price, and responsive service.
Agencies depend on the media for their existence. Their incomes are based to some degree on how much advertising they buy; conversely, the media depend on agency buying decisions for much of their revenue. As a result, agencies and media continually perform a ritualized, arm’s‐length waltz: Agencies try to buy at the lowest prices possible, and the media try to sell at the highest prices possible. This is a good example of an ambivalent, co‐dependent, love‐hate relationship.
A further complication is that agencies tend to be defensive about their accounts because of the tenuousness of agency–client relationships. Although clients and agencies have contracts that normally spell out the financial details of relationships, rarely is a long‐term commitment involved. Agencies will serve their clients because of an advertiser’s trust, faith, and, too often, whim.
Advertisers might drop an agency for a number of reasons: advertiser personnel changes (a new person at the client wants to make a change); new personnel at the agency (the client does not like an agency’s new creative director); agency plunder (agencies target other agencies’ clients); or moving the digital media buying in house. Salespeople who call on agencies must learn to deal with the complex needs and behaviors of agency people, particularly of media buyers.
Media buyers are in the bottom echelon of an agency’s media department. They are typically overworked, unappreciated, and underpaid. They are the agency’s infantry troops slogging through mountains of media research and media proposals. There is little wonder that buyers tend to be defensive, given the pressure under which they work. They are particularly touchy about salespeople calling on their clients.
Calling on clients.
Some media salespeople, especially those from magazines and television networks, frequently make sales calls on both the advertising agency and the agency’s clients with the blessing, or at least the grudging cooperation, of an agency. Generally, the larger the agency, the more secure it is with its relationship with clients. The higher the position of a person in the agency hierarchy, the less that person usually objects to media salespeople calling on the agency’s clients because they hope the salesperson can convince the client to increase the client’s advertising budget. However, buyers, who are far down on the organizational ladder, normally do not like salespeople calling on their clients, especially if it is to complain about a buy or to make waves of any sort.
If you feel it is necessary to stir things up to get your message across to a client, and a buyer has told you not to call on the client, then sell your way up through the agency’s media department (through the associate media director to the media director to the vice president in charge of media). All along the way, tell your medium’s story; tell the agency why you want to see its client and exactly what you are going to tell the client. Someone higher up will finally give you permission to see the client because he or she will realize that, in the final analysis, the agency cannot keep you away if the client agrees to see you, plus, you might get the client to invest more in advertising.
The secret of getting agencies’ permission to call on their clients is to keep the agencies involved all along the way and to go over your proposals with them so they will be assured you are not going to make them look bad.
Numbers and data are a security blanket.
As mentioned previously, agency selling is numbers‐ and‐data‐oriented selling, as opposed to direct selling, which is usually results oriented. Since an agency’s performance is difficult to measure, anything that has a number associated with it is eagerly grasped as a measurement device. In broadcasting and cable, ratings are used as a tool to evaluate an agency’s media‐buying performance. Online, impressions are currently the quantitative criteria, and in print magazines and newspapers, circulation is generally the quantitative criterion.
If a buyer can bring in a campaign on budget for the desired audience or impressions level, the agency and the buyer have a way of quantifying their performance to their clients. The agency and their clients feel secure with the numbers because they are tangible evidence of the fact that the agency performed its service and exercised good buying judgment. Therefore, do not expect agencies and their clients to give up their security blankets. You have to play the game using their rules, and their rules place emphasis on numbers and data, not on results.
Still, if agencies and their clients take refuge in the security of numbers and make their media buys based on ratings, impressions, and circulation, you might well ask how a salesperson makes a difference. It is because numbers are so absolute and finite that salespeople can make a difference. In fact, in a numbers‐oriented selling situation, salespeople are the only difference, because a 10 rating is a 10 rating is a 10 rating and 1,000 impressions are 1,000 impressions are 1,000 impressions. Buyers continually need reassurance that what they are buying will turn out to be what they hoped for. In their hearts, they know that numbers do not walk through doors and buy products, but that people do. Buyers know that ultimately they will be judged by their clients on the overall effectiveness of their advertising campaigns. If buyers buy very efficiently in media that have the wrong demographics or to which no one pays attention, then their campaigns will not be successful. So, agency buyers depend on media salespeople to help them by keeping them thoroughly informed about the various media: demographics, attentiveness and engagement levels, programming and content changes, demographic changes, and anything that will help them evaluate the media better and make better buys. In other words, agencies want excellent, helpful, and responsive service.
Communication skills.
The International Radio and Television Society (IRTS) conducted a survey among important agency media buyers in New York City several years ago. The buyers were asked to name and rank the characteristics they thought were most important for a salesperson to have. The following list resulted from the study:
1 Communication skills – clarity and conciseness, not oral skills or flamboyance, were ranked as most important
2 Empathy – insight and sensitivity
3 Knowledge of product, industry, and market
4 Problem‐solving ability – using imagination in presentations and packaging
5 Respect
6 Service.
7 Personal responsibility for results
8 Not knocking the competition
Summary
Personal selling for a media company is a fascinating and worthy craft that involves dealing with people, who are complex and basically trustworthy. Even though the media are often under attack, selling for a media outlet often gives salespeople access to high‐level executives who appreciate the media’s ability to grab their customers’ attention.
Virtually all media selling involves digital advertising in some manner, and digital advertising is highly complex and requires new approaches for the digital era. The serving‐the‐customer, focus‐on‐customer‐success, and selling‐as‐educating approaches require teaching prospects about your product and the complexities of digital advertising, tailoring your offers to customers’ individual needs, and taking control of the conversation. Exhibit 2.2 summarizes the new assumptions, new approaches, and trends that have been brought on by the Internet, the increase of digital advertising, and the growth of automation and artificial intelligence
