Driving newspaper revenues higher: How to sell more multimedia advertising over the phone

By Bob Davis

Over the last few years, my company—Robert C. Davis and Associates (RCDA)—has been working with newspaper organizations to help them sell multimedia advertising. In some cases we have helped our clients build multimedia sales centers from the ground up. In others, the task has been to train and coach existing inbound classified reps to make outbound multimedia sales calls. Our experience in these efforts has taught us a great deal about what drives desired results.

Hire the right people. This may seem obvious, but it is clear that not everyone is cut out for outbound multimedia advertising sales. We have learned this the hard way when trying to convert inbound reps into outbound sales stars. Many simply do not have the personality for it. We believe in training and coaching people to do the job, but some individuals just do not have the right traits. When building an outbound sales team, it is critical to test reps for several key traits:

• Empathy

• Resilience

• Energy

• Persistence

• Social boldness

Use good lists. Studies show that as much as 40 percent of success in an outbound campaign is tied to good lists, and our experience supports these findings. Not all prospects are created equal. The multimedia sales rep’s job is to call prospects who are not advertising and are too small to be called on by an outside sales rep. But this does not mean to call on just anybody. Most markets have tens of thousands of prospects, and management must target the prospects and manage the lists.

It is unfortunate indeed to go into a multimedia sales center and see reps spending time on the Internet or looking through the yellow pages for the next prospects to call. They should be on the phones. Almost as bad is to see reps wasting hour after hour calling prospects who are unlikely to buy. You may have 397 nail salons in your market, but is this a list your people should spend a full day calling? Without a doubt, building good lists is hard work that requires exceptional management skills, but it’s much more profitable than using bad lists. Here are a few tips:

• Find businesses in town that do not advertise with you, but that look like your current advertisers.

• Determine the characteristics of businesses that advertise on radio and TV.

• Build a target profile and create a list of businesses that fit it. If you don’t have sufficient resources to generate the list in-house, work with a good list broker.

Create and manage a campaign calendar. Even with the very best lists, the right timing is essential. Calling the snow removal people in the fall and the lawn maintenance people in the spring seems like a no-brainer. But without a campaign calendar to coordinate what lists to call and when, many great dates and opportunities to sell will just slip by.

Insist on 200 dials daily. Keeping the right pace is another key to successful outbound multimedia sales efforts. We believe in the effectiveness of 200 dials daily per rep, and we insist on it. To reach their sales goals, reps must keep dialing and not spend time looking up or Googling the company they are going to call next. When management provides excellent lists and firm campaign objectives, reps hit this number of dials consistently, and it shows in higher sales.

Measure ROI daily. Like prospects, not all campaigns are created equal. To keep reps focused on the campaigns that can make the most profit for the organization, measure your return on investment for each campaign daily.

Have a Quality Conversation. This is the most important and interesting part of the process. As we have talked with thousands of prospective advertisers, it continues to impress and amaze us how many people—after just a minute or two—will open up to a stranger who has called them and asked with a caring demeanor about their wants, interests and needs. The most important thing that we strive to understand is the advertising motive. As we ask prospective advertisers the right questions with genuine interest, they open up and provide the road map to the sale. It’s all part of a proven process in five basic steps:

• An enthusiastic Greeting

• Discovery questions to determine the prospect’s wants, interests and needs

• A Solution conveyed by centering on features and benefits

• An Offer that shows how the features and benefits fulfill the prospect’s wants, interests and needs

• An assumptive Close

Manage the pipeline. It would be nice to think that every sale could be closed on the first call. However, the truth of the matter is that most of the biggest and best sales take several calls. With a level of activity at 200 dials or more per day, a pipeline of interest will grow very quickly.
This pipeline must be managed, and this is the job of the sales coach, who should ask:

• How many leads are being generated by each sales person?

• What is the value of each lead?

• What is the next step to take with each lead?

Then, the sales coach must manage each next step to help the reps close the sales.

Considering the number of advertisers a newspaper has versus the number of businesses in the market, the potential for driving multimedia sales is tremendous. But simply increasing outbound efforts is not enough. It must be done using a proven, targeted and well-managed process.

Bob Davis is the president of Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net), a consulting firm in Alpharetta, Georgia, specializing in improving sales, customer service and retention results in customer contact centers across North America. Bob is also co-founder of Surpass (www.surpasscalls.com), a highly specialized outsource customer contact center serving the needs of business clients across the country.

A virtual Ellis Island: Selling online services to digital immigrants—and to new arrivals on the docks

By Bob Davis

Recently, the publisher and vice-president of advertising of a major newspaper sat down with me to listen to the recorded sales presentation by a 20-something online telephone sales rep in the newspaper’s multimedia sales center. It was an eye-opening experience. The prospect, a tire store owner, replied, “Can you send me something that spells all that out? I am having trouble following what you are saying.” In this case and countless others like it, the rep was a digital native speaking in a new lexicon—and the prospect was a digital immigrant yet to learn and understand the language. How can the prospect make a purchase decision when he can’t decipher the pitch?

My consulting organization has been helping clients deal with this challenging issue. The question is, how do you communicate your online value proposition to someone who did not grow up digital—an immigrant to the new world of online advertising—or to a business owner still on the docks of this virtual Ellis Island?

It is so easy for digital natives to fall into their own language when talking to a prospective advertisers. They use terms such as organic search results, pixels, RON, CPM, SEO and skyscrapers. These terms mean little or nothing to digital immigrants, and a prospect who is confused does not buy. If online advertising sales people are going to be effective, they need to communicate in a way that makes sense to their prospects.

So, what is the best way to communicate with digital immigrants? It is critical to remember that they tend to be smart business people who know how to make a profit and will be interested in the value proposition of online advertising—if we can just explain it in the language they understand.

Here are some tips:

Tell success stories. Nothing sells like success stories. Ask your online advertising sales people to share them. If they don’t have many on hand, insist that they go out and collect more. If your online offerings are helping other businesses, and you share the specifics with prospects, they’ll see how online advertising will drive desired results for them, too.

Talk in terms of the prospect’s interests. The discovery step of the sales process is critically important. It is the key to what I call the Quality Conversation. And, if handled correctly, discovery gives sales reps all the information they need to talk in terms of the prospect’s interests. Reps should ask discovery questions such as:

• Do you have a website?

• What did you hope your website would do for you when you set it up?

• How has your website lived up to your expectations?

• When the last time that you polled your new customers to find out how they came to do business with you?

When reps know what their prospects have tried, what works, and what hasn’t worked, they’ll be in a better position to relate online advertising offerings in terms of each prospect’s interests.

Make your sales presentation easy to understand. There are many market realities associated with online advertising that will resonate with advertising prospects and drive the sale. For example:

• Eighty-seven percent of all consumers research online before they buy, making a strong online presence essential to businesses. If businesses are not where their potential customers can find them, they will be out of the game.

• Online advertising prices are at low introductory rates. Their return on investment will be better now than at any other time.

• Online offerings are limited, so now is the time to get the best placement.

Prospects understand these kinds of value propositions for online advertising very quickly, and they respond positively.

We work in an industry that continues to adapt to the evolving world of online advertising, and innovative thinking reaps high rewards. So let’s keep the conversation going. I encourage you to share your experiences and ideas by leaving your comment below or sending me an email at bob@robertcdavis.net.

Bob Davis is the president of Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net), a consulting firm in Alpharetta, Georgia, specializing in improving sales, customer service and retention results in customer contact centers across North America. Bob is also co-founder of Surpass (www.surpasscalls.com), a highly specialized outsource customer contact center serving the needs of business clients across the country.