salesperson has three key tactics to use on a day‐to‐day basis to help them carry out their broader strategies:
1 To create a differential competitive advantage
2 To build relationships
3 To solve problems
To create a differential competitive advantage
Salespeople who cannot find ways to create differential competitive advantages for their product and for themselves are merely order‐takers or clerks who wait on customers and process transactions, and they will not build a long‐term career in the highly competitive environment of media selling.
To build relationships
A relationship must be built on mutual trust and respect, and salespeople must take the long view when managing a relationship. The relationship between a salesperson and a customer does not end when a sale is made; it is just beginning of the relationship from the customer’s point of view. The relationship should intensify over time and help to determine a customer's buying choices.
To solve problems
Salespeople must be creative in solving advertising problems that get results for customers. The objectives of a salesperson begin with getting results for customers, and a salesperson’s key functions end with solving problems for them. You cannot get results unless you learn first to discover and then solve problems.
Related functions
A salesperson has three functions that support the key tactics:
1 To monitor the marketplace
2 To recommend tactics
3 To cooperate
To monitor the marketplace.
Salespeople must provide information to their management and other salespeople about competitors in all media – their pricing, strategies, content or format changes, management and ownership changes, advertising and promotion strategies, and sales strategies and tactics. Competitive intelligence is vital to your management in determining your company’s competitive strategy.
To recommend tactics.
A salesperson should recommend new selling tactics, new questions to ask, new packages, promotions, and changes in selling approaches to their management as a result of what they learn on the street about what competitors and other media are doing.
To cooperate.
It’s important for all salespeople in your department to learn from each other’s experiences – successes and failures; to help the sales department meet its strategic selling objectives; to cooperate in completing reports, expense accounts, and insertion orders (IO) accurately and on time; to help with promotions, parties, and events; and to cover for other salespeople who are absent. Departments in which the mode of operating is cooperative are more productive than those in which the operating mode is competitive, according to Alfie Kohn in his 1986 book, No Contest: The Case Against Competition.
These are the key tactics and related functions for salespeople. Their responsibility is to demonstrate an intelligent effort (DIE) in carrying out these tactics and functions. In other words, not only must digital‐era salespeople do what they are supposed to do to carry out these tactics and functions, but they must also let their management know that they are doing so diligently, that they are implementing the company’s strategy which management has designed to reach the company’s objectives.
An outline of the above approaches, mission, objectives, strategies, key tactics, and related functions can be downloaded onto your smartphone so you can refer to it often and so it can act as a reminder at www.mediaselling.us/downloads.html.
Exhibit 2.1 details how the competencies of salespeople in the digital era have changed from those previously required. Hiring managers are now looking for people who can analyze data, think strategically, and learn the business.
Digital‐era media salespeople also need to apply the competencies listed in Exhibit 2.1 to two different types of selling.
Types of Selling
Now that you have a foundation consisting of the assumptions about and approaches to digital‐era media selling, you need to know how to apply them to different types of selling.
There are two basic types of selling: missionary selling and service selling. Successful salespeople must apply a selling‐as‐educating approach to whichever type of selling they are engaged in. Often salespeople are described as hunters or farmers depending on the type of selling they do.
Exhibit 2.1 Salespeople require different competencies than they did two decades ago
| Percent appearance in job profiles | Percent appearance in job profiles | ||||||
| Top competencies in the past | Pre‐ 2000 | 2000– 2009 | 2010 – 2014 | Top competencies today | Pre‐ 2000 | 2000 – 2009 | 2010 –2014 |
| Develops sales leads | 30% | 12% | 8% | Prioritizes tasks through logical analysis | 10% | 15% | 17% |
| Commits time and effort to ensure success | 20% | 12% | 6% | Embraces strategic vision/implements corporate direction | 0 | 8% | 13% |
| Qualifies prospects with standard probes | 45% | 9% | 7% | Ability to learn the business | 0 | 2% | 10% |
| Willingness to deal with multiple tasks | 20% | 7% | 3% |
Controlled work approach
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