Ad sales reps give nearly every excuse imaginable when it comes to sales goal failure. Excuses range from a bad economy...to changing deadlines…to the diminishing importance of print…to working for a real jerk.
The truth is your advertising sales success is only as good as your ability to adapt and overcome the situations before you. This applies to the ad sales game and in life. It’s not about having the number one media in the market. It’s not about making 85 outbound calls per day.
Ad sales success is about having consistent, disciplined actions and the ability to understand basic human behavior. And in the ad sales game, it means gaining insight into what motivates your advertisers.
Daily practice and customer motivations are at the very heart of my ad sales training program. I’m going to share with you my own personal example. Early in my sales career, I struggled.
My journey started out with some serious questions:
- What are the main reasons people do not buy from me?
- What can I do to make it easy for customers to buy from me?
- What steps do I need to take to better connect with my clients?
- How can I develop those steps into an actual process that could be practiced and repeated with each new client, resulting in more sales?
I soon discovered that there were 4 areas that needed to be addressed if I wanted to grow my sales business and myself.
Here are my 4 truths of ad sales training success:
1. People don’t do business with strangers. Provide relevant, personal information about yourself.
2. People don’t like change. Give other concrete success stories as examples.
3. People don’t buy what they don’t understand. Consider a more “visual” sales approach with hands-on data and graphics that they can take to final decision-makers.
4. People don’t like to make hard decisions. Streamline your contract process.
Next week I will walk you through my 4 truths and give you some sound strategies to overcome clients’ objections. If you can adjust your ad sales program with some fine-tuning, you will be on your way to meet your ad sales goals.
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More about Ryan Dohrn: Ryan is President of 360 Ad Sales Training, an internet & sales consulting firm focused on developing print and online revenue strategies for magazine publishers.
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