Selling Ads: Closing the Deal -- Part III
Posted on Tuesday, November 30, 2021 at 4:02 PM
Selling ads involves more than just great feature-benefit statements.
First, you need to probe your prospect to determine what he or she needs
and how you can fulfill that need.
By William Dunkerley
A
productive way to appeal to a prospective advertiser is to focus your
presentation on his or her specific needs and interests. But how do you
know what they are?
Get the prospect to tell you. That's the most
effective way. In Part II we discussed three variant techniques:
--Taking
an open and friendly personal approach (extroverted personality).
--Using
an understated sincerity to sound reliable and trustworthy (introverted
personality).
--Asking survey questions to engage the prospect
(either personality type).
While different personalities will be
better suited to different techniques, there is one connecting thread:
It is really important that the salesperson get the prospect to do a lot
of the talking. The focus of the call must be on the prospect, not on
your publication. That's the purpose of the first phase of a sales call:
to establish rapport and to probe.
That means each of the above
techniques should net the same result. You need to find out where to
focus your sales presentation from data elicited in the probe.
The
Probe: Getting to Know Your Prospect
Your probe should yield
two valuable pieces of information: First, you want to learn what the
prospect’s needs and interests are, what he or she wants to do. Second,
you need to determine for yourself which needs and interests the
prospect can satisfy by advertising in your publication.
Once you
know those things, you can start talking about your publication. Do that
by explaining how advertising in your publication will help the prospect
achieve his or her objectives. Be specific. Don't offer generalized
brags about your publication.
In our last issue, while discussing
the "survey questions" technique, we suggested these questions:
--What
position do you see your company playing in the market?
--How long
has your company been active in this market?
--How long have you
personally worked in this market?
--What do you think your company's
best accomplishments have been?
--What competitive threats do you
face?
--What are your expectations for the market in the future?
--What
are you aiming to accomplish in the next twelve months?
The idea
behind these questions is to get the prospect talking and, hopefully,
revealing what his or her objectives are.
The Feature-Benefit
Statement: Delivering Your Pitch
Once you are comfortable in
knowing those objectives, you can transition the conversation from
probing to delivering targeted feature-benefit statements.
Let's
examine that with a hypothetical situation: Say you publish a magazine
about consumer communications technology. Your readers are at companies
that are professional users of related equipment and services.
Advertisers are the producers, providers, distributors, and sellers of
such.
You are talking with a prospect that is a major nationwide
distributor. You've learned from your probe that the prospect company is
dissatisfied with its market share in the move to 5G technology.
The
following conversation ensues:
Ad salesperson (A): From what
you've told me, it sounds like you need to gain ground in 5G. Is that
right?
Prospect (P): Yes, we have competitors out there that are
moving ahead of us.
A: Do they have more visibility than you?
P:
Yes, they are larger companies, with greater resources.
A: So you
really need to find a way to achieve greater visibility?
P: That
would help a lot, yes.
A: Actually, that is something we can help
you with. You see, over 90 percent of our readers have a strong interest
in 5G. Our latest survey attests to that. Catching their interest would
be helpful to you, wouldn't it?
P. Well, yes, I guess.
A:
The best part is that our readers are the decision makers in the buying
process. Almost all of them are involved, and 75 percent make the
decisions themselves. These are the kinds of people whose attention you
need, right?
P. Yes, of course.
A. I have a direct
recommendation for you. We can run a conspicuous ad about what you offer
and the benefits of doing business with you in our next issue. Our
readers are hot on 5G and represent the kinds of prospects you want to
reach. How quickly would you able to get your ad to us? We can offer
help in production if that would expedite things.
So that was an
attempted close. It's what is called an assumptive close. It is not
appropriate in all situations, but in this one it seemed appropriate.
This
simulation is somewhat truncated for brevity. In practice, you would
cover points in addition to gaining a competitive advantage.
Will
the prospect go along with the close? Will you get the sale? Or will the
prospect respond with an objection? In a future issue, we'll discuss
resistance handling along with other strategies for closing.
One
final note: Observe that the ad salesperson was asking a series of
questions that were designed to elicit a "yes" response. Some say that
if you get the prospect to answer a series of questions with a "yes," he
or she will be more likely to say yes when you attempt to close. It's a
technique worth using.
William Dunkerley is principal of
William Dunkerley Publishing Consultants, www.publishinghelp.com.
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