy, and no wise man who is not,” said the Roman philosopher Cicero. In the centuries since, there has been considerable study of the plight of the unhappy fool, but little attention given to what makes us happy.

The magazine The Futurist published a special report called “The Science of Happiness” and noted that psychological literature between 1967 and 1995 included 5,119 abstracts mentioning anger, 38,459 mentioning anxiety, and 48,366 mentioning depression. In the same period there were only 1,710 mentioning happiness, 2,357 mentioning life satisfaction, and 402 mentioning joy–a 21:1 ratio of negative to positive.

In the report, authors David G. Myers and Ed Diener cite four traits of happy people:

1.  Happy people like themselves. They have high self-esteem.

2.  Happy people feel personal control. They feel empowered rather than helpless.

3.  Happy people are optimistic.

4.  Happy people tend to be extroverted.

As sellers, we might equate money with happiness, but money is simply a means to an end, not an end in itself. If we create an appropriate environment for our clients’ messages, our clients get results, our advertising is paid for, we receive a commission, then we use that income for “life management” or “life leadership,” as the time management people call it.

In How to Master the Art of Selling, Tom Hopkins admits that money is important, so much so that it’s first among his “six motivators” and is related to many of the others. Here’s a rundown of those six motivators:

1. Money. “Money is good as long as what you earn is in direct proportion to the service you give,” says Hopkins. “All that money can do is give you opportunities to explore what will make you happy.”

2. Security. Abraham Maslow tells us that the average human being strives daily to supply physical needs. Hopkins equates this with security, but he relates it also to money: “In a primitive society, security might be a flock of goats; in our society, security is something bought with money.” (For more on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, see the discussion of needs analysis.)

3. Achievement. Hopkins divides people into two groups: achievers and nonachievers. He claims that “almost everyone wants to achieve, but almost no one wants to do what’s necessary to achieve.” That’s why achievers make up only 5% of the world, according to Hopkins. No salesperson can succeed without a desire for achievement.

4. Recognition. Hopkins feels people will do more for recognition than for anything else, even money. That’s why, he says, kids do cartwheels in their back yards—so their parents will pay attention.

5. Acceptance by others. Everyone wants to be liked, but that’s not quite what Hopkins is saying here. The key, he says, is to “surround yourself with the people most like the person you want to become.” Work to gain their acceptance. Remember that you’ll demand more approval from the world than the world is willing to give.

6. Self-acceptance. More important than the acceptance of others is self-acceptance—what Hopkins calls “calcium for the bones of our personalities.” Self-acceptance is “the state of being your own person. You have arrived exactly where you want to be.”

You and Selling

You’ll be put in a position to do the work long before you’re paid for it. Sellers may start with a draw or salary, but they soon shift to commission. The trend in electronic media is toward spending more on commission than on salaries. (There’s more on salary and commission in Chapter 4.)

Before the commission comes, you’ll make presentation after presentation, you’ll do the consulting, you may write the advertiser’s commercial message—all for free. Closing simply affirms the work you’ve already done.

First-year salespeople spend more time learning than earning. You learn the medium you’re selling, then you learn about the prospect’s business. High-learn equals low-earn.

Chris Lytle of the Lytle Organization calls sales “a series of defeats punctuated by profitable victories.” In school, an “A” grade might be 90 to 95%. In sales, it’s more like 25%. Successful salespeople learn to handle rejection. “No” is not personal. Successful sellers tell themselves that every “no” is just a way of getting closer to a “yes.”

The good news is that hard work is rewarded.

The Sales Cycle

It was July, and I had been given my first assignment as a salesperson in Houston. This was my opportunity to show what I could do as a seller, moving beyond the sales support role I played as head of the programming departments at radio stations. Where should I start? Or, better yet, how could I start with a win? I’d rather come home with my first sale to build my own confidence and to show the station they’d made a good investment in me as a seller.

I remembered talking a few months earlier with Buddy Brock, a Houston band leader who also ran a talent agency. In passing, he had said to me how he wished he could start booking Christmas parties in the summer so he’d know how his year would end. Nobody in Houston, Texas, thinks about Christmas in July, but I called Buddy and reminded him of the conversation. Yes, he would be interested in a radio campaign that sold Christmas bookings in the heat of summer. My first close!

“If You Can’t Close, You Can’t Sell” is the title of a chapter in Charles R. Roth’s Secrets of Closing Sales, a classic in the sales field.²³ The premise of the book is that a salesperson should try for closing from the beginning of every sale. “Make every call a sales call,” it says, and describes a seller who asks for the order on first handshake.

There’s no denying that every sale must have a close. That’s the moment when the prospect becomes a customer by saying “Yes!” To understand the dynamics of closing (and to use Roth’s “Master Closing Formula,” which I’ll describe later), you have to begin at the beginning and follow the steps toward closing:

1.  Prospecting

2.  Qualifying

3.  Needs analysis

4.  Presentation

5.  Answering objections

6.  Closing

7.  Relationship management

Those seven steps are the sales cycle. At any one time, you’ll have a number of clients at a variety of points in the sales cycle. This is why salespeople are looked upon as independent managers of their own jobs. Only the salesperson knows for sure where each customer is in the cycle. So you must take charge of the process personally.

So much has been written about the sales cycle that you’ll find lots of different words to describe those seven basics. Here are a few examples:

•  Selling Power magazine combines “prospecting” and “qualifying” under “call preparation.” I prefer to keep them separated.

•  Michael Keith, writing in Selling Radio Direct, equates “prospecting” with “list building.” I agree and have adapted some of his ideas on the subject.

•  I prefer to separate “qualifying” from “needs analysis,” even though one begins to dissolve into the other. I tend to take the word “qualifying” literally and remind myself that there are some prospects we just shouldn’t sell. (I’ll explain that idea later.)

•  In Charles Warner’s classic textbook, Broadcast and Cable Selling, “prospecting and qualifying” are termed “researching and targeting.” That also assumes the step of “answering objections,” which I prefer to separate out so you can see how objections are a natural part of the sales process.

•  You might see “negotiation” as a separate element of the sales cycle. I include it as part of closing. If you’re at the point of negotiation, the sale is emotionally closed. Only the terms of the sale are still in question.

•  I feel the same way about “servicing” accounts. Getting the paperwork done, the order processed, and the commercial copy prepared is part of closing. Otherwise sellers of electronic media could not deliver their product, and, technically, there’d be no close. Servicing and implementation is a bridge between closing and relationship management.

•  “Relationship management” begins the process all over again by helping us retain clients. Repeat business keeps us all gainfully employed.

You’ll find that the seven points I’ve listed are contained in every list, regardless of what they’re called and regardless of how many entries there are in the list. The specific words I have chosen to use are the result of letting electronic media selling experts guide me. (See Figure 2–10.)

The Perfect Customer

“In sales, you get the customers you deserve,” says Mark McCormack, author of What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School.²⁴ If you don’t believe this, McCormack suggests you look at your company’s top producers. Who do they sell to? Who are their prospects? How do their customers stack up against yours in terms of power, friendship, integrity, and decisiveness?

McCormack describes the perfect customer as (a) a friend, (b) a decision-maker, and (c) someone who likes what is being proposed and will form an alliance with you as the salesperson to overcome the forces of resistance. That description reinforces the definition of selling presented in Chapter 1: when the buy is right, the customer needs no convincing. Closing has to be profitable both for your company and for the customer.

FIGURE 2-10  The steps of the sales cycle in order. I’ve tried to indicate that each flows into the next. The line from Relationship Management back to Prospecting means you should follow the arrows, then start again.

How can you identify “the perfect customer”? Here are Mark McCormack’s guidelines:

1.  The customer talks, you listen. The customer describes the problems and the solutions. From the beginning, you know if there’s an internal conflict that affects the sale. The sure sign the customer is a friend is if you are included in the solution.

2.  The customer needs you; you don’t abuse it. Not only are you needed, but you’re trusted, too. You don’t over-promise. You don’t overspend. In McCormack’s words, “You have to bend over backwards to be less fair to yourself” (McCormack’s words, my emphasis.)

3.  When the customer says no, you still feel good. If there’s no interest, that’s clear immediately. The customer respects your time. If there’s interest but rejection follows, that’s also clear. The perfect customer prepares you for rejection so you don’t lose face. You never feel that you’ve been stiffed.

4.  The customer makes you better. If the customer has high visibility or exalted status in the community, the prestige rubs off on you. The fringe benefits of associating with some customers often outweigh the commissions, especially if you learn to do your job better or to reach a personal goal.

The Numbers Game

Perfect customers or not, you can separate your prospects into five categories:

1.  Those who don’t believe in advertising.

2.  Those who believe in advertising but don’t believe in the medium you’re selling.

3.  Those who believe in your medium but not specifically in your outlet—your station, system, or network.

4.  Those who have used your outlet in the past and were dissatisfied with the results.

5.  Those who’ve had no problems at all with your outlet.

Your sales manager or sales director will advise you to limit the time you spend trying to convince the people in category 1 to change their minds. It can be done, but it’s a long, frustrating process. You’ll have more success selling category 2 than you do category 1, more selling, 3 than 2, and so forth. You find yourself longing for prospects in category 5, but those are few and far between.

First and foremost, sales is a numbers game. A seller in the insurance business needs the names of 40 friends, friends of friends, coworkers, and relatives in order to get ten appointments. From ten appointments, an insurance salesperson is likely to get four sales. If that sounds like a lot of contact for little return, Tom Hopkins tells us that in all of selling, the average is closer to 10 to 1. Ten prospects yield one appointment. Ten appointments yield one sale.²⁵

In baseball, a batter with 30 hits is not very good, unless that’s measured against 100 at-bats. Now you’ve got a .300 hitter! That’s how big league managers decide whom to send to bat against an opposing pitcher.

Direct marketing experts declare victory with a 2% response rate to a database mailing. They know response is the first step to conversion. The statistics help them know what to expect.

You can look at the percentages in one of two ways: as daunting because they tell you there’s lots of work to be done, or as an incentive because you know that once you’ve made the fourth call, your chances of closing are higher on the fifth. Like the baseball manager, you play the percentages.

All successful businesses use percentages to guide decision-making. Mutual funds lure your money with projected annual yield. You’d rather establish an account that yields 18% than one that pays 5%, right?

Percentages are an easy-to-grasp way of expressing ratios, where one number divided by another gives each a perspective. As Tom Hopkins explains in How to Master the Art of Selling, ratios that help you manage your selling business are serious stuff. Here are the ratios Hopkins urges sellers to track:

•  Prospecting calls/hours spent prospecting

•  Prospecting calls/appointment made

•  Appointment/sales

•  Hours worked/money earned

•  Prospecting calls made last month/income this month

In Hopkins’ words: “If you’re not keeping track, you’re not steering your ship.” He looks at the selling process as a constant increase in the numbers in your ratios:

By making one call a day, you’re meeting about 30 people a month, so you’re closing about three sales a month. Now what’s going to happen if you decide to make two calls a day?

Your sales go up to six a month, and your income doubles.

Suppose you elevate your performance level again, and start making four calls a day?

Your sales go to 12 a month and your income doubles again. So if you were making $1,000 a month off three sales before, now you’re making $4,000 a month off 12 sales—and feeling very good about yourself.

Hopkins doesn’t ask us to double our effort immediately, only to add one call a day. He knows that every prospecting call does not yield a sale. Yet more calls equals more chances for closing. What Hopkins is telling us is that we must set our goals high enough to keep ourselves challenged, yet solidly rooted in reality so we can have a reasonable chance to achieve them. He’s also telling us to constantly raise the bar to achieve the next level of success.

Your sales director or sales manager sets goals for you each week, each month, and each quarter. For each of the steps in the selling cycle, be ready to set specific goals for yourself, too.

Step One—Prospecting

Where do potential customers come from? They start as prospects—potential advertisers. Just as the insurance seller starts with family, friends, co-workers, and others who might need insurance coverage, your first step is to cast the net to see who needs advertising.

First, every business needs to advertise. Not every business needs to advertise in electronic media, so your task is to develop lists of those who might and then to qualify them—see if they are, indeed, prospects for your medium.

If they already advertise on television, radio, cable, or interactive media, then they’re already prime prospects. They’ve been sold by somebody. Your job is to convert them to your specific service as part of their overall media mix. Start with the basics; for example:

•  For sellers of local Web sites: Who’s already represented with banners on local city pages or click-throughs on regional home pages? Who’s on manufacturer sites of retail pages?

•  For radio spot sellers: Who’s on the air at other stations?

•  For TV time sellers: Who’s advertising on the other channels? On local cable? On radio?

Those are your first prospects, and they’re already predisposed to your message.

Now let’s look closer at competing media as prospecting tools.²⁷

Newspaper

Newspapers still take the lion’s share of advertising from most markets. Newspapers not only tell you who’s in business, but also how much money they’re spending on advertising. The larger the ad, the more they spend. Big display ads are important qualifiers. When an advertiser can afford to buy one or more full pages in the newspaper, chances are there’s cash for other media, too.

The business section of the local paper is a perfect place to begin prospecting. What new deals have been cut? What land has been sold and to whom? Does it mean a new business is about to open?

National newspapers like The Wall Street Journal and USA Today carry regional and local news and advertising. Look especially in the Journal’s “Marketplace” section. Read the editorial copy and the advertising content. Read beyond the institutional ads and find the small displays about new openings, new assignments, and help wanted.

When reading your hometown paper, don’t stop reading at the business sections. Check real estate, food, entertainment, and sports sections, too, for advertisers who prefer to link themselves with a reader’s activities or specific lifestyle.

In the Sunday papers, look for coupons and coupon books (known as FSIs in newspaper language for “free-standing inserts”). Those four-color glossy coupons mean more to you than a few cents off at the grocery store. They could be a lead to a new promotional campaign or a new retailer. In other words, a prospect.

Local want ads are early indicators of pending openings. When a store begins to hire staff, the grand opening can’t be far behind. Look also for out-of-town companies soliciting personnel.

Suburban papers carry press releases from every new business in the community. You should subscribe to every weekly in your trading area. Don’t overlook the want ads.

Newspaper advertisers have long been considered targets for radio salespeople, because an advertiser can divert a portion of a newspaper schedule to radio and still see the ad in print.

Radio

Virtually everyone in America listens to the radio during the average week: 76.5% of persons aged 12 and over listen every day, 95.1 % listen every week. Radio’s ability to target demographically and geographically attracts businesses of all types.

It’s not as easy to go prospecting on radio as it is in the newspaper, because advertisers on radio are not so neatly compartmentalized. You can’t tear out a prospect’s advertisement to get the address, so you may have to do some research. By scanning the dial and making notes of all the commercials you hear, you can begin to create a list of potential clients who use the medium.

Local cable sellers target radio advertisers, arguing that commercials on cable cost about the same as radio and have the advantage of adding pictures to make the message more effective.

Cable

Cable reaches 68% of all U.S. homes and even more (81 %) of households with an annual income of $60,000 or more. Like radio, cable is considerably more targetable than over-the-air television because specific channels provide content that is geared to specific demographics, affinity, or lifestyle.

Because cable systems make their money on subscriber fees, not all local operators sell advertising. Most major markets have “interconnects” that sell advertising on several cable systems as one package. The Cable Advertising Bureau (CAB) lists 109 interconnects covering markets as large as New York and as small as Dothan, Alabama.

Even with interconnects, some markets cannot be covered with one buy. Baltimore, for example, requires several interconnects to reach both the city and suburban areas. Utica, New York, has one cable operator; its neighboring city, Rome, has yet another.

If the cable operator in your area does carry advertising, it’s another opportunity for prospecting. Area advertisers who buy cable might use inserts in CNN, TBS, or USA programming in place of local TV commercials because cable costs less.

Because of the low cost, cable has been called “discount television” by some national advertisers. So advertisers who use scrolling cable messages or banners may not be as lucrative as prospects, because they spend so little to get their exposure. The important point for you to consider is that they’ve shown a commitment to advertising in electronic media.

Television

Over-the-air television reaches 98% of U.S. households, and the average viewer spends more than 7 hours a day with the TV turned on. The good news for sellers of TV advertising is that the medium reaches huge portions of the mass audience with a single exposure. Pictures, sound, and motion are all factors in television’s potential to attract attention for an advertiser.

The bad news is that TV shares are declining in the face of new competition from cable, new networks like Fox, UPN, and WB, and online usage that steals time once spent with TV. Production costs, too, create anxiety for TV advertisers. A typical 30-second spot for a national advertiser might cost more than $250,000 just to produce. Airtime increases that cost dramatically.

Advertisers on local television are good prospects for media salespeople who can demonstrate how to use the same dollars more efficiently, targeting consumers directly.

Yellow Pages

The phone company is kind to sellers. Not only do they give us our best tool for contact—the phone itself—but each year they issue an encyclopedia of local business, the Yellow Pages. Any business that has more than the standard listing of name, address, and telephone number pays for the privilege. That means when you see a display ad in the Yellow Pages, you’ve found a business willing to spend money on advertising.

To make things even easier, the Yellow Pages are organized by category, so you can identify immediately what a company does. In the Phoenix Metro Yellow Pages for 1997, there were 136 pages with the heading “automotive.” That included the dealers, the car washes, muffler shops, and wrecker services.

Stories abound about first-time sellers who are handed the Yellow Pages and told to sell something. I’ve been asked whether those stories are myth or reality. Believe me, they are reality. The Yellow Pages is called “the prospector’s Bible” for a reason.

Outdoor Displays

I know salespeople who keep notebooks or recorders in their cars. When they see a sign announcing construction of a new business, they make a note. More importantly, they make a call, asking who’s building the new business and where the owner can be reached.

Any business that uses outdoor advertising is a prospect for electronic media. Billboards aren’t cheap, so even one outdoor board indicates a substantial commitment. The advantages of outdoor advertising include the ability to be seen by large numbers of consumers. The disadvantage is that those consumers are often traveling at high speeds, so the copy on a billboard must be brief to be effective. Electronic media sellers have the opportunity to demonstrate that their form of media can fill in the gaps in a cogent outdoor message.

The Internet

Most companies have an online presence for public relations purposes. They want their customers to have access to information they cannot provide in brochures. By checking search engines like Yahoo! or In-foseek, you can discover categories of potential advertisers.

Look also for local and regional advertisers who sponsor banners on city guides like accessatlanta.com, sidewalk.com, bayinsider.com, and nbc-in.com, which creates local Web sites for broadcast TV stations affiliated with NBC.

Trade Publications

Every industry has one or more trade publications. They offer a wealth of leads. They’re not only excellent for list-building, they also make you seem smarter to a retailer who knows you’ve been doing your homework on an industry other than your own. This is the customer focus that is so important in selling electronic media today.

The Supermarket

Neighborhood “shopper” publications provide leads, especially for forms of media that target geographically—radio and cable, for example. Sellers of new interactive media create prospects from “local” advertisers who want to create a marketplace beyond the store on Main Street. Does it matter to the retailer where orders originate? An order and a valid credit card number are enough of a payoff in the new wired economy. A retailer shouldn’t care that customers come from another part of the globe via cyberspace.

While I’m on the subject of shoppers, don’t take the next trip to the supermarket for granted. After squeezing the produce and stocking up on prepared meals, scan the end-of-aisle displays and the “shelf talkers” (those little signs on the shelves). They may tell you about a selling opportunity, a new product, or a special promotion.

Stop at the grocery store bulletin board if there is one. Among the listings of babysitters and free kittens are often business cards, notices of hiring, and other possible leads.

Brochures and Flyers

That neon flyer placed under your windshield wiper at the mall may lead to a sale. Don’t throw it away until you pursue the potential. Could the business become an advertiser?

While I was waiting for a client to pick me up at a hotel in Midland, Texas, a man in the lobby handed me a flyer about job openings at the new Computer City store opening soon. No, I didn’t want to interview for a job, but I did want that flyer. I gave it to my client so one of his salespeople could use it as a lead.

A brochure or flyer at the cash register of a retailer you trade with might be your next appointment for a presentation.

Direct Mail

Direct mail, the most targetable nonelectronic advertising medium, can zero in on geography, product affinity, previous purchases, potential interest, or lifestyle activities. The greatest advantage of the medium is that each consumer can be addressed as an individual.

A letter directed to you is a sales lead if it’s from a retailer or service provider who works in your trading area. If you sell local advertising, say on radio, television, or cable, the coupon mailings that come each month in ADVO or Carol Wright packages may be good prospecting for you.

Your pitch to advertisers who prefer to use mail should be that direct mail has traditionally low-response rates, and consumers perceive the stuff as “junk mail” even if they read and respond.

Government Offices

The county clerk, the secretary of state, the city permit office, or any government agency that accepts new filings should be contacted. The secretary of state has files of newly created corporations. Your city hall issues building permits. Your state alcohol and beverage agency controls liquor permits. Your county clerk files real estate transfers.

Some states require fictitious names filings before a new business can even get a bank account. That’s the law in Texas, and every 10 years when I refile the name of my company with the county clerk, I get a flood of calls and mailings from sellers who think we’re a new business.

Handshakes and Referrals

Insurance sellers know that sales begin at home. Don’t overlook the prospecting value of your personal network. Who in your personal circle is a prospect? Friends, family, school friends? Even if they can’t buy advertising, they might lead you to a prospect they know.

Think of members of your immediate family who might help. Do they work with a company that advertises? Do they know someone who does? After you examine the immediate family, check the extended family, in-laws, cousins, and family members by marriage. Again, look for opportunities. If they advertise or influence advertising, put them on your prospecting list.

If you have no personal network, then create one. Offer to speak to a business breakfast club. Better yet, join several. Network at any organization meeting, especially service clubs. Where business people gather is your opportunity to make contacts, collect business cards, and build your list. You can also trade potential prospects with sellers in other industries.

Tom Hopkins tells the sales “Champions” in his training sessions that referral prospects are the easiest to close. He claims you’ll spend half as much time selling the referred lead as compared to the company-generated, nonqualified lead.

Your Own Operation

All radio and TV stations and some cable outlets get news releases by mail, fax, and e-mail. Ask your news director to pass along any release that has commercial implications.

Radio and TV stations and some cable channels use commercials or promotional announcements to advise advertisers of the benefits of running a schedule. The premise is that if the advertiser is already watching or listening to that medium, there’s a predisposition to using it for advertising, too.

You’ll read Cheryl Vannucchi’s sales pitch later in this book. I found her on the “Santa Rosa 6” cable TV channel in Sonoma County, California, while I was there working with a client. As a seller for the local cable channel, Cheryl was part of a TV commercial inviting businesses in Sonoma County to advertise on the local system.

If you’re selling for an Internet company, the one-to-one opportunities of interactive media seem to be made for prospecting. Many commercial home pages include an “advertise here” message to let users know there are availabilities.

Running Dry?

“You never lack leads,” says Roann Hale, vice president of the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB). She conducts sales meetings for RAB member stations and helps salespeople stay alert for new advertising dollars. She tells members of her training sessions that “the sky is the limit” when it comes to leads and opportunities. It’s true for all electronic media selling.

List Building

Each salesperson has a “list,” a collection of clients and potential clients exclusive to that seller. It’s called a list because it’s usually written down. Exclusivity is an unwritten rule.

A new salesperson may get a list that looks impressive at first because it’s long and filled with business names. The new seller’s first list is often nothing more than a catalog of dormant accounts. Michael Keith recalls in Selling Radio Direct that his first list was two pages long and contained 75 area retailers.²⁸

His first impulse was, “Good Lord, I’ll be rich in no time at all!” His glee was dampened when Keith’s sales manager informed him that only two of the 75 were active accounts. After attempting to turn his prospects into customers, Keith dubbed the list the “Dead Sea Scroll” and proclaimed the accounts “beyond dormant to moribund. They had been neglected for too long or horribly mishandled” by previous salespeople.

It’s a lesson that every sales representative must learn: how to build an account list, usually from scratch, using all the prospecting and networking techniques you can muster.

Don’t be surprised if another sales representative on your staff also attempts to “claim” an account you’ve discovered. Every seller in your department is busy exploring prospects and making lists, so duplication is inevitable. Most sales organizations work on a first-come, first-serve basis, and the arbiter is the sales manager.

“Claiming” an account is done only with the sales manager’s approval. A new advertiser or prospect might be added to a seller’s list for a short period of time to see whether the seller can generate interest. If the first salesperson to claim the account fails to make progress, the sales director may assign the account to another representative, hoping that a different approach might bear fruit.

Generally, once a seller is assigned a client or finds and claims a new prospect, other salespeople in the same department are expected to stay clear of that business, not to make calls or otherwise compete with the first seller for that account. Again, the sales manager is the referee.

A list may be defined geographically—the northwest side of town, the southeast region of the United States, or all of the state of Georgia, for example. It may be defined by category—auto dealers or finance companies. Most lists, however, are catchalls of clients assigned by the sales director, combined with prospects uncovered by the seller. A seller who calls on gift shops might also call on unrelated businesses such as restaurants and hardware stores.

The growing customer focus in electronic media selling makes the category-based list both popular and lucrative. Hiring sellers who become specialists in the customer’s industry makes advertisers more comfortable. The seller who reads Automotive Weekly has a better chance of striking a responsive chord with an auto dealer than the seller who simply walks in with a rate card in hand. Rapport breeds revenue.

Lists are most effective when worked diligently. Sales trainer Chris Lytle likes the idea of a limited number of accounts on a seller’s list, with maximum contact:

Let’s assign 200 accounts to Jones and 50 accounts to Smith and require each of them to make 10 calls a day. At the end of the month, Jones and Smith have each made 200 sales calls. Jones has made one call each on 200 accounts. By “concentrating the force” of sales calls against the target group, you can bet that Smith outsold Jones. Jones has a bigger list, but Smith has more sales on the books.

Farmers have used this principle for years. It’s more profitable to increase the yield from the same acreage than buying more fields.²⁹

Cold Calling

I remember a story in Selling magazine about an insurance seller who would stalk prospects, sneak though back doors, dodge receptionists, lurk in parking lots—anything to deliver a sales pitch. The magazine dubbed the man the “king of cold calls” and congratulated him on his prowess.³⁰

The story troubled me when I read it, because that’s exactly the kind of thing that gives salespeople a bad name. I’m not against cold calling, but I am reluctant to encourage you to act like such a vulture.

The term “cold calling” means walking into a prospect’s place of business unannounced—cold. There’s also the fact that cold calling sends chills down the spines of some of the heartiest salespeople. The idea has been called “less than professional” and “downright rude.” In the eyes of some retailers and most agency buyers, it’s more professional to set up an appointment by phone, then proceed with the sales call during the scheduled appointment.

Appointments are not easy to get, as you’ll see in the next section. But unless the phone rings off the wall with new business at your place, you’ll find yourself making cold calls, knocking on doors, and hoping for a friendly ear.

Be prepared for rejection. Few prospects have time for interruptions, especially at peak hours of the day. Many targets of cold calls think only in terms of how to get rid of the intruder.

Imagine for a second that you are the target of a cold call. You’re a shop owner or a business manager. A salesperson has walked in unannounced. There are two questions going through your mind:

1.  What is this about?

2.  How do I get rid of this problem?

As the salesperson, it is your job to keep the prospect as far away from the second question as possible. Through careful choice of words, you can do it. Begin by answering that first question—“What is this about?”

Always begin the conversation by stating the purpose of the call in words the buyer wants to hear. The typical buyer doesn’t necessarily care what we want, or what we need or what we would like.

For instance, don’t say, “I dropped by to introduce myself and my company.” The prospect will simply think, “Who cares? I have work to do.”

Another wrong approach is “I came by to tell you about a new promotion our company has just introduced.” Expect your target to think, “If it is something I want, I would have already called you.”

Houston-based sales trainer Rick Alan, of Rick Alan and Associates, puts it bluntly:

It is no big mystery why many buyers think salespeople are all alike. Let’s face it, many of us sound alike. Whether we like it or not, we are an interruption to the buyer. I’m not saying we’re not a worthwhile interruption, but we are an interruption. It is up to us to create value in what we are saying and to increase the buyer’s curiosity to hear our message.³¹

Here are two possible ways to make the interruption work for you and for your prospect:

“I came by to talk with you about generating more customers for your business.”

“I came by with an idea that could possibly give you an edge over your competition.”

As Mark McCormack suggests, “Have a pretext. It doesn’t have to be a profound or persuasive reason, but it has to be slightly more compelling than ‘I want to sell you something.’ That’s not a pretext. That’s a subtext—which is usually left unspoken.”³²

A good pretext is a visit to someone in a new job, saying “congratulations” or “welcome to the community.” For that reason, newly opened businesses get a lot of cold calls. The owner or manager might even be pleased that you discovered the establishment.

Another pretext is “being in the neighborhood,” for example, calling on another account and stopping by other businesses on the same street or in the same shopping center. “Our advertising campaign can help your business the same way it did Monica across the street at the Boulevard Bistro. She had a sellout on Thursday night.”

Mark McCormack adds one more pretext: “Invite them to something.” His business is involved in sporting events, so there’s always a big-name golf or tennis match on his schedule.

What’s your invitation? Here are a few ideas:

•  If you sell for a TV station that sponsors an annual bridal show, you might offer an invitation.

•  As a radio seller, you might invite a prospect to the premiere of a new movie you’re sponsoring or to a concert your station is presenting.

•  Your cable system may be participating in a business-to-business show at the convention center.

•  New media sellers will know about demonstrations and workshops introducing new software. Invite a prospect.

If you walk in the door as a breath of fresh air for prospects, you’re less of an infringement on their time.

“I don’t know anyone who will admit to enjoying the cold-call process,” says Mark McCormack. “It’s intrusive. It’s fraught with rejection. It’s psychologically draining, especially if you’re calling 100 people a day and 99 of them won’t even agree to see you in their office.”

Don’t take rejection personally. There’s a lot of rejection in cold calling. The payoff is also very low. It takes a lot of cold calls to generate welcomes warm enough to translate into appointments. Your most productive prospecting will be done by telephone.

Keeping Track

As a salesperson, you’re likely to have 100 or more accounts on your list—some active advertisers, others inactive, but prospects nonetheless. Every one will represent potential earnings. To know where you stand with each client and prospect, keep a record of all calls, whether in person or by telephone. It’s easy to forget what happened on a call at the end of the day when you’ve made additional calls that same day. As Michael Keith says in Selling Radio Direct, “A record of the call will put you back on point. When preparing a record of a call, the more detail the better.” Keith uses this example:

Bennington Floor Covering—contacted 5/11. Presented TAP Plan. Client says not interested until late July. Wasn’t too impressed with TAP approach. Listens to ‘Bill Bannon Show.’ Maybe have Bannon visit on next call. Offer plan in show. Call back in mid-July. Gets co-op dollars and buys in combo. Not happy with newspaper. Likes station. Solid prospect. Mail new inserts from media kits and drop off dozen (station) magnets. Stick with this one.

A status report like that one should be kept for every client, so you’ll have a quick and easy reference. If the client’s an active advertiser, the file should include plans you’ve offered the client previously as well as the one being used currently.

Your file is not complete without your advertising contracts and the schedules the client bought. It should also include past contracts, affidavits, and credit check information from your research on the client. As we work through the sales process, you’ll conduct a needs analysis for each client. That information should be part of the client file, too.

Records management software programs will make the job easier. Database management software designed for sellers captures the essential information and gives you the flexibility to customize data fields for your own needs.

Using a Database

My company markets its services primarily to radio stations. To be effective, we maintain our own database of targeted prospects and potential clients. We also buy databases from list marketers who specialize in electronic media, although we find our own information preferable to that we get from outsiders. (After all, who can define the target better than we can?)

One of those list marketers called me to solicit a buy, and he began by asking me if I knew his company. Yes, I did, I said. I told him we’d used his databases, but it had been a few years. (In fact it had been 5 years.)

“Let me get my files,” he said. A remark like that is the beginning of the end of the conversation for me. I asked myself quick questions about his selling approach:

Why wasn’t his file open when he called me?

Why did a database company use its own product so badly?

Why did he wait 5 years to call?

The reason we weren’t using his product, I told him, was that he didn’t have specific names available in the database. We were much better served by scanning trade magazines and having our own people keep up with changes at stations.

His reply was that all a salesperson has to do is to call the prospect and ask the receptionist for the manager’s name before asking to talk to the person.

I told him that no one representing my company could afford to be caught so unprepared. The research on whom to call comes first, before the call. I want the receptionist to know our people are prepared, too. That ended the conversation. He expected our sellers to treat our prospects as casually as he had treated me. No one can afford to sell that way.

There are many contact management and sales automation software systems available. So many, in fact, that Selling Power required five pages just to list all the systems they reviewed in the November 1997 issue.³³

Each month there are new releases with new features. The basic element of any sales software is the customer database and fields for information about contacts, histories, pricing, and so forth. Time management pages and word processing are also basic. The least complex systems are called “contact managers” or “account managers” because that’s what they help you do.

It doesn’t require a sophisticated system to include e-mail, faxing, map makers for retail selling, and basic order processing (although most electronic media outlets have their own system for order processing).

Systems that work on a local area network or an intranet allow for sales analysis, inventory control, changing grid levels (pricing) when inventory becomes tight, and other tools that are more the province of the sales manager or sales director than the individual salesperson. Those systems are generally called sales force automation (SFA).

The favorite contact management software systems for some years were ACT! and Goldmine. They are not identical, but similar, with the benefit of lots of fields, many that can be designed by the user for specific purposes. (A friend of mine in the music industry retooled his ACT! pages to show top-40 chart positions and other pertinent information about his artists as well as the basic needs for customer data he had as a seller.)

A step up from those systems is the Sales Logix system, which falls between contact management and the high-end sales force automation systems. Sales Logix contains an online sales library, automated processing of routine tasks, and custom reports on the whole sales team that the sales manager can access.

There is proprietary software designed for each electronic medium, too, which allows integration of Nielsen and Arbitron ratings information.

Step Two—Qualifying

We never want to say this to the customer, but some customers are better for us than others. The best example is a customer who spends a lot of money buying advertising. One of the mistakes first-time sellers often make is concentrating on advertisers whose budgets are too small. No matter how hard you work, you can’t increase the amount of money the customer is willing (and able) to spend.

Customers who pay their bills on time are better customers than those who stall and make excuses. Those who pay on time are back month after month or season after season, and you can count on their advertising expenditures. Checking credit rating and payment history will be near the top of your list as you qualify potential advertisers.

Because the purpose of business is to create customers, bear in mind that not all customers are the same. Which customers do you want to sell to? The good ones, of course. But how do you know who the good ones are? You know by qualifying your prospects.

Qualifying is information-gathering. It’s the step at which you begin to build a file on your prospect. Charles Warner and Joseph Buchman call qualifying “the single most important step of selling because it is in this step that you begin your relationship with your customer.” (Their emphasis.) They feel that 15% of your average month should be spent qualifying prospects.³⁴

You’ll notice a point at which qualifying begins to merge with needs analysis. It’s difficult to create clean lines of demarcation in the sales process. A good job of qualifying yields a head start on needs analysis. Proper needs analysis is often its own closing technique. Given Warner and Buchman’s feeling that qualifying is the beginning of relationship-building, that’s a head start on the work you’ll do after the close.

Tom Hopkins links qualifying directly to closing. He says salespeople “try to close the wrong people too often and too hard. In other words, they don’t fail to close, they fail to qualify.” It takes the same amount of time to present your story to ten unqualified prospects as it does to ten qualified prospects. The difference is you can work toward closing only with those who are qualified.

Hopkins says you’ll close one qualified prospect for every one that gets away, and you’ll lose nine unqualified sales for every one you close. Remember that closing rates vary. Hopkins’ figures are based on selling generally, not on selling electronic media. The principle remains the same.

Getting to the Right Person

Getting your foot in the door is only half the battle, as the saying goes. Make sure your foot’s in the right door. All your efforts will be for nothing if you don’t present your story to the person with the power to make the buy.

Here’s a rule for qualifying prospects: “Don’t take no from someone who can’t say yes.” Bill Burton, president of the Detroit Radio Advertising Group and self-described “cheerleader” for sellers, was the first person I heard say that. I’m sure it was said long before Bill, but he deserves credit for saying it repeatedly to sellers who call on the auto industry in Detroit.

If the prospect has no authority to buy, you’re wasting your time making a presentation. If your prospect has no budget, you’re also wasting your time. It might be that the prospect cannot buy until next year’s budget is approved or until an existing contract ends. You need to know that. Consultant Harry Spitzer says 65% of all sales calls are made to the wrong person. The key is getting to the person who makes the buying decision.

It doesn’t hurt to ask, “Are you the person who makes the final decisions on your company’s advertising?” If the answer is “no” ask, “Who is that person?” If you are businesslike, most of the people you encounter will help you by giving you the name of the person you need to approach.

Tom Hopkins has two very effective questions he recommends using to get to the right person. One is direct: “Who, in addition to yourself, makes the final decision?” You’ll find some prospects want to feel important, so they wait until the last minute to tell you that they can’t make the decision. Asking the direct question early in your qualification process saves you both time and frustration later.

Hopkins’ other question is less direct, but opens the conversation to additional information: “If we are fortunate enough today to find the right schedule for you, would you be in a position to proceed?” The phrase “If we are fortunate enough today” takes the pressure off, because you indicate you’re not going for the close then and there. That might open the prospect to say something like, “No, before we go any further, I’ll have to get my partner’s approval.”

Again, don’t take “no” from a person who can’t say “yes.”

Checking Resources

A key qualifier you must determine for any potential advertiser is the ability to spend money. Does your prospect have the dollars required to commit to an advertising plan you develop?

If you were a network cable seller calling on my company, you’d discover that we can afford a schedule on Nickelodeon’s sister channel, TV Land, but a schedule on the main channel is out of the question.³⁵ The cost is far beyond our means. As a seller, you should have qualified me by finding out about my resources. For a big schedule on the big network, I’m a terrible prospect. You’ll be disappointed that my money will run out far faster than your schedule will.

Fortunately, I’m a good credit risk, so that’s not a problem when you call on me. Just direct me to the lesser network, where I’ll get fewer viewers but good response, and you’ll help me spend my limited resources wisely.

Credit is not the only issue here. If you were actually trying to sell me advertising on Nickelodeon, you’d have missed an important step in qualifying: making sure that my service fits your audience. Most of my advertising is business-to-business advertising within the electronic media industries, so neither network would be exactly the right fit. If one were better than the other, it would be Nick At Nite because it reaches adults.

Qualifying requires matching the business to the medium so that the category works for the seller and for the buyer. Simple examples include soft drinks on MTV, beers on ESPN, homebuilders and grocery stores on adult contemporary radio, and banks and auto dealers on news/talk stations.

Can They Pay?

Some of your prospects will not be very credit-worthy. That may lead you to reject them as potential advertisers or to limit them to paying cash in advance before their schedules run. Asking for money up front can be very uncomfortable, but it’s necessary to ensure that you’re able to collect. After all, that’s how you’re paid.

Checking credit is usually left to the business office, not to the individual salesperson. As a seller, you need to know from your business office just what a prospect’s credit rating is. As Warner and Buchman put it in Broadcast and Cable Selling:

In general, it’s a good idea to use managers as a buffer and to let them take the heat or blame for decisions that could offend or upset a prospect for that is one of the things for which managers are paid. The important thing is to conform to good business practice while leaving the door open for further approaches.

Note that some advertisers—night clubs, concert promoters, and other entertainment businesses—are often required to pay cash in advance for their advertising. Generally, they’re used to it, because they pay in advance for other services, such as bands and performers. Asking them for money up front is not so troublesome as asking the same thing of a prospect who isn’t able to pay or who isn’t accustomed to paying in cash in advance.

Remember that a prospect who cannot pay you is not a prospect at all!

Saying It Again

Let me repeat the importance of qualifying. Your most successful work in sales will be the result of using your time effectively, so think of qualification as a time management tool. The more time you spend qualifying your prospect, the less time you waste making presentations to the wrong people. As Tom Hopkins puts it, “Qualification is the key to high production.”

Getting in the Door

Qualifying eases the way to needs analysis, which continues the sales cycle’s information-gathering process. In order to conduct a needs analysis, you’ve got to get in the door, to see the prospect face to face. In order to get in the door, you may have to fight for an appointment.

The easiest and most logical way to see your prospect is to make a phone call and ask. If you already know the person, that’s probably all you’ll need to do. Most of your prospects, however, will be people you don’t know. Rather than offering you a gracious invitation to sell them, they’ll be more like the grumpy old codger you met at the beginning of this book. Remember the caption on the poster of the “Man in the Chair”?

I don’t know who you are.

I don’t know your company.

I don’t know your company’s product.

I don’t know what your company stands for.

I don’t know your company’s customers.

I don’t know your company’s record.

I don’t know your company’s reputation.

Now—What was it you wanted to sell me?

That’s a tough audience to face! The good news, of course, was that the old codger at least sat still for an appointment with the seller he was addressing.

If you work for a well-known media outlet—the leading TV station, a high-profile cable operator, or the radio station with the number-one morning show, for example—that alone might get you in front of your prospect. Your medium is already perceived to be of value, and that value transfers to you.

Yet even the most valuable medium can’t get you in to see a prospect who isn’t predisposed toward using that medium for advertising. Worse, some prospects have an aversion to advertising itself, regardless of medium.

You may also encounter former clients who have been disappointed by your outlet or by your competition. It’s difficult to convince them that the appointment you want will be anything but a waste of their time.

The Telephone

Get ready. One of the most disturbing aspects of selling is that during your career you’ll make thousands of phone calls trying to set appointments, with only a few callbacks. Even so, the telephone is your best organizer and time saver.

“Agency buyers and retailers are busy people,” says sales trainer Pam Lontos. “They don’t want salespeople just dropping in on them with an attitude of, ‘Drop what you’re doing, I’m here to sell you advertising.’ It shows no respect for the client’s time. And it’s hard to sell someone you’ve annoyed,” she warns.

Further, Lontos believes that setting an appointment by phone “improves your chances of getting the sale.” If you’ve made the appointment, the client has set aside time to listen to what you have to say. You’ve also demonstrated respect for the client’s time.

Here are her tips for setting appointments successfully:

1.  Ask for the owner, president, or senior manager. Don’t ask for the person in charge of advertising because that person might not be the decision-maker.

2.  Start at the top. If your first call is to a person who can’t make decisions, it’s difficult to go over that person’s head without antagonizing them. If your first meeting is with the top person, you can go back to them if you don’t get results from a subordinate.

3.  Use the name of the person at the top. If the CEO or president refers you downward to an advertising manager, say so and use the top person’s name.

4.  Top decision-makers use receptionists and assistants to screen calls. Call early (before 8:30 a.m.) or late (after 5:30 p.m.) to bypass the gatekeeper.

5.  Find out if the decision-maker is in before you ask to speak to that person. It makes it difficult for someone to say that your target’s not available after saying the target is in the office.

6.  Show confidence and energy in your voice. Sound like someone of authority who deserves to be put through.

7.  Use first names, yours and theirs. It makes you sound like a friend.

8.  Get the secretary’s first name and use it. Make the secretary your friend.³⁶

Lontos advises against leaving messages, assuming that the prospect will say something like, “Oh boy! Another salesperson!” My feeling is that leaving a message can’t hurt, and it may even help. You still have to keep calling until you can get through to the person you want, so leaving a message is hardly the end of the process. I look at a stack of telephone messages as a measure of persistence on the part of a seller.

If you decide to leave a message, be creative with it. Arouse enough curiosity that the prospect wants to call you back and find out what your evocative message is all about. Kerby Confer, who built Keymarket Communications and merged it into Sinclair Communications, would call prospects and tell them he had “the big idea for their business.” Prospects responded to the message because with Kerby it was never a ploy. He delivered with promotion and advertising ideas that won him business and made money for his clients.

Lontos suggests at least 30 calls a day, all made in a short period of time, say between 9 and 10 a.m. “Thirty calls should result in reaching 15 people, which should yield 8 appointments. With practice, your ratio of appointments to calls should improve.” Lontos uses the tally sheet in Figure 2–11 to count calls and appointments. That helps her measure the ratio.

“Once you start your 30 calls, don’t stop until all are done,” she advises. “These calls go fast if you don’t stop or go for coffee in between. When you get an appointment, dial another number immediately. Call back at the end of the day to reach all the people you couldn’t get in the morning.”

Step Three—Needs Analysis

We’ve defined selling as “identifying customer needs profitably. Profitable for you, profitable for them.” Your job as a salesperson, then, is to use all the tools at your disposal to help your prospects and clients solve their advertising and marketing problems in a mutually profitable way.

Tool number one is your own medium and the audience your programming attracts. Tool number two is your own knowledge of the client and the client’s business. Your success as a seller will be in direct proportion to your demonstration of your knowledge of the client’s product, service, and customers.

The RAB’s introductory course for radio salespeople, Welcome to Radio Sales, has a section that applies to anyone selling any electronic medium:

It stands to reason that the more we know about what they (the clients) really care about—how their industry works, current trends in their industry, major concerns for their industry, emerging profit centers in their business, who their customers are likely to be—the more time they’ll be willing to spend with us … and the more likely they’ll be to openly sharing information about their specific concerns and problems.

To gain this critical knowledge, we no longer can get away with walking into an account, completely ignorant of his or her business, and saying “Tell me all about the _______________ business.” Why?

1.  Most prospects have neither the time nor the inclination to teach you (and every other salesperson who calls on them) about their business; and

FIGURE 2-11  Can you make 30 telephone calls a day? That’s Pam Lontos’ recommendation. She says 30 calls equals 15 contacts and 8 appointments. Here’s her tally sheet for appointment calls. Courtesy Lontos Sales & Motivation, Inc., Orlando, Florida (407) 2996128. Used with permission.

2.  They will not see you as a true professional who deserves their time and ultimately their trust.

Without prior knowledge of the prospect’s industry, you simply will be perceived as just another rep trying to sell them something instead of a valued resource.³⁷

There are two steps to gaining that prior knowledge: (1) doing your homework, and (2) asking questions. Without the homework, you may never get to ask the questions.

You should go into your appointment armed with no less than the prospect’s company history, some idea of business cycles in that industry, and a sense of the competition for the prospect’s customers. Sales trainer Chris Lytle suggests starting a client interview with a fact about the client’s industry. For example, you might be calling on an electronics retailer and open the interview with the following:

The Electronics Industries Association says in their year-end reports that audio product sales grew about 22% last year compared to a 3% increase in color TV sets. What percentage of your sales came from audio?

Your question about the prospect’s specific store is based on the homework you’ve done. Where do you look? Read the local newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, trade magazines from the client’s field, and annual reports from the client’s company. Watch the local TV news and talk to receptionists, secretaries, and assistants. The more you know before you meet with the prospect, the greater your ability to impress them.

In order to learn specifics about any company, you need to ask questions. For example, IBM sales representatives have a list of 103 questions to ask prospective clients. Xerox sales reps ask as many as 137.

Harvey Mackay, author of Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive, arms the salesforce of his Mackay Envelope Corporation with a 66-question customer profile.³⁸ The questions in the “Mackay 66” are detailed and even personal. They include medical history and marital status, how much alcohol the customer drinks or whether the customer has an aversion to those who drink. The list even includes moral and ethical questions to be considered in a relationship between Mackay Envelope and its customer. Mackay’s sellers don’t ask their prospects the questions directly. They get the answers by doing their research.

Former NBC public relations practitioner Mike McCaffrey compares the needs analysis interview to a doctor-patient relationship.³⁹ In Personal Marketing Strategies, McCaffrey reminds us that a physician “spends no time at all pointing to diplomas or boasting about cures.” Instead, “the doctor probes with questions because it is necessary for his diagnosis.”

McCaffrey believes that “the single most effective selling tool you have is the ability to ask questions well,” and he calls asking questions a “highly learnable skill.”

When you ask questions, you take control of the conversation, because you define who is going to talk and what the subject is. If you ask a prospect what their business offers that the competitor can’t or won’t offer, it’s unlikely that the subject will involve anything but the answer to your question. If the prospect rambles or repeats, you can maintain control with an interruption:, “You just triggered another question …” Questioning gives you credibility.

Back to McCaffrey’s analogy to the doctor and patient: As the doctor asks more probing, perceptive questions, the patient’s confidence grows. “The most successful sellers do not need to tout themselves,” McCaffrey says. “When they ask incisive, perceptive questions, pretty soon the buyer gets the message: ‘This guy knows what he’s doing.’”

RAB has five tips to insure a successful consultancy call or needs analysis interview:

1. Resist selling! Remember: the goal is to gain information that will help you make the big sale.

2. Memorize as many of the questions as possible, and be sure to ask them in the proper order.

3. Be sure to customize or tailor the questions with client industry research.

4. Take copious notes during the interview so you can remember to include key findings in your subsequent presentation—and to show the prospect you’re really listening.

5. Don’t hesitate to be enthusiastic about the prospect, the business, and your ability to help solve key marketing problems.

There are differences of opinion about “taking copious notes.” In Broadcast and Cable Selling, Warner and Buchman recommend against taking notes, saying it makes people nervous and unwilling to open up. They suggest instead making detailed notes after the interview.

I prefer taking notes, because I was a reporter early in my career and the habit stuck with me. I don’t write everything down, but I capture key words that help me fill in detail later. Using key words takes only a moment and you don’t lose focus on the prospect and what’s being said.⁴⁰

I remember a salesperson who took notes on a laptop computer and tried to input every word I said during a needs analysis interview. It drove me nuts! So much so, I asked him to stop typing and start listening.

On another occasion, I was the one asking the questions in a needs analysis interview, and I decided to rely on my memory rather than taking notes. While I perceived no problem, the client admitted that she had a terrible memory and it worried her that mine might be as a bad as hers. She begged me to take notes on the conversation!

Psychology

Remember Peter Drucker’s view that “the customer is the business”? In Chapter 1, I quoted from Drucker’s Managing for Results that there is only one person who knows what the customer wants and that’s the customer. “The customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him. One reason for this is, of course, that nobody pays for a ‘product.’ What is paid for is satisfactions. But nobody can make or supply satisfactions as such—at best, only the means to attaining them can be sold and delivered.”

The word “satisfactions” indicates “needs” that would be satisfied. When the word “needs” is introduced, the first name that typically comes to mind is Abraham Maslow’s, not Peter Drucker’s. In his groundbreaking 1954 book, Motivation and Personality, Maslow theorized that you and I are motivated by a desire to satisfy several needs at once.⁴²

He established this hierarchy that flows from bottom to top:

1.  Self-actualization. Realization of individual potential.

2.  Esteem. The need for respect from others and competence of self.

3.  Social relationship. The need to belong, to be loved.

4.  Safety and security. A predictable, controlled environment.

5.  Physiological needs. Food, clothing, shelter, air, and water.

Maslow took the world even deeper into his theory in Toward a Psychology of Being, “It is a basic or instinctual need if (1) its absence breeds illness, (2) its presence prevents illness, (3) its restoration cures illness. …”

I’m not going to develop a theory that selling electronic media might prevent or cure illnesses, nor am I going to turn this into a psychology text. But selling includes a good deal of psychology, and you’re better at needs analysis if you recognize the complex motivations that cause people to buy.⁴³

As the 1980s turned into the 1990s, several former Apple Computer staffers were recruited by Marc Porat of General Magic, a Silicon Valley company, to develop software for wireless computing. To stimulate his Apple corps to “change the world one more time,” Porat had them investigate three basic “domains” or needs of humans:

1.  Keeping track of words and pictures that belong to you. “It’s very personal; it’s very intimate.”

2.  Maintaining relationships between you and other people. This could be based on interactions with family, friends, workers, or people who have only a brief role in your life, such as an insurance agent or an electronic media salesperson.

3.  Obtaining information you require quickly, whether it relates to business, entertainment, or home repairs.⁴⁴

Porat’s three needs were part of a speech to a conference called “Wireless Mobile Computing” in 1990 and were reported in the newsletter Mobile Data Report. Porat’s approach was termed “touchy-feely Apple-speak” by his detractors. To others, what seemed vague was dismissed as a company that did not want to give away its secrets.

I use Porat’s list because the items address a world that has solved Maslow’s basic safety, security, and physiological needs, even if it hasn’t distributed the solution to everyone. In an affluent, information-based society, people often think first of their connection to themselves, and that’s where General Magic found its psychology.

The basis of sales psychology is that needs are learned and can be triggered externally; thus good sellers develop an eye for clues that tell them how to react.⁴⁵ Warner and Buchman offer specific examples for sellers of electronic media:

•  Photos of the prospect and important people indicate a need for recognition. You might suggest that the prospect appear in commercials.

•  If the prospect keeps you waiting and fields phone calls during your interview, there’s a need for dominance. Pitch the dominance a schedule will give the prospect’s business.

•  Intelligent, probing questions about the advertising you sell means the prospect needs understanding. Include lots of facts and figures in the presentation.

•  Sports analogies indicate a need for achievement. Position your medium as a means to win, to beat the competition.

•  A bare desk indicates a need for order. Show that you’re the salesperson with an eye for detail.

Larry Wilson of Wilson Learning identified four reasons why people don’t buy: no trust, no need, no help, no hurry. As a result, Wilson introduced the idea of consultant selling to the insurance industry. Wilson’s systems were licensed and adapted for electronic media by Ken Greenwood, CEO of Greenwood Performance Systems.⁴⁶

Greenwood teaches the “social style” concept, a two-dimensional way to look at needs and expectations—why people respond to each other as they do. (See Figure 2–12.) One dimension is assertiveness, the other is responsiveness. The horizontal axis shows assertiveness from “asking” at the left to “telling” at the right. The vertical axis shows responsiveness, with people at the bottom and tasks at the top.

Greenwood cautions that there is no “best” social style and no “right” place to be in the quadrants. “Each style has strengths and weaknesses,” he says. “When you learn to recognize the social style of a prospect or customer, you can tailor your sales process to those needs and expectations.”

Asking Questions

Today’s selling environment is as much about questioning and listening as it is about presenting and closing. Your presentation is better targeted if your questioning skills are sharp and your listening skills honed.

In Selling with Integrity, Sharon Drew Morgen describes how “the seller takes responsibility for supporting the buyer in discovering the best solution to his or her problem.” Morgen equates questions with “supporting the process of discovery.”⁴⁷

Greater discovery comes with open-ended questions, the ones that cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. Usually open-ended questions begin with who, what, why, and how.

IBM salespeople use the worst-best method, a specific set of open-ended questions: “What do you like best about this particular product?” They follow that with “why” questions to make sure they understand the prospect’s attitude toward the product that’s likely to be replaced by an IBM. Once they’ve exhausted the “best” sequence, the questions turn to “What’s worst about this product?” That’s followed by additional “why” questions to probe feelings.⁴⁸

The objective of questioning is not to sell, but rather to find out what the prospect needs. “If you arrive at that point,” says Mike McCaffrey, “you are likely to make the sale. The good seller first seeks to find problems rather than sell solutions.”

FIGURE 2-12  Ken Greenwood teaches the “Social Style” concept, pioneered by Wilson Learning. The styles fall into quadrants formed by matrices of responsiveness and assertiveness. Learn to recognize the social style of your prospect or customer and tailor your selling accordingly.

Here are open-ended questions McCaffrey suggests as examples to evoke revealing discussion:

•  What is your thinking on … ?

•  I’d like to better understand your thinking on …

•  Would you elaborate on that?

•  Why are you taking this action?

•  What are your greatest areas of potential growth?

•  What are the reasons for this?

•  Where has your company been? Where is it now? Where is it going?

•  If you could step back and be objective, what would you say are your greatest strengths?

•  If there was one area that might be strengthened, what would it be, and why?

•  What would you say are your biggest concerns?

•  What do you think needs to be done to improve the situation?

•  What are some of the indications that make you feel you could use help?

•  What takes up most of your personal attention? Why?

•  What are the real reasons you are considering a change? Elaborate.

McCaffrey says the response to the final question is the best clue to the prospect’s “emotionally charged beliefs, opinions, positions, and justifications.” (See Figure 2–13.)

FIGURE 2-13  The Marketing Revolution by Kevin Clancy and Robert Shulman introduced me to this wheel of emotions. They applied it to research for consumer products, but I think it also applies to needs analysis. As you read your customer and the reasons for a purchase, look for a motivation based on any of these emotions.

There’s a danger here, however. Some salespeople collect more information than they can ever use, and it gathers dust in a computer database or a paper file. It’s important to transfer questions into action. You’ll see later in this chapter that the information you collect must be used as a well-targeted presentation that demonstrates to the prospect that you’ve not only asked your questions, but you’ve also understood the answers.

Ken Greemvood puts it this way: “The PURPOSE of asking questions is to gather information that fills a gap between what you know about a buyer and what you need to know. The PROCESS of asking questions is to connect questions so that the buyer wants to reveal information. … The PAYOFF for the seller is insight into the buyer’s product and personal needs.”

By using questions effectively, you as a seller can position your offering of an advertising plan as a solution that fits both sets of needs the buyer has demonstrated, product and personal.

I like questions that open discussion to the prospect’s hopes and goals. For example, “Where are you trying to go?” or “What are you trying to achieve?” It’s even fair to ask directly, “What’s your vision?” The answers are valuable.

There are three inviolable rules in question-asking, according to Harold Bausemer, president of the Sales Group of Boston: “One, never ask a question that the client cannot answer. Two, never ask the same question twice. Three, never ask more than one question at a time.”⁴⁹

Listening Skills

You may develop the best questioning skills on the planet, but it counts for nothing if you can’t listen to the answers. The fifth of Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits is “seek first to understand,” and understanding requires listening. “Empathic listening,” Covey calls it, because doing it right creates empathy with the person you’re listening to.⁵¹

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand,” says Covey, “they listen with the intent to reply. They’re either speaking or preparing to speak.”

When you’re busy thinking about what to ask next, you’re not hearing what’s being said at the moment. Covey calls that being “filled with our own autobiography. Our conversations become collective monologues, and we never really understand what’s going on inside another human being.”

The Wall Street Journal called Americans “a nation of blabbermouths” in an article that lamented the passage of the pause.⁵² “People think that listening is boring,” said an Atlanta communications trainer. “It’s more fun to talk. There’s the old joke, the opposite of talking isn’t listening, it’s waiting to talk.”

The Journal assigned the blame to three areas:

•  Radio and television, because people combine their listening with other activities

•  The fast-paced world where we’re mentally saying, “Get to the point.”

•  The public opinion that listening is considered innate. It’s not. It’s a skill that must be learned and practiced.

Sales expert Ken Greenwood tells a story about the upbringing of a young girl. Mother says, “Guess what, Sarah said her first word today.” A few years later, mother picks up Sarah at nursery school and is told, “Sarah said her little stand-up speech today very well.” The story takes Sarah through high school, where she becomes valedictorian. Greenwood supposes that Sarah “in her entire life, was never praised for listening, only for talking. In fact, in her teens she probably heard that great line: ‘Now, listen to me, young lady!’”

How do we apply that to sales? Greenwood puts it this way: “Salespeople who are good listeners focus on the other person, really give them their full attention. Thus the novice salesperson is likely not to pay attention. They merely wait for their time to talk.”

A 1957 article in the Harvard Business Review gave early support to listening as a skill for salespeople:

How a salesman talks turns out to be relatively unimportant because what he says, when it is guided by his listening, gives power to the spoken word. In other words, the salesman’s listening becomes an on-the-spot form of customer research that can immediately be put to work in formulating any sales talk.⁵³

Empathic listeners paraphrase what’s being said. Suppose for a moment you’re the seller of broadcast TV advertising for a station in Chicago. You’re conducting a needs analysis with an auto dealer in Napierville, which is well west of the Loop and in the center of populous DuPage County. You might say something like this:

So, reaching only DuPage and Kane Counties is important to you. You’re worried about the wasted coverage of our Chicago signal over Cook County. Do I understand you correctly?

That’s a sign that you’re really listening and striving for understanding of the client’s needs. The prospect responds this way:

No, viewers in northwest Cook County might drive out to my dealership, I just hate to waste my money on the Loop and people as far away as Will County.

Now you’re not only on the same wavelength, but you’ve also received useful information from your prospect that will help you create an advertising plan.

“Being a good listener does not necessitate being a passive listener,” says public relations expert Henry C. Rogers in Rogers’ Rules for Success. “If you are a good listener, you will give as well as take. If you are listening intently, questions will come to mind. When the speaker pauses, ask them. Even though you may allow (the speaker) to carry the bulk of the conversation, an occasional relevant comment makes you an active participant.”⁵⁴

Creating Solutions

Remember, advertisers are not buying advertising, they’re buying a business solution. That’s why you spend so much time in your needs analysis digging for information about the prospect and the prospect’s product or service.

Your homework and your interview yields an outline that shows both the prospect’s needs and clear ideas about how your medium gets the prospect’s message to the target audience. You’re ready to become a partner with your prospect, to affect the conversion from prospect to client.

The needs analysis also gives you direction for your proposal and presentation. The presentation is your face-to-face demonstration that you’ve created a solution that will bring your prospect more business.

Step Four—Presentation

The sales presentation is here—it’s show time!

Most good sellers like the presentation part of the sales cycle the best. It’s an opportunity to demonstrate just how attentive you were during the needs analysis and just how well you understand the problems your prospect wants solved.

It’s also the way to answer the prospect’s key question: “What’s in it for me?” By answering that question, you become a partner with your prospect, and you set the stage for closing the sale.

Presentation is making a case for your medium in a face-to-face meeting with your prospect. Your job is to let the prospect—the buyer—know that advertising with your operation will do one or more of the following:

•  Solve the buyer’s problem

•  Save the buyer money

•  Increase sales for the buyer

•  Raise the buyer’s stature in the community

•  Make the buyer’s work easier

You can tell I like Mark McCormack, because I quote him all the time. Like everybody else, I discovered him with his first book What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School. Until I read McCormack, I knew nothing about the International Management Group, the company he founded, which manages the business affairs of golfers Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, and Jack Nicklaus, as well as other sports greats.

In McCormack on Selling, he includes a section called “How Anyone Can Make Me Buy,” which offers good advice on how to sell a man who knows how to sell. McCormack is also a buyer at IMG, so he looks at sellers from a buyer’s perspective. First, the essentials:

•  Belief in your product

•  Belief in yourself

•  Seeing a lot of people

•  Timing

•  Listening to the customer

•  A sense of humor

•  Knocking on old doors

•  Asking everyone to buy

•  Following up after the sale with the same aggressiveness you demonstrated during the sale

“I’m sufficiently insulated at our company nowadays that I don’t have to see sales people off the street,” McCormack explains, so not all of the essentials apply to people he sees personally. Those that do, however, he takes very seriously. For example, he doesn’t want to be just another sales call. “Like most people, I don’t enjoy the feeling that I’m just a name and number on someone’s massive checklist of people to call. Lump me in a crowd and you won’t get my money. Make me feel unique, as if I’m the first person you’ve ever called on with your product or service, and you will.”

“Common sense will tell you to step back and look at my business. What does our company do? Who do we deal with? Who have we bought from in the past? How have we grown? What do we need? Common sense will tell you to talk to people who know me,” he continues.⁵⁵ It’s the homework you learned in the discussion of needs analysis.

Why They Buy

Research from Learning International shows three key reasons why customers buy.⁵⁶ They have nothing to do with price, rather, with the quality of sellers:

1.  Business expertise and image

2.  Dedication to the customer

3.  Account sensitivity

Yet sales trainer Chris Lytle notes that clients still say, “Your rates are too high.” Clients give us rate objections because they have trouble articulating why they aren’t buying. “Very few clients will tell you, ‘You are an inept, insensitive person dedicated only to selling … and unwilling to offer me any expertise or guidance,’” Lytle says. Instead, they let you down easy.

You cannot avoid objections, as you’ll see. However, if you’ve done your homework properly, you can overcome objections that are nothing more than a diversionary tactic.

Your Attitude

A key step in any presentation is believing in yourself. If you demonstrate no faith in your own ability to sell, your prospect will develop none. When your nerves tell you it can’t be done, remember Henry Ford’s words, “If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you’re right.”

Make your anxiety work for you, not against you. It’s natural to be nervous before a presentation. By channeling your anxiety, you help yourself stay sharp and ready for anything the prospect might ask.

Use your nervous energy to rehearse out loud one last time. Give yourself a quick motivational speech. Harvey Mackay (the man who taught us to Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive) told the story of a seller in the mining industry who wrote at the bottom of each day’s schedule of calls the word “astonish.” It was a reminder to be ready for every call, every presentation.

Give yourself the same benefit. Think back to the article about visualization, “What You See Is What You Get.” Picture yourself closing the sale, for example. Visualize the handshakes or the pats on the back when you report the victory to your sales manager. Mentally write the amount of your billings on a blackboard or whiteboard for all to see.

Repeat these silent affirmations before your sales call:

•  I am here to help.

•  I go the extra mile.

•  (Prospect) is the most important person in the world.

•  Closing is a very natural, mutual conclusion for me.

Remember that affirmations are tools for subconscious image impression. Using a positive assertion about yourself and your selling situation is a specific way to program yourself for success. Your subconscious will believe whatever you tell it, so why not feed it positive, productive messages?

Recall from earlier in this chapter that the critical factor about affirmations is to say them in present tense, as if they’ve been achieved. (This is the significant difference between affirmations and goals.) Say the words aloud, see the results in your mind, and feel the results.

With affirmations you give yourself the inner strength and the resolve to keep going. Selling is all about keeping going. By the way, that means going back again, too. Sales consultant Harry Spitzer gathered these figures from sales management studies:

•  48% of salespeople make one call and quit.

•  Of those remaining, 25% make two calls and quit.

•  Of those remaining, 12% make three calls and quit.

•  Of those remaining, 15% make four calls and quit.

•  The clincher: 89% of sales to new accounts are made after the fifth call!⁵⁷

Credibility

You’re not only delivering a presentation, you’re developing mutual trust with the prospect. Without that trust, the sale breaks down. Your prospect should expect you to demonstrate your trustworthiness, competence, objectivity, and expertise throughout the selling process.

Lester Wunderman, “the pioneering father of direct marketing,” reminisces in his book, Being Direct, about a needs analysis early in his advertising career. Wunderman asked what results the prospect had enjoyed previously, but the man said he wouldn’t even share that with his ad agency. The two agreed on an exchange of letters that guaranteed confidentiality. Wunderman agreed not to divulge the prospect’s financial details if the prospect would agree to keep Wunderman’s proposals and pricing a secret. Each said yes, and Wunderman was able to show the prospect a way to attract new business.⁵⁸

Not every prospect will be so private, yet you’ll need to demonstrate that your prospect’s business secrets aren’t going to be heard all over town. The best way to build trust is to be honest. Begin by telling the truth. Prospects have uncanny antennae that can detect false claims and phony flattery (although, as Selling Power puts it, “A fake smile is better than a sincere frown”).

Sell the Benefits

Make no assumptions when it comes to your prospects’ needs and concerns. Tell your prospect why they are going to benefit from buying advertising on your medium. (See Figure 2–14.)

The fact that you’ve got the largest 18–34 female audience in town is good, but remember the advertiser’s main concern: “What’s in it for me?” It’s not just the size of the audience but how you can deliver that audience to that advertiser.

For instance, radio stations often make the mistake of using their wattage as a selling point. The prospect doesn’t care how powerful the station is. The benefit is that the advertising can be heard all over town or across two states. It’s the same message, but expressed in advertiser language.

For a proposal that puts the prospect’s needs first, see Figures 2-15 through 2-18.

There are exceptions. Some presentations you make as a seller will be product-focused, not benefit-focused. Professional buyers at advertising agencies, for example, expect product-based presentations that talk about ratings numbers because it makes their jobs easier. Product-based selling works well when selling a one-time event like the Super Bowl or the Olympics. The advantage: one presentation covers many prospects.

Get to the Point

Time and attention are the chief currencies of the twenty-first century. No one has time to waste, and attention is divided among too many stimuli. If your prospect has enough money to spend on advertising, you can assume he or she has a full and pressured calendar. Time is money, and wasting either will be a strike against you.

The way to get the customer’s attention is to provide helpful information that demonstrates your expertise. Narrow your focus to just a few important points and stick to them. Make sure everything you say sets up your key point, then supports and illustrates it. Complex and complicated are out, simple and effortless (for the buyer) are in.

Business writer Howard Upton reinforces that: “Ask IBM for details on a consumer product, for instance, and you will receive a printed piece covering that particular product. Period. Moreover, the IBM brochure will be clearly written.”

FIGURE 2-14  The product focus is CNBC’s report on a volatile stock market. The benefit to the advertiser is that viewer levels surge when there’s big news. Courtesy of NBC Cable Networks, Ad Sales Department, April 1998. ©1998, NBC Cable Networks.

Upton, former CEO of the Petroleum Equipment Institute, saw his share of sales presentations:

Skilled salespeople limit their presentation to the specific product in question and concentrate on explaining how that product will benefit the particular customer. They avoid distractions and refrain from confusing the customer with information overload.

“Successful salespeople … dispense customer information in measured amounts—neither too little nor too much. They realize that there is, after all, as much business peril in providing too much information as there is in not providing enough.⁵⁹

Presentation Tips

Has the client heard it all before? Most clients have been exposed to basic sales pitches before yours. Since that’s the case, you’d better come up with a new angle.

Your presentation will stand out if you have interesting (but brief) stories to tell. The stories should not be about you. Rather, make them success stories about similar advertising campaigns for similar clients or targeted for the same audience your prospect desires. Nothing is so convincing as hard evidence that other people have done the same thing you’re asking the prospect to do. When somebody tells you that you’re making a smart decision, it gives you comfort, right? That’s what testimonials are all about: other people offering reinforcement. Here are some examples of targeted testimonials:

FIGURE 2-15  Start a proposal from the client’s point of view. This prototype makes the client’s logo the largest item on the page, demonstrating that the subject of the proposal (and all the conversation that follows) will be the client. Note that the station information is in relatively small type. Developed by Mike Mahone of RAB for Welcome to Radio Sales. Used with permission.

•  BET presents a list of its clients to show a potential advertiser that their product will fit well into the current group of advertisers.

•  Letters from satisfied customers fill the pockets of presentation kits from many local cable operators who sell local advertising.

•  RAB canvassed its membership to collect 1,100 case studies and testimonial letters to show the power of radio.

Talk about colorful: Twentieth Television sends photos of agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully to potential X-Files advertisers. Bound behind the slick photo are ratings comparisons of X-Files against ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox prime time schedules to entice ad agencies to support X-Files in off-network syndication.

In another example, potential advertisers on TBS and TNT receive fat binders with elaborate pull-out pockets holding photos of stars and data about programming on the two networks.

National networks have the most elaborate graphics because they hope to sway advertisers who’ve seen just about everything. But local media can do the same on a lesser scale: Some of Forever Broadcasting’s radio stations call themselves FROGGY and include color photos of their “Mr. Froggy” mascot in the presentation packages.

FIGURE 2-16  The first section of the proposal takes its language from the consultancy interview or needs analysis. The three points will become the foundation of the entire proposal. Section 2, “The Research Shows … ,” positions you as a valuable marketing consultant and partner, not just another media seller. Courtesy Radio Advertising Bureau. Used with permission.

Give Your Numbers Impact

It’s hard to digest numbers, so give them perspective. In other words, relate numbers to something your prospect can visualize. For instance, a cable seller on Chicago’s west side might describe suburban DuPage County as “a population equal to Indianapolis.” The quarter-hour share for a Houston radio station might be “standing-room-only at the Astrodome.”

Design easy-to-read charts and graphs to illustrate your figures. I hate to give newspapers credit, but USA Today does a terrific job with the graphics they use to show polling results. The artwork adds to the understanding of the numbers behind the percentages.

Country Music Television uses Arbitron ratings for the country format on radio as a selling tool for the cable network. The CNN Airport Network uses an index of frequent travelers against the U.S. population to demonstrate the income potential of its audience.

Cable systems in markets 100 and smaller use Arbitron’s “RetailDirect Lite” to show advertisers qualitative data about viewers: banking services used, beer and soft drink consumption, plans to buy automobiles, grocery expenditures, and ten other qualitative categories. Cable sellers know who’s a potential user of the prospect’s product, and they have the numbers to demonstrate the fact.

FIGURE 2-17  Before a prospect considers your operation, you’ve got to sell your medium and its benefits. Here, the benefits of radio are outlined. Only then does the presentation turn specifically to the seller’s station. Courtesy RAB. Used with permission.

Make sure the numbers you use tell the story, not garble the issue. Best to keep figures to a minimum and use them to illustrate a point, not as the point in themselves.

Some prospects want numbers, numbers, numbers in their presentation. Your needs analysis should uncover that information. As an example, I presented a new music format to two partners who owned a chain of radio stations in the Southeast. My needs analysis showed that one was the creative force in the company, the other was a CPA and numbers cruncher. My presentation for them had two parts: one with lots of audio and visuals of modern rock bands, designed specifically for the creative partner, the other with stacks of research tables for the analytical part-

Use Questions

If you’ve taken journalism courses, you know the “Who, what, where, when, why, and how?” question sequence. The same open-ended questions work well in the selling setting, too. They encourage thoughtful answers in full sentences, not just a word or two. Questions encourage participation.

Questions help you secure agreement as you proceed through the presentation. Look for nonverbal signals that indicate whether you’ve connected. In sales, communication is your responsibility. If the client is not listening to you, it’s not the client’s fault, it’s the presenter’s fault.

FIGURE 2-18  Your client is buying more than a schedule, so sell solutions. Use a page to demonstrate how your commercials will solve the problems that were the basis for the entire proposal. Then, in the last section of your presentation, cover the details and get the client’s approval. Courtesy RAB. Used with permission.

If you’re not connecting with the client, address the issue right away. Questions like ‘Am I really on target for you?” and “Is there something else you would like to hear about?” underscore your sensitivity to the client’s response.

Questions work in both directions. You learn more about the prospect’s needs with your questions. Let the prospect ask, too, so you can fill in all the details that lead to closing.

Let the Customer Say “No”

Customers have a need to say no. It helps them maintain a sense of dignity and control. As Mark McCormack puts it, “No customer wants to be regarded as a pushover.” He suggests prefacing a great idea with a few lesser ones.

A better technique is offering several proposals that differ in price: one large, one medium, one small. Amy Bly and Robert Bly of the Center for Technical Communication call it “The Rule of Three.”

Before you sit down to bargain, you should have three figures or positions fixed firmly in your mind:

The maximum—the highest figure. The most you dare ask for without “blowing away” (the client).

The minimum—the bottom line. The lowest figure you’d settle for.

The goal—a realistic figure you have a good chance of getting. The goal is probably between 50 and 75 percent of the maximum.⁶⁰

If you use the three-step proposal, you should construct the one with the lowest cost so that it shows clearly how much better the medium- and high-cost proposals are in comparison to it.

Tom Hopkins calls this procedure “bracketing-up for money” and the “triplicate of choice.” Buyers often pick the middle price, especially if they’re buying tangible products (like office equipment) or services (insurance, for example). The natural response is the middle, in an attempt to avoid seeming either extravagant on the one hand or cheap on the other.⁶¹ See Figure 2–20 for a promise to recommend only the right plan.

Keeping Your Prospect Involved

When my wife and I were trying to decide on a new vacuum cleaner, the woman at the shop greeted us with a container of sand, which she threw on the floor. She handed Pam the business end of the Hoover “Wind Tunnel” vacuum we had seen advertised during Houston Astros games. Once Pam finished, she handed the machine to me, and in no time, the floor was clean. Now that’s involving the prospect!

Copier sellers do the same type of thing: they hand you a sheet of paper to feed into the machine. Sellers of telephone systems plug in the phones so prospects can push the buttons, hear the rings, and check the audio quality. Buying a new sofa? You wouldn’t buy without sitting on it, would you? A new mattress? I bet you’d stretch out on it and bounce on the edges before you’d buy!

You get the idea. Involvement techniques are like the auto dealer’s test drive. If a car seller gets a prospect behind the wheel, there’s “effective selling control,” to use Tom Hopkins’ words. The more the prospect touches and feels the merchandise, the better the opportunity for a sale.

The difficulty in selling electronic media is that there’s no vacuum cleaner to suck up strewn sand and no ability to “get behind the wheel.” Our intangible forms of media are made more tangible with ideas, however—recorded commercials from radio stations, storyboards from TV stations, and promotional tie-in opportunities.

Media kits like the ones I described earlier in the chapter also make our products more tangible. Media kits contain market and audience information, descriptions of programming, personality profiles, coverage maps (for radio, television, and cable), rate cards, testimonials, and press clippings.

Says Michael Keith in Selling Radio Direct, “Media kits do not sell a client, but they can certainly aid in this objective. Promotional materials say a lot about a station. They reveal it.”⁶²

A flashy, fun media package says the medium is flashy and fun. Nickelodeon’s materials reflect the whimsy of a kids’ network and the nostalgia of its sister networks, Nick At Nite and TV Land. (See Figure 2–19.) The Weather Channel uses an austere, factual presentation peppered with remarks designed to catch the reader’s attention, such as “If hell freezes over, you’ll hear it here first.”

Media kits are designed for the salesperson to use as visual aids to bring the medium alive in the prospect’s mind during a presentation. An effective seller uses parts of the media kit as integral elements of the presentation to inform and involve the prospect. For example, bringing out a profile sheet when you’re describing your medium gives you the chance to physically hand something to your prospect.

The A&E network’s presentation requires the prospect to unfold the kit itself and then open a cardboard tab to remove spiral-bound books and program information. USA Network puts its presentation in a black folio that looks like the box for a movie script. Prospects are involved immediately because they must remove an elastic band to open the folder.

A good salesperson doesn’t work directly from a media kit, Keith says. “Select in advance what parts of the packet you’ll employ. During a presentation, don’t dig through your pouch of materials like a circus clown does his bottomless, gag-filled satchel. You’ll just look silly.” Don’t take Keith’s “satchel” remark as a cue that you shouldn’t use tools, including gags, that enhance your presentation. His point is that you want to plan what you use.

FIGURE 2-19  A flashy, fun media kit says the medium is flashy and fun. The green plastic pouch that holds Nickelodeon’s presentation is the color of the slimy Gak that Nickelodeon splashes on unsuspecting kids. Even mundane ratings information is presented with flair and attitude. Used with permission. MTV Networks.

When Kerby Confer, Chairman of Sinclair Communications’ radio division, speaks to audiences about creativity, he often tells stories about his “big deal pen.” Out of his pocket comes a huge pen—probably 2 feet long. When he was a station salesperson, Kerby would put the pen on the edge of the desk and roll it toward his client. “I’ve brought the big deal pen, because I feel today’s the day you’ll sign the big deal you’ve been looking for,” he’d say. The client got involved immediately, trying to catch the rolling pen. Kerby got attention and earned a reputation for creativity and confidence.⁶³

Powerful Words

Words. Choose the right ones and you open doors. Mark Twain said it best: “A powerful agent is the right word.” He added a modifier for effect:”… those intensely right words.”

Practice using the best possible words to convey your meaning while portraying transactions in the most positive terms possible. It’s not what you say but how you say it that can make a difference between a sale and no sale.

Tom Hopkins uses the term “rejection words” for words that remind buyers that this is a selling situation—you’re making a sale to them. That may trigger fear. “Rejection words really work well,” Hopkins says. “They let you scare your prospects so much that most of them will reject you and your proposition.”

FIGURE 2-20  Ethics are alive and well! The radio stations owned by Forever Broadcasting include a pledge to their advertisers about how the stations will conduct business.

Here are samples of rejection words and their preferred alternatives:

Rejection Word	Preferred Word
Buy	Own
Commission	Fee for service
Contract	Paperwork, agreement, worksheet
Cost or price	Total investment
Deal	Transaction, opportunity
Down payment	Initial investment
Monthly payment	Monthly investment
Pitch	Presentation, demonstration, plan
Sell, sold	Become involved with the program
Sign	Okay it, approve it, endorse it, authorize it

Alternate words don’t change the fact that a sale is being made. They simply soften the effect on the buyer and help to reduce the triggers that send red flags up during the selling process. Those red flags make the buyer cautious, which may stall the momentum and turn into an objection.

Consider just one of the examples above, the word “investment.” What do you do when you invest? You put your money to work to bring income or other benefits. That’s why “investment” is a better choice than “cost,” “price,” or “payment.” Use your vocabulary to create value in the prospect’s mind.

The decision-making process is often more emotional than rational. By choosing the right words you tap the emotional side of your prospect. As an example, a question using the word “think” prompts a rational response. Instead of trying to get someone to accept an idea you’ve proposed by saying “What do you think?” try these approaches to trigger an emotional response:

“How does it sound so far?”

“Feels pretty good, doesn’t it?”

“Does this look like a winner to you?”

Appealing to the senses helps you gain acceptance for your proposal.

Use “pedestal words” to raise the other person to a level above the ordinary. Here are ten examples:

“May I?” Asking permission implies authority.

“As you of course know …” implies vast knowledge.

“I’d like your advice …” suggests superior wisdom.

“I’d sure appreciate it if…” implies that the prospect has the power to refuse or grant.

“You are so right.” A pat on the back.

“Spare time from your busy life” implies the prospect is a busy and therefore important person.

“Because of your specialized knowledge.” Implies skill, professionalism.

“A person of your standing.” No one knows just what “standing” means but everyone believes—or hopes—he or she has it.

“I’d like your opinion.” People on pedestals are supposed to have opinions, so if an opinion is asked, the person is immediately put on a pedestal.

“Please.” The great lubricator of human relations.

Do these words work every time? No, of course not. Yet they beat the alternatives every time.

The power of “the intensely right word” is demonstrated by Tom Hopkins when he reminds us that no one ever says, “Wait till you see what a salesman sold me today.” Instead, you’ll hear, “Wait till you see what I bought today.” Hopkins’ explains:

When people talk about what I bought today, they’re really saying, “Wait till you see the new status-raiser that I own as of today. They’ve done something. Now they want everyone to admire their wisdom, style, and power—and they won’t willingly share the glory with the salesperson who closed them.⁶⁵

Most buyers don’t want to admit that something other than their own choice entered the decision to buy. “Owning” a product or service allows them to maintain the dignity of their desires and decisions. “Buying” the same service means they’ve been unduly influenced.

In customer-focused selling, the sales process should be transparent so that the buyer makes the decision to own. As the seller, you’re a facilitator who creates a logical link between the customer’s need and the solution you sell.

In the next section, you’ll see that the link is not always logical. Nor is it always smooth. But you’ll also learn techniques to neutralize your prospect’s defense mechanisms.

Step Five—Answering Objections

The seller’s dream is to make a presentation to a potential customer and immediately hear the words, “I’ll take it!” More often, the seller experiences a rude awakening: “Your rates are too high!” Get used to it. This will not be the last time you hear that sentence if you’re serious about selling.

Part of your presentation should prepare the customer to hear the price or a range of prices. Examples of what other schedules cost in your medium help to ease the way. Choose your examples with care, and be prepared to help raise the customer’s sights.

Price, you’ll discover, is the easiest objection for a prospect to articulate. As you read in the last section, there’s often a deeper reason for not wanting to buy. It’s your job to probe for the true reason and to answer it with the benefit inherent in the schedule you’re proposing or the medium you’re selling. That way you neutralize the objection and win the business.

An objection is simply an expression of your prospect’s concern about advertising. On the surface, the objection seems to be a reason not to buy what you’re selling. You might even take an objection as rejection. Don’t. As Tom Hopkins puts it, “You don’t lose to objections, you win by handling objections.” (See Figure 2–21.)

The objections you encounter are likely to fit into one of three categories:

1.  An unspoken request for more information or clarification

2.  A defense mechanism on the part of the prospect

3.  A stalling technique

The good news is that objections can be resolved to the benefit of both prospect and seller. As Hopkins says, “Any active sales person will discover most of the built-in objections within the first month. A built-in objection is one that the prospect will give you nearly every time. After a few months in the business, the sales people will say, ‘I always get hit with that objection.’”

FIGURE 2-21  “The Man in the Chair” states his objections clearly and openly for sellers. Your prospect may not be so easy to read. This is the 1996 version, less confrontational than the original (see Figure 1–1) and more in tune with today’s selling style. ©1996, McGraw Hill Company. Used with permission.

Let that give you hope. It’s a positive sign if you know in advance what objections are going to arise while you’re selling. That gives you the opportunity to prepare not only your presentation but also your response to objections. Until you learn to handle objections adroitly, you cannot reach your potential as a seller.

Objections Versus Conditions

The example I used earlier, “Your rates are too high,” is typical of an objection. However, what if a prospect says instead, “I can’t afford to advertise on TV”? That’s a condition, not an objection.

The difference between objections and conditions is that objections can be overcome but conditions cannot. A condition is a valid reason for not buying, and it’s a reason for the salesperson to walk away.⁶⁶

Conditions should be discovered in the qualifying process. The major aim of qualifying is to determine whether there are conditions that make the sale impossible. Yet even the most skillful seller will sometimes overlook a signal in the qualifying process, thinking that it’s an objection that can be overcome.

When that happens, take Tom Hopkins’ advice: “Treat it like an objection. That is, try to break it down. If it doesn’t break down, it’s a condition, and you’ll need to develop the ability to swallow hard and then quickly and courteously disconnect from that prospect.”

If the prospect truly cannot afford to buy TV time, you, as a smart TV seller, should bow out. The reason to do it gracefully and to be pleasant about it is that the condition may someday be removed. If that prospect grows the business and the advertising budget, you’ll want to pitch again!

Walking away shows the difference between the old-style “close-at-all-costs” selling methods and today’s customer-oriented sales. (See Figure 2–22.) By saving the prospect a needless (and harmful) expenditure, you show respect and therefore win respect. The prospect’s doors are more likely to be open to you when the time is right.

FIGURE 2-22  I like the fact that this ad uses the phrase “salespeople that don’t know what the word NO means.” It weeds out candidates who can’t or won’t give all they can. Used with permission of Chancellor Media’s WAXQ.

When the Customer Says “No”

My company once published an article titled, “Selling Begins When the Customer Says NO.” We didn’t invent the phrase; we adapted it from selling literature that had been used for years. The phrase is essential to maintaining a positive attitude while you’re selling. It’s a given: you will encounter objections.⁶⁷

Objections need to be dealt with before you can move forward in the selling process, and addressing each objection specifically and completely gives your sale momentum. Your job is easier if you prepare in advance. Consider the following guidelines:

•  Expect the objection. If you anticipate it, you’ll be in control when the objection occurs. If you are caught off guard and hesitate before answering, the prospect will think you agree. You can forestall the objection by anticipating it and including it in your presentation. It’s best to address recurring objections early, so you appear objective and candid. That enhances credibility.

•  Understand the objection. When a potential customer has stated an objection, make sure you understand the comment. An answer that doesn’t satisfy the customer’s need distances you from the close. Use open-ended, probing questions. Don’t ask, “Do you watch CNN?” Ask, “How do you think advertisers evaluate their schedules on CNN?”

•  Reconfirm the objection. Restate the objection and position it as a benefit. Then ask if your statement is correct. Compliment the prospect for being so astute: “That’s a good point you’ve made.”

•  Address the objection. Once the prospect agrees, you have eliminated the objection. Now you are ready to counter the objection with another benefit. Empathize with the prospect: “I understand how you feel about our station’s teenage audience. The real value is the adult females we deliver, too.”

•  Close the sale. As soon as you have an agreement, try to close. The longer you wait, the more opportunity the prospect will have to come up with objections. (We’ll cover trial closes in the next section.)

Planning and preparation are the primary ways to deal with objections. According to Selling Power, there are four universal difficulties salespeople face when they deal with objections:

First, sales people discuss the problem instead of possible solutions. Accept the fact that the client is unhappy for a few moments, then deal with the facts and the negative emotions will quickly vanish.

Second, sales people overreact by blowing the problem way out of proportion. Don’t automatically assume that every objection is a major hurdle. Determine the true extent of the objection before you negatively prejudge your chances for making the sale.

Third, sales people often assume that the problem has been dumped in their laps and they must be the only ones who have to find the solution. That’s not true. Customers often come up with their own solutions, providing you ask them for their ideas and suggestions for coming to an agreement.

Finally, sales people tend to ignore the customer’s concerns instead of confronting the objection. While ignoring a fake objection is a good strategy, real objections should be addressed quickly. You don’t want a genuine objection to smolder until it bursts into leaping flames.⁶⁸

Ken Greenwood sees an evolution in the art of handling objections. In what Greenwood calls “old-style selling,” there was a simple format:

You presented; they raised objections. You handled the objections and you closed. They raised another objection, you turned it into a question, and you closed. In the scheme of understanding the sales process, objections fit neatly between the pitch and the close.⁶⁹

The fit is not nearly so neat now, because objections can arise anywhere in the process, even as early as when you’re trying to set an appointment with a prospect. Greenwood suggests that each of the four levels of sales expertise recognizes objections differently and handles them in different ways.

Novices, Greenwood explains, feel that an objection is a personal rejection. In their minds, they, themselves, are being rejected, not the proposal. “Out of this … mindset comes the idea that you ‘overcome objections,’” he says.

Second-level sellers, learners, feel their idea or product is being rejected, not themselves. “They transfer the objection from personal to product,” he explains.

Level-three salespeople—the competents—consider objections part of the sales process. “Often in their call planning,” Greenwood says, “they will do a little brainstorming or visualizing and anticipate objections they might encounter. They plan their presentation to eliminate as many objections as possible.”

Greenwood’s fourth and highest-level sellers, which he calls both “consultants” and “cocreators,” put the emphasis on the customer and the customer’s needs in such a way that the objection is separated from buyer and seller. The objection, therefore, is without ownership and can be stated in third-party language:

“So the reservation is the lack of guarantee, right?”

“The issue here seems to be change, and change is often difficult.”

“The implication is clearly made that the issue, the problem, the reservation (all words used instead of objection), is a neutral problem that we ought to consider,” Greenwood says. You’ll find your own approach to handling objections will evolve along with your selling skills.

Addressing Objections

I’ve taken Ken Greenwood’s lead in not using phrases like “overcoming objection.” Instead, I like to use “neutralizing,” “handling,” and “addressing” objections. Selling electronic media is not a confrontation, rather a consensus that leads to a solution for the buyer.

Here are some typical objections you’ll encounter and a brief discussion of how to handle each one.

“Your rates are too high.”

Probe to discover what the prospect is using for comparison. Another electronic medium? The newspaper? Find something the prospect is doing that may have high rates, such as an expensive location or a large, impressive sign. Remind the prospect that the money was well spent.

Compare the value. Stress that the prospect will be buying much more than an advertising schedule, such as the numbers reached, or the characteristics of that audience. Instead of the cost of the schedule, emphasize the cost of reaching individual customers and how it compares to other media.

Quote success stories from other advertisers. Remember that if price is the objection, then you haven’t made the case for the value of your medium or the schedule you’re selling. Remind your prospect that you don’t set the rates, your advertisers do. Rates are based on supply and demand. The fact that rates are high means that inventory is almost sold out.

As a general rule, put off discussion of price until the very end of a presentation, so you have an opportunity to demonstrate value that supports the price. The truth is, the only way to know if a price is too high is to quote it and ask the prospect to pay it.

“I don’t have the budget.”

Try to discover the prospect’s advertising budget during the qualifying process. Use the information (or your best estimate) to show the affordability of your schedule and demonstrate how your medium will reach potential customers.

Look for co-op or vendor money to augment the prospect’s limited budget. Tell the prospect how much assistance your organization or your industry group (TVB, CAB, RAB) can offer in securing vendor programs. (See Chapter 5 for more about co-op advertising.)

“My budget’s already spent.”

If you’ve estimated the prospect’s total budget you’ll know if that’s true. That means you’ve got a condition, not an objection. If so, prepare for the future by learning when the prospect commits the budget.

For example, a prospect says there’s no budget and two days later you see a full-page ad in the local paper announcing an annual October sale. You file the information for the following year. In August, talk to the client about the sale.

“I only buy newspaper.”

Quote the statistics about newspaper readership: there’s been a steep decline. Tell the client that buying your schedule helps to offset the decline. Newspaper reaches old, established customers. New customers are tuned to electronic media.

Suggest that the client refer to the newspaper ad in commercials on your outlet. “See our ad in today’s paper” reinforces the print and reaches the people who won’t read it.

“I tried cable (or TV or radio) and it didn’t work.”

Probe for more information. You may find that the prospect bought too short a schedule or targeted the wrong demographics. Maybe the commercial was poorly written or executed. Explore the likely causes of disappointment and explain how you will do things differently on the client’s behalf.

Use facts and examples to demonstrate the effectiveness of using your medium to reach the prospect’s potential customers.

“You can’t guarantee results.”

This calls for success stories and testimonial letters. If your qualifying and needs analysis uncovered friends of the prospect who have been advertisers on your medium, ask the prospect to call and learn firsthand about their results.

Network television sellers guarantee the size of audiences for their programs. If the shows don’t meet a certain level, the advertiser gets additional spots in other programs to make up for the shortfall. (See “Upfront Buying” in Chapter 6.)

“I’ve been advertising on Channel 2 for years. I don’t want to change.”

Find out when the prospect first advertised with Channel 2 and what influenced that decision. Reinforce the success the decision brought the prospect. Then ask how the prospect’s business will grow from this point on. You’re offering the means to reach an audience beyond Channel 2’s audience—new customers or a different mix of customers. It may be advantageous to compare costs.

“I’ll think it over.” “Let me sleep on it.”

The prospect may actually want to think about it, but it sounds more like a stalling device to me. Don’t allow “thinking it over” until you’ve probed to find out what they’re going to think about.

Summarize all the benefits you’ve presented that received a positive response. “The timing is right for your grand opening, right?” “You like using 30-second spots, right?” “You’ve already agreed that the cost is in line.”

Go back through all the yes answers you’ve received to ferret out that final no. Then answer it. The client may not want to sleep on it after all.

“Your cost per point is too high.”

As you’ll learn in Chapters 3, 4, and 5, cost-per-point (CPP) and cost-per-thousand (CPM) selling is the norm at agencies, especially those that buy national advertising. Sellers at the national broadcast, cable, and radio networks sell almost exclusively on a CPP or CPM basis. Automated systems like Maximi$er (see Figure 2–23) for radio or TVTrak for television allow you to hone in on the audience your buyer wants to reach.

Zero in on demos: the automated systems create demos that are not typical Arbitron or Nielsen demo breaks. Change dayparts by spreading the schedule into other hours. Radio and cable sellers target geography.

“I’m buying around you.”

The customer is saying, “I don’t need your outlet,” and you’re being challenged to prove that it’s not true. What can you show that demonstrates to the prospect that your operation is essential to the buy? Do other outlets being bought deliver the audience composition that mirrors the market? Or the prospect’s product?

“I don’t see media sales people.”

What you need is something other than media to talk with the prospect about. If you’ve done your homework, you know about the customer’s business or about something personal that gives you an opening discussion. Call with an idea for the church fund-raiser that’s so close to your prospect’s heart. That gets you in the door and begins a relationship that could blossom into a sale.

FIGURE 2-23  Create your own dayparts and custom reports with software that uses ratings data to tell the story. Television and cable sellers have similar tools. This one is Maximi$er from Arbitron, showing the comparison of women listening to News Talk radio to the Baltimore market overall. Courtesy the Arbitron Company. Used with permission.

“I’m not interested.”

That’s a sign the seller has not created interest. According to Selling Power, the best response is, “There’s no reason why you should be interested until I show you how it can help you make money and solve problems.”

Transactional Business

Some selling situations are better described as “buying situations.” You might find there’s nothing you can do to change the buyer’s mind, and there’s no way to overcome what you would classify as an “objection.” You may even get the order, but you get no more than the buyer intended to give you.

This situation arises in the advertising agency setting, where decisions are made about market coverage and media placement long before the buyer is involved. A media planner or media director makes the decisions and hands it off to the buyer for execution. If the process starts long before the buyer’s in the picture, it’s even longer before salespeople from various media are called in to make presentations.

This is called “transactional selling,” because it’s more a transaction than the give-and-take of the “consultant sale.” In transactional selling (as it applies to electronic media), there’s little input by the seller. This is a situation that requires matching the buyer’s cost-per-point target rather than using a more persuasive selling technique.

Lee Masters of E! Entertainment Television put it this way: “Selling national cable, ultimately, every buy comes down to demo. No matter how much [the national agencies] talk about qualitative, they’re concerned about quantitative.” In other words, how large is your outlet’s audience in the target they’re after?

Compare it to cashing a check at a bank’s teller window. The human teller is unnecessary in the transaction. Banks discovered this fact long ago and introduced ATMs and debit cards, reducing the numbers of face-to-face transactions and saving enormous sums of money. Does that mean the electronic media seller is unnecessary in the transactional sale? If the buy is made on a CPM or CPP basis, it’s virtually a computational function. As E!’s Masters said, “The buyer takes almost a factory approach. Selling skills come into play if [the buyer] is on the fence. If somebody is buying seven [networks] deep, selling skills determine how much I will get and at what price.”

There’s no reason why some buys of this nature could not be done in a purely computational way, with the agency’s target matched to a database of each medium’s performance. In fact, it’s been attempted with online buying services as www.buymedia.com.

How much transactional selling will you encounter? Ken Greenwood admits there’s no research on percentages of transactional against consultant selling, but his estimate is that consultant sales accounts for about 60%. “The figure may even be higher,” he says. “It’s certainly true in advertising, insurance and real estate, heavy machinery and high-tech.”

At the local level, there’s less transactional selling than at the national level. You’ll find more in large markets than in small markets, because large markets tend to have more business that flows through advertising agencies. Agencies are covered in more depth in Chapter 5.

Cheryl Vannucchi of Cable One in Santa Rosa, California, and Jennifer Baird of CNN in Chicago are both sellers of time on cable, but their jobs are at opposite ends of the selling spectrum. Vannucchi works completely in the realm of consultant selling, working with direct accounts like real estate brokers, restauranteurs, and bridal boutiques in Sonoma County. Baird, on the other hand, sells CNN, Headline News, and CNN’s Airport Channel and interactive services primarily to advertising agencies in her midwest region. Both women use their personal selling skills, but Baird spends more of her time in transactional selling, especially for the main network. “The benefits of CNN are known,” she says, “so the buyers know how to buy it. For the extension networks [Airport Channel and the interactive services] there’s a lot more selling. That takes relationship building.”

In transactional selling, you’re more like a commodity broker than a consultant seller. That’s not a value judgment; that’s a fact. It takes a keen analytical sense to judge the research information that’s required to present your commodity, that is, your medium, effectively.⁷⁰

Rejecting Rejection

Addressing objections is a natural part of the selling process. Tom Hopkins calls objections “rungs of the ladder to sales success.” Master seller Zig Ziglar calls them “the key to closing the sale.”

There’s a story that motivational speakers use about Thomas Edison’s work on the invention of the light bulb:

The biggest challenge Edison faced was finding a filament that would burn long enough to make the light bulb practical for use. Before he solved the problem, Edison conducted over a thousand experiments and wrote detailed notes on each one of them. None of them produced what he was looking for: a device to light a room electrically.

He developed a filament that worked for an hour or so. Next, he found one that worked for a full day. Next a week’s worth of light. Finally, the longer lasting bulb that makes us wonder how we could live without his invention.

Someone asked Edison, “How did you feel, failing over a thousand times?”

His answer: “I did not fail a thousand times. I learned a thousand ways it wouldn’t work.”

A true story? I hope so. It’s a perfect story for sellers who face both objections and sales that are not made. A nonsale can be considered as either a failure or a step to the next sale. It’s your choice.

A final note about objections: some customers have a need to say no. It helps to maintain their dignity, as I mentioned earlier, and it also helps them assure themselves that they’re not pushovers. You might find yourself pitching a few bad ideas before you pitch your excellent idea, just to get “no” out of the buyer’s system. Or, you may have to go back again and again. As Mark McCormack puts it:

I’ll go back to a potential client with another proposal, and yet another. I’ll do all sorts of things—send them newspaper clips, personal notes, invitations to events to let them know I value them, that there are no hard feelings, and that I still think we can do business together.

After spending so much time getting to know a potential customer, I’d be foolish to take his first or second or third no as a cue to cross him out of my life permanently. The way I see it, as the customer’s no’s accumulate, my odds of getting a yes increase.⁷¹

Getting to “yes” means closing. That’s the next step in the sales process.

Step Six—Closing

No one is happier than I am that selling and marketing are merging. The day of the high-pressure hard sell is long gone, because today’s customer is so savvy. But not every salesperson knows that.

A few years ago I was shopping for office space to see if my business would be better served from a different location in Houston. One rental agent drove me nuts, trying to close on virtually every comment I made: I said I liked the view, so he went for a close that had to do with the view: “You could be enjoying those trees every day, Mr. Shane. Will you put your desk in this corner or that one?” I commented on the carpeting, and he said, “Think of those rich blues greeting you every morning when you arrive, Mr. Shane. Shall I have the rest of the carpeting done in the same shade or a compatible gray? Finally, I had enough of his transparent closing techniques, and each time he tried one of the prepackaged closes, I asked where he learned it. “What do you mean?” he asked me. “That sounds like Charles Roth,” I’d say, “but you’re not being subtle enough.” Or, “That’s Tom Hopkins’ ‘Little Questions Close’ isn’t it? That’s not what Tom meant.” Or “That’s Ken Greenwood’s Alternate Close,’ right?”

The real estate salesman was not pleased. I don’t blame him, but “going for the close” in such a clumsy way was absurd. He had read the right books but he interpreted them the wrong way. He recited the words and phrases he had memorized rather than guiding me naturally and easily through the steps, allowing me to make the sale for him. Needless to say, he didn’t close. He didn’t even get to an effective needs analysis. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure he was even aware of what I wanted. He was so dead-set on closing at the wrong time.

What’s the right time? The right time is when all the questions have been answered and when all the objections have been discussed and resolved. In other words, when the prospect is ready. The first sign may be the point of negotiation. When the prospect is ready to talk price, you’ve entered the closing phase.

You’ll remember from my introduction to the sales process that some sales experts list negotiation as a separate step in the sales cycle. My feeling is that when negotiation begins, the close is in sight. Just the minor details are left to work out. (Of course, I admit that they don’t seem “minor” at the time!) That’s why I include the negotiation process here, as the first topic of conversation in the closing section.

FIGURE 2-24  This is not an affirmation, it’s a mandate. When I first saw this graphic in the newsletter The Competitive Advantage in 1991, I clipped it and saved it. When I need a motivator, I pull it out and post it where I can see it. The same idea might work for you, too. Thanks to The Competitive Advantage, 1101 King Street, Suite 444, Alexandria, VA 22314. 1–800-722–9221.

Many people look on negotiating as an unpleasant, stressful chore to be avoided at all costs. Because they’re not comfortable with the idea of negotiating, they feel they get the short end in bargaining sessions.

It’s true that the word “negotiation” conjures confrontation and risk-taking. You’ll even read about “opponents” and detect an adversarial tone in some literature on negotiation. To me that’s the wrong approach. It indicates that there will be a winner and a loser when the negotiating is over. To be effective, you need to negotiate so that both sides win. You win the order, and your customer wins the best advertising schedule.

Think of negotiation in the same way you thought of sales at the very beginning of this book: if everything is selling, whether you’re asking for a raise or deciding on a movie for the weekend, then everything is negotiation, too. That raise requires negotiating with the boss. The movie is the result of discussion about whether to go to a 30-screen cineplex or watch a video at home. It’s all negotiation.

Gerard Nierenberg, who wrote the first book on the formalized process of negotiation, The Art of Negotiating, says, “Whenever people exchange ideas with the intention of changing relationships, whenever they confer for agreement, then they are negotiating.”⁷²

In his book, It’s Negotiable, Peter Stark discusses a San Diego State University seminar on negotiation:

[T]he following question was posed to participants: How often do you negotiate–often, seldom, or never?

Surprisingly, over 36 percent of the respondents answered seldom or never. However, this was a trick question! The correct answer is always. Everything in life is negotiated, under all conditions, at all times: from asking your significant other to take out the morning garbage to merging into a freeway lane in rush-hour traffic, from determining what time to schedule an appointment with a client to deciding which 11:00 o’clock news program to watch with your family—every aspect of your life is spent in some form of negotiation.⁷³

Negotiation takes place throughout the sales process. The moment you meet your prospect, negotiation begins. You’ll negotiate for an appointment, for information, and for a chance to make a presentation.

In the discussion on presentation, I suggest “The Rule of Three” from Amy and Robert Bly. Before you bargain, have three figures fixed in your mind: (1) the maximum, which is the highest figure, the most you dare to ask; (2) the minimum, which is the lowest figure you’ll settle for; and (3) your goal, which is the figure you have the best chance of getting.⁷⁴

In an article published by the Center for Technical Communications, the Blys say: “It pays to be optimistic and aim high when setting your maximum. When negotiating, try for your goal but be prepared to accept any offer between the minimum and the maximum. In some cases you may be surprised to find that the maximum is approved without argument.”

On the other hand, you might also find that the customer wants to spend something less than your minimum. It’s very important to know your minimum—how low you will go. Be prepared to walk away from any figure that’s a penny lower.

The Blys suggest that you set the rules in negotiation:

The person who controls the negotiation is usually the one who has set the guidelines. …

To do this, say, “Before we get started, I’d like to go over the situation as it stands, and outline what we hope to accomplish here.”

Then go on to state things as you see them. The other person will generally agree, interjecting only to make a few minor modifications to what is basically your point of view. Thus, when you begin to negotiate, you’re in control of the situation—because you defined it.

Key elements to success are being prepared and being able to choose the time and place. You can control the preparation, but often you cannot control the venue. Your prospect will likely be an agency or a retailer who will want you at their location for your negotiation.

That makes it essential that you plan your negotiating strategy in advance. What type of order do you want to get? Are you going for rate? For the largest amount you can get? For share of budget?

In your planning, you need to know what concessions you’re willing to make and what you’ll give up in order to move the process forward. Good negotiators suggest letting your concessions get smaller and smaller as you go along so you give the impression that there’s nothing more to give. Hold on to those items you’ve decided to give up until critical junctures in your negotiation talks. If you surrender something too early, you look too easy, and it makes the other side greedy for more.

Victoria Ruttenberg, a Washington, DC-based lawyer who advises on negotiation, suggests role-playing in practice sessions so you can anticipate the other party’s tactics. “Not just what position they’re going to come up with, but why. And not just the business reason why, but what else is driving them.”⁷⁵

Like any management skill, negotiation can be learned. If you enjoy dealing with other people, and you’re committed to creating a win-win outcome, it’ll be easier for you. The fact that you want to be a seller says you enjoy solving problems and coming up with creative solutions. Approach negotiation with that attitude, and you’re on your way to closing!

If You Can’t Close, You Can’t Sell⁷⁶

You’ll remember that line from reading it earlier. It’s a chapter title from Secrets of Closing Sales, by Charles B. Roth and Roy Alexander. The book is a sales classic that has guided more than 200,000 sellers since it was first published in the 1940s. It introduced Roth’s “master closing formula,” which you’ll learn in just a few pages. His formula, along with countless “closing techniques” that can be memorized and rehearsed are all effective tools for the seller.

In the wrong hands, “closing techniques” are as dangerous as they are effective in the right hands. Rehearsal, repetition, and study are essential, but only if they make the close a natural part of your sales process. By reading closing formulas and memorizing phrases, you make the process second nature.

The reason for rehearsal and memorization is to prevent your having to think about it when the time comes. Here’s a nonsales scenario as an example:

You’re driving at 60 miles per hour, and a car cuts in front of you. There’s no time to articulate the situation, but if there were, you might hear yourself saying, “That’s a Volvo S-70, moving 55 degrees to the right. I’m going 88 feet per second. It will require 12 pounds of pressure to my brake pedal to stop about three feet shy of a collision.”

Instead, without the slightest hesitation, your brain communicates with your hands and feet: Hit The Brakes! And you do.

The more you drive, the more practice you get. Repetition prepares you for quick reaction to dangerous situations. The same is true in sales. The more you practice the language of closing, the easier it is to say the right words without thinking about them. If you’ve prepared yourself for closing the way you prepared yourself to meet objections in the last section, your response will come naturally, smoothly, and—most importantly—at the appropriate time.

Financial sales trainer Bill Good says that every salesperson needs at least six different closes “memorized and instantly available.”⁷⁷ There are more than six in the coming pages, and you must assimilate them into your own personal style. The minute you spew canned closes like a robot, you run the risk of blowing the sale, just like the hapless real estate seller I mentioned earlier.

What Is Closing?

Sales trainers will tell you that closing is everything, but like a fine wine, closing is better in its own time. A salesperson who beats a customer into verbal submission is not going to get much repeat business. That’s old-style selling. Yet it’s still true that “If you can’t close you can’t sell.”

Closing is the payoff for all the work you’ve done: the prospecting, qualifying, needs analysis, presentation, and answering objections. As sales trainer Chris Lytle puts it:

You do the consulting for free. You do the commercial for free. You write the proposal for free. All of that may take hours, and you may or may not get paid for it. When the client says, “yes,” you collect commissions for the schedule’s duration.⁷⁸

Since closing is the payoff, closing is perceived as the glamour part of the sales process. It’s the one point in sales when you want to shout “Yes!” for everyone to hear. Zig Ziglar insists that “the close is no more, or no less, important than any other phase of the sales process.” He makes his point by reminding us that if there’s no prospect, there’s no chance to close. If there’s no presentation, there’s no close. And so forth through the selling steps.

Ziglar’s right, of course. All the steps in the sales process are equally important because together they create the atmosphere that solves the buyer’s problem with the solution the seller offers.

In Personal Marketing Strategies, Mike McCaffrey calls closing “the natural conclusion,” because that’s the point in the sale when you and the buyer want something agreeable to each of you. “There should be nothing dramatic about the natural conclusion, or close,” McCaffrey says. “It should be as its name implies, natural. Closes are not climaxes, nor should they be. As a part of a total sequence of events, closes should be the mutually satisfactory result or outcome of the whole selling presentation.”

Before we study closing techniques, let’s review some rules for getting to the “natural conclusion”:

1.  Assume you will close. Go into your presentation expecting to make the sale. McCaffrey calls this “an attitude of as-sumptiveness.” The seller approaches the situation with confidence, as if, using McCaffrey’s words, “it would be unnatural if you didn’t reach a mutually satisfying conclusion.” Expecting to close makes you ready to close. You take the appropriate materials, you watch the prospect’s closing signals, you stay cool and confident even though your adrenaline is pumping.

2.  Summarize needs and wants. What surfaced during your needs analysis and your presentation? All the problems, concerns, and situations you uncovered that led you along the path to a sale should be recapped. McCaffrey advises that this step should take only a minute, long enough to let the prospect know that you’ve listened, and that you’ve matched your solution to the needs.

3.  Summarize solutions. During your presentation, you reached agreement on specific solutions your advertising schedule will provide the prospect. This summary is confirmation that you’ve matched solution to need. Next, emphasize that advertising is a solution, and your proposal is the best solution to the prospect’s problems.

4.  Help prospects fantasize. In the previous section, you read powerful words that help to create a positive mood for the prospect. Take that a step further–encourage the prospect to visualize their commercial message on the air. Speak in the present tense as if the schedule has already been bought. Talk about when the prospect sees the commercial, not if. You’re selling adjacencies to show-business, so involve the sponsor in the show business aspect of your medium.

5.  Close early. It works especially well when the benefits are already known or are easy to explain. “There’s a :30 available in the 11 O’Clock News, and I knew you’d want it.” Some salespeople go for the close moments after the first handshake. “I’m here to get your order, provided I can prove its value to you.”

6.  Ask for the order. You’d be surprised at how many salespeople go through a presentation and never ask for the business. They’re afraid of rejection or afraid of appearing pushy. It happens more with newcomers to sales than with veterans, but no one’s immune to the tendency.

You don’t have to say the specific words, “May I have an order, please?” but it helps. You want to communicate to your prospects that you want their business. I find that saying something like, “We’re ready to get this schedule on the air when you give the go-ahead” is a good signal to the client.

I also like to say to a prospect, “My staff is eager to get to work on your project.” It indicates commitment of all the company’s resources, and in our case it happens to be true.

7.  Shut up! Tom Hopkins adds these two most important words at closing. Ask a question that prompts a close. Give the prospect a chance to answer your question and commit to the buy. It may lead to an awful silence, but the minute you talk, you take the pressure off the prospect.

The Master Closing Formula

Closing seems so simple when you look at short list of rules from Secrets of Closing Sales. Here is Charles Roth’s “master closing formula”:

1.  Make every call a selling call.

2.  Try early in every sale for a close.

3.  Close on every resistance.

4.  Keep trying time after time.

On the surface, Roth’s formula sounds like the old days of adversarial sales, where the seller won and the buyer lost. It’s true that Roth first put his ideas together in the 1940s when that was the attitude of too many sellers. However, the “master closing formula” holds up in today’s customer-focused selling, too.

Obviously I don’t recommend twisting the arm of the buyer on first meeting (or ever). Showing a sense of purpose in your initial call and in your needs analysis interview sets the tone. By approaching every call as a sales call, you offer something that you can close on later.

Dickie Rosenfeld, the long-time general manager of Houston’s KILT stations, accused sellers of being “visitors” when they didn’t try to close. Charles Roth calls them “loafers” and “goodwill ambassadors.” Not very flattering words.

The idea of closing “on every resistance” is a way to keep you selling even in the face of blustering objections. Some prospects are willing to say, “No sale, I’m not interested” just to test you. Your best response may be to ask for the order, because they don’t expect it. It won’t work every time, of course.

When sellers take full advantage of Roth’s closing formula, they add closing techniques to their arsenal of selling strategies, maneuvers that have been tested by sales professionals in a variety of fields. As I said before, the power of the techniques is in knowing them so well that they’re second nature to you. They must sound as if they’ve come from you personally, not from this book or a sales seminar.

Closing Techniques

Remember the real estate seller I used as an example at the beginning of this section? You sure don’t want to sound as shallow and mechanical as he did. Closing techniques must be sincere and transparent to the customer.⁷⁹

Sales books and sales seminars are full of “closes.” Some of them leave me cold because they don’t sound real. Consider, for instance, the “secondary question close.” It’s a statement of the decision, followed by another question that involves the buyer at another level. The tip-off of a secondary question close is the opening phrase: “The only decision we have left is….” That’s followed without a pause by the phrase “by the way” and a choice between two other options. Here’s an example:

“The only decision left is when you’ll start benefiting from the JX7546 gizmotron. By the way are you going to use it in the new plant or in the existing warehouse?”

“I see that the only decision left is when to start our janitorial contract. By the way will you clean the main factory first or use the service at your home?”

Maybe I just can’t hear myself saying those words. Not surprising, some salespeople do better with one technique and not others.

Assimilate the techniques that fit your personality, then make them second nature. When the situation arises, you’ll be able to recognize it, say the words naturally, and close naturally. Finally, match the proper technique to your prospect’s style and pace. Here are some different closing techniques.

The Direct Close

This is basically asking for the order. Use a question or phrase that yields agreement: “Can we go ahead with this schedule?” or “Let me write this up so you can be on the air Thursday night.”

The Deadline Close

You are about to be sold out. The special package rate ends Friday. The rates go up on the first of next month. Tell your prospect they should buy now before the deadline arrives. One key to the deadline close is there’s no bluffing or you’ll lose trust.

The Choice Close

Following the “rule of three,” you’ve offered three options for scheduling. Now follow with a question: “Which package do you prefer, the first, the second, or the third?” Prospects feel less trapped when they have several choices to consider. Tom Hopkins calls this close the “triplicate of choice.”

The Ben Franklin Close

Remind the prospect that Benjamin Franklin, “a founding father and a wise man,” would make his decisions by drawing a line down the center of a blank sheet of paper and listing the reasons for and against the decision. (Franklin wrote “reasons for” and “ideas opposed,” according to Zig Ziglar.)

In the “for” column list a key benefit, preferably one that is emotion-based, “You like our morning show,” for example. Then begin the “against” list with the objection you heard most during the presentation. Some sellers complete the “for” list first. Some alternate. You as seller should bring out the objections. It proves you were listening. Anyway, if you don’t, the prospect will, so take charge.

Don’t number the points as you make the list, but total them at the end of the process. If you’ve done your job there will be more in the “for” column than in the “against” column. Analytical, fact-oriented prospects will appreciate the approach. It makes the seller seem fair and objective.

This technique is also called the “balance sheet close” and the “t-account close.”

The Higher Authority Close

Before you visit your prospect, you know there’s a specific question coming, so you prepare with a little help from an important friend.

Contact a well-known client who had the same question during one of your presentations. Look for a client who is satisfied with the performance of your schedule and who accepted your answer to the objection or question you anticipate. The client needs to have a high enough profile to be “the higher authority” in the eyes of your current prospect.

When the questions arise, write them down. When the list is complete, ask to use the phone on your prospect’s desk. “You know Jim Johnson at Hondaland, don’t you?” (Even if the prospect doesn’t know him personally, you’ve chosen someone who is seen and heard regularly.) Place the call and let Jim Johnson answer the prospect’s questions.

This is a situation where preparation is vital. The higher authority must know your call is coming and must be willing to field it for you.

The Make-Me-an-Offer Close

If the prospect makes you an offer, there’s an intention to buy. Save this technique for late in negotiation, because it usually results in some sort of concession.

If you can keep it from being a price concession, all the better, such as: “You know this plan is right, so make me an offer on something other than price, and I’ll see what I can do.” Or “Make me an offer of how many promos you want and I’ll see what I can do.” Or “Make me an offer of how you’d like to participate in the promotion and I’ll see what I can do.”

The Three Qiiestions Close

Zig Ziglar teaches his own salespeople to use this close when they’re selling Ziglar training:

1.  Can you see how using this sales training course would increase your sales?

2.  Are you interested in increasing your sales?

3.  If you were ever going to start increasing your sales, when do you think would be the best time to start?

Replace “sales training course” with “schedule” or “promotion” and the questions apply to selling electronic media.

Speaking of questions, I’ve seen sales books that recommend taking a customer’s question and turning it into your own closing question. For example, the customer says, “Could we run Monday through Thursday?” The sales technique suggests asking, “If I schedule it that way can I get the order?” It sounds like a neat tactic, but what if the customer’s answer is no? Then you’ve lost the order.

A better approach would be when the customer asks, “Could we run Monday through Thursday?” you answer, “Absolutely!”