Ten steps to selling like an ad agency

Here are ten key lessons learned from the Palm Beach Post's internal ad agency that can be used by local media of any size and type. Use these take aways to create a full on Innovative Client Solutions Team, or just advance an agency-style sales culture. Thanks to Chuck Gerardi, VP of Business Development and Suzanne Pepper, director of Innovative Client Solutions at the Palm Beach Post for sharing their expertise.

1. Know your customers. 

The first step in committing to providing what advertisers want is to find out.

The Post used Frank Magid & Associates to survey customers:  They wanted to see more of sales reps,  experience less product-pushing and more real help with digital strategies.  For more of these insights here's  the summary,  but there is nothing like looking at real answers from your own advertisers for inspiring - and backing up - new initiatives. Surveys also point out which products and services customers want to buy.

Another company used extensively by the Sacremento Bee for ongoing research is Ram Company.  In a pinch Survey Monkey   is  free and simple for non-expert researchers to to deploy (we used it to test what content the audience for this site really needed). Using Survey Monkey avoided bottlenecks;  questions can created by the ad director in a few hours and the survey itself can be set up by an intern. Most of the time spent is in creating and getting feedback on the right questions to ask.  If you are in the middle of an organization whose vision lacks clarity, arm yourself with this research!

2. Train AE's to conduct a more sophisticated needs analysis

To thwart product-pushing,  Palm Beach Post  created a double needs analysis, first for the key business challenge (conducted by the AE) and then for all of the strategic marketing issues (conducted by an analyst) before products and strategies are suggested.

AE's  are  trained to identify the most important need,  or KMC, Key Marketing Challenge,  a tool also  from Center for Sales Strategy, CSS.  Require reps to ask clients for - and bring back - top business objectives and challenges. They will quickly identify businesses who don't have specific marketing objectives and who just "want to increase sales,"  but who are also engaged and interested. 

Sales representatives then take back a specialist to conduct a long form marketing interview;  that unearths competitive situations, unique selling propositions and explores digital issues.  A similar analysis it on this site  here.

If you are serious about agency-style selling, make finding the  client's key business challenge a mantra in your department. Ask reps early and often what "key challenges"  their clients are having.  At The Post, knowing the key marketing challenge is the "entree pass" for obtaining a full brain-storming session. 

3. Put the best creative horse-power to work generating creative campaign ideas

The Post redeployed a group of  mostly existing (15 of 16) creative designers and analysts (the new sales support)  into a separate "Innovative Client Services" group, reporting to the VP of Revenue Development.  The group has one creative designer per  per every five sales people, and the creative team is responsible for collectively  brainstorming ideas campaigns.

Minimally, a portion of the creative team should report through the revenue side, otherwise they are more concerned with productivity standards rather than quality standards.

For small companies, even one full time creative assigned to the sales department can make a huge difference. Since this removes designers from high volume production - and can pay more - its a high status position designers  compete to earn. Test by rotating deisgners through this role to see who flourishes.

A couple of simple solutions for very small companies under budget constraints: Have designers apply for a 'lead designer' position that is paid more and given the leeway to work "outside the workflow" on campaign ideas, including attending brainstorming sessions. Have a plan for regular or for scheduling "brainstorms" that pull in others (sales reps, designers or?) for an hour. You could reserve a regular time - Friday afternoon - for accounts that need creative help.

Media companies whose production is centralized elsewhere should ALWAYS have a designer onsite - even a part-time one - to just work on campaigns.

4. Use  formal brainstorming techniques

The Post uses technology from CSS a sales strategy consulting group, but there are a number of free resources online. A wonderful list we plan to use here was found at MindTools.com; it includes not just general tips, but also six or seven techniques to increase the production of ideas (besides having great names like The Crawford Slip and The Charette Procedure.)  The difference between formal and informal brainstorming is this: A great session at The Post can yield 60 to 100 ideas, and participating clients are "blown away" by the results. So learning how to do this right can be energizing to the whole team. 

Practice makes perfect so don't expect to be great at this from the get go. One of the first brain-storming sessions at The Post was "botched", but after the second or third, the account closed and is on track to spend six figures.

5. Focus on high-potential accounts, not just big ones

We all love the big accounts!  But mid-sized accounts often have solid businesses and are  under-spending or only buying a single product.  Chuck Gerardi considers this the "sweet spot."  Identify the 20 to 25% of businesses with the most potential for a more thorough marketing meeting with an  expert, analyst, digital specialist or manager - whomever you use to help get clients to open up and talk about their digital marketing and business issues in more detail. 

6. Get used to a longer close cycle

Anticipate a longer close cycle - and some resistance from sales representatives to taking more time to close sales.  Tell sales reps they can also expect larger orders and more repeat business from the new process. Convince them by showing them the larger contracts and year-to-year increases from clients as they occur. 

7. Evaluate clients based on quality

The Post does not use a "dollar cut-off" to decide which of their more expensive services customers will get, but since a brainstorming session is free and can take up to three hours of a seven person team, some means of allocation is required.

The sessions are reserved for mid to large clients, but budgets can be moderate. It's not an exact science.  

Primarily they draw a distinction between companies who don't have clear marketing objectives  and ones that do.

Companies no real plan get the MSM (Marketing Strategy Model) from an analyst (these customers may not have pre-allocated budgets; but be willing to spend if they had more help identifying objectives and strategies). 

Companies that already have  marketing objectives are ideal for full brainstorming sessions. For example, customers have included a medical facility that wants to promote a specific division and has a number of other objectives, a mid-sized business that wanted to promote a large anniversary celebration and a mall that needed to overcome bad press about a foreclosure and bring people in for weekend events. In all these cases, the objective was already clear, so the brain-storming session could be highly effective in creating the "big idea" for a campaign.

(The Post  plans to move transactional customers - one who just want to pay for an ad and don't want to engage in marketing meetings - to self-serve with support from call centers.

8. Set internal goals for higher level campaign brainstorming.
No initiative lasts long that isn't measured, and no new expense will prevail past the next budget unless  it is justified. So track creative brainstorming sessions and results. The Post executives can rattle off their 15 to 20 brain-storming sessions a month, and plans to double this number. They also track closes on these campaigns, and the collective overall performance of these accounts, especially important when justifying the cost of deploying creative services in the ways mentioned here. 

9. Aim to fill "any need" by provide a variety of products and services  

The Post aims to provide customers with whatever products and services they need, from Facebook services to providing extra promotion of Twitter feeds. Using the "second call with an expert" solves the problem of having to train sales representatives to be "experts on everything,"  which Gerardi maintains is no longer possible.

Having a suite of products that customers need and want is an important leg of the agency model, in the long term the agency model does not stand up without that leg. For smaller organizations, keep reading this site to find new, easy to deploy solutions to selling things like social media. There are a number of good third party partnerships (The Post uses Ballyhoo Media to provide social media services). 

10.Close the feedback loop
Often the hardest part of the sale is tracking 'what happened.'  Closing the feedback loop allows everyone involved in the campaign to benefit from the accumulated knowledge.

Part of management's job is to create a solid system to make this happen. In short, campaign sales, results and other outcomes such as renewals, should be collected, posted on one sheets and made available to both the designers and the sales representatives, both as resources and training tools. (Don't forget to email great creative and top performing campaigns to LocalMediaInsider, alisacromer@gmail.com). This is a best practice at The Post's Innovative Client Solutions department and one that should be emulated. 

The author, Alisa Cromer is publisher of a variety of online media, including LocalMediaInsider and  MediaExecsTech,  developed while on a fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute and which has evolved into a leading marketing company for media technology start-ups. In 2017 she founded Worldstir.com, an online magazine,  to showcases perspectives from around the  world on new topic each month, translated from and to the top five languages in the world.

Keywords