Related functions
A salesperson has three functions that support the key tactics:
1 To monitor the marketplace
2 To recommend tactics
3 To cooperate
To monitor the marketplace.
Salespeople must provide information to their management and other salespeople about competitors in all media – their pricing, strategies, content or format changes, management and ownership changes, advertising and promotion strategies, and sales strategies and tactics. Competitive intelligence is vital to your management in determining your company’s competitive strategy.
To recommend tactics.
A salesperson should recommend new selling tactics, new questions to ask, new packages, promotions, and changes in selling approaches to their management as a result of what they learn on the street about what competitors and other media are doing.
To cooperate.
It’s important for all salespeople in your department to learn from each other’s experiences – successes and failures; to help the sales department meet its strategic selling objectives; to cooperate in completing reports, expense accounts, and insertion orders (IO) accurately and on time; to help with promotions, parties, and events; and to cover for other salespeople who are absent. Departments in which the mode of operating is cooperative are more productive than those in which the operating mode is competitive, according to Alfie Kohn in his 1986 book, No Contest: The Case Against Competition.
These are the key tactics and related functions for salespeople. Their responsibility is to demonstrate an intelligent effort (DIE) in carrying out these tactics and functions. In other words, not only must digital‐era salespeople do what they are supposed to do to carry out these tactics and functions, but they must also let their management know that they are doing so diligently, that they are implementing the company’s strategy which management has designed to reach the company’s objectives.
An outline of the above approaches, mission, objectives, strategies, key tactics, and related functions can be downloaded onto your smartphone so you can refer to it often and so it can act as a reminder at www.mediaselling.us/downloads.html.
Exhibit 2.1 details how the competencies of salespeople in the digital era have changed from those previously required. Hiring managers are now looking for people who can analyze data, think strategically, and learn the business.
Digital‐era media salespeople also need to apply the competencies listed in Exhibit 2.1 to two different types of selling.
Types of Selling
Now that you have a foundation consisting of the assumptions about and approaches to digital‐era media selling, you need to know how to apply them to different types of selling.
There are two basic types of selling: missionary selling and service selling. Successful salespeople must apply a selling‐as‐educating approach to whichever type of selling they are engaged in. Often salespeople are described as hunters or farmers depending on the type of selling they do.
Exhibit 2.1 Salespeople require different competencies than they did two decades ago
| Percent appearance in job profiles | Percent appearance in job profiles | ||||||
| Top competencies in the past | Pre‐ 2000 | 2000– 2009 | 2010 – 2014 | Top competencies today | Pre‐ 2000 | 2000 – 2009 | 2010 –2014 |
| Develops sales leads | 30% | 12% | 8% | Prioritizes tasks through logical analysis | 10% | 15% | 17% |
| Commits time and effort to ensure success | 20% | 12% | 6% | Embraces strategic vision/implements corporate direction | 0 | 8% | 13% |
| Qualifies prospects with standard probes | 45% | 9% | 7% | Ability to learn the business | 0 | 2% | 10% |
| Willingness to deal with multiple tasks | 20% | 7% | 3% | Controlled work approach | 5% | 3% | 8% |
Source: Cespedes, Frank V. and Weinfuter, Daniel. 2015. “The best ways to hire salespeople.” Harvard Business Review. Used with permission.
Hunters are salespeople who have the personality, motivation, experience, and preference to do missionary selling which involves developing new business – finding new partners to a medium (television, online, for example) and to a media outlet (a station or a website, for example) – and typically involves calling on customers, including local retailers, and not calling on advertising agencies. Missionary selling is also commonly referred to as direct selling.
Farmers are salespeople who have the personality, motivation, experience, and preference to do service selling, which includes calling on, servicing, and getting increased business from current customers. Service selling typically involves calling on advertising agencies.
Both types of selling require the ability to build trusting relationships with different types of customers and partners.
Two types of customers
In their Harvard Business Review article “Make sure your customers keep coming back,” F. Stewart DeBruicker and Gregory Summe identify two types of customers: inexperienced generalists and experienced specialists.29 In media selling, examples of inexperienced generalists are smaller customers, often retailers and others called on direct (those who do not have an advertising agency), who are new to advertising in a medium. Examples of experienced specialists are advertising agency media buyers. DeBruicker and Summe point out that selling and creating value strategies to these two types of customers must be different.
Inexperienced generalists typically do many jobs