Exhibit 2.2 Assumptions, approaches, and trends
| New assumptions | New approaches | Trends |
| The Internet caused a fragmentation of the media.The Internet increased the opportunity to target customers.Programmatic disintermediated buying and selling.The Internet caused an explosion of complexity in the advertising ecosystem.Internet advertising is under attack. | A teaching, tailoring, and taking‐control approachA serving, partnership approachA selling‐as‐educating approachAlgorithms‐as‐the‐competition approach | The customer burden of solutionsThe rise of the consensus saleIncreased risk aversionGreater demand for customizationAI is changing all steps of selling |
Because media selling today requires focusing on a customer’s success, a salesperson’s number one objective is to get results for customers. Other objectives are to develop new business, to retain and increase current business, and to delight customers. The numberone sales strategy to accomplish these objectives is to create value for your product. Other strategies are to research and develop insights into prospects’ and customers’ problems, challenges, pain points, and competitive positioning. Key tactics are to create a differential competitive advantage, to build relationships, and to solve problems, and functions related to the key tactics are to monitor the marketplace, to recommend tactics, and to cooperate.
Much of the remainder of this book will be spent helping you develop the attitudes, emotional intelligence, skills, knowledge, opportunities, preparation, and persistence necessary to become a salesperson who can help both direct buyers and agency buyers make effective and efficient media investments.
Test Yourself
1 What are the three old and four new assumptions that this book makes about media selling?
2 What are the elements in the AESKOPP approach to selling?
3 What are the four approaches for the digital era?
4 What is the difference between tangible and intangible products?
5 What is the mission of a sales organization?
6 What are the four objectives of a sales organization?
7 What are the five strategies, three key tactics, and three related functions of a media salesperson?
8 What is the difference between missionary and service selling?
9 What are the two types of customers, and what are the differences between them?
10 What are the main differences between what direct clients and agency buyers want?
Project
Make an appointment with the person responsible for purchasing advertising at a large advertiser in your market (not at an advertising agency). This person might be the sales manager of a large automobile dealer or the head of marketing at a large hospital. Interview this person and ask him or her what they expect of media salespeople, what attributes they would like to see, and what kind of service they expect. Make a list of these answers and compare them to the answers that professional media buyers gave in the IRTS survey in this chapter. Are there any differences? What are they? What did you learn from this exercise?
References
1 Auletta, Ken. 2009. Googled: The End of the World As We Know It. New York: Penguin Press.
2 Blanchard, Ken and Bowles, Sheldon. 1993. Raving Fans. New York: William Morrow.
3 Dixon, Matthew and Adamson, Brent. 2011. The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation. New York: Portfolio/Penguin.
4 Hari, Johann. 2018. Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression—and the Unexpected Solutions. New York: Bloomsbury.
5 Kohn, Alfie. 1986. No Contest: The Case Against Competition. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
6 Pink, Daniel. 2011. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. New York: Riverhead Books.
7 Pink, Daniel. 2012. To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others. New York: Riverhead Books.
8 Stewart, Tom and O’Connell, Patricia. 2016. Woo, Wow, and Win: Service Design, Strategy, and the Art Of Customer Delight. New York: Harper Collins.
9 Weinberg, Mike. 2013. New Sales Simplified: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development. New York: AMACOM.
Resources
1 Examples of RFPs (http://www.mediaselling.us/downloads.html)
Notes
1 i In March, 2019, Google announced it was abandoning the second‐price auction system and was adopting a first‐price auction system that is standard practice in programmatic, real‐time bidding (RTB) bidding for available inventory.
2 ii Google changed the name of AdWords to Google Ads effective July 24, 2018.
3 iii Google changed the name of AdWords to Google Ads effective July 24, 2018.
4 1 Auletta, Ken 2009. Googled: The End of the World As We Know It. New York: Penguin Press.
5 2 Ibid.
6 3 Ibid.
7 4 Ibid.
8 5 Ibid.
9 6 John, Leslie K., Kim, Tammi, and Barasz, Kate. 2018. “Ads that don’t overstep.” Harvard Business Review, January–February.
10 7 Manjoo, Farhad. 2018., “Tackling the Internet’s central villain: The advertising business,” The New York Times, January 31.Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/technology/internet‐advertising‐business.html .
11 8 Benes, Ross. 2018. “People Believe Ads Are Becoming More Intrusive.” Retrieved from https://www.emarketer.com/content/people‐believe‐ads‐are‐becoming‐more‐intrusive .
