(By Loyd Ford) Everyone has the same amount of time in a day, a week, a month, and a year, but the pressure to produce is relentless. Business owners feel it every single day. That constant pressure makes them feel that time isn’t on their side.
In what’s shaping up to the The Big Data Century, what advertisers and business owners don’t have is the same knowledge as experts in marketing. That’s us.
What they are looking for is the truth and only the truth. They shrink from sellers because they don’t feel they get what they need from them. Listen to me. Even if a potential client thinks they know something, that doesn’t mean the knowledge they have is correct. Your opportunity is actually showing advertisers how to solve their problems and supporting your story with data.
Not Just About The Data
If you’re in sales, your job is to create a narrative that educates the buyer and helps guide them to a proper and effective solution for their problems. That’s not easy today unless you arm yourself with storytelling tools that are compelling and deliver the ordering principles of commanding data that prove what you are saying is the safest path in a risky world. Just like when you enter a courtroom and face a judge, it’s the person who tells the best story that wins.
If They See It, They Buy It
If you’ve been in sales any length of time whatsoever, you know that when someone can see it, they are much more likely to buy it now.
When advertisers see value, they often buy immediately.
Balance Your Approach
- Listen more than you talk. Become skilled at getting prospects to talk. Buying is their story; not yours.
- Always bring value to potential clients and existing advertisers because constant value increases their desire to see you while limiting access to others.
- Do your prep and pull your data together to tell your prospect the story you want them to see. Don’t underestimate the value of data in telling a story, but don’t allow the raw data to be your whole story. Weave the data into a story for credibility.
- Practice identifying buying signals. The better you get doing this, the better your closing ratio will become.
- As they have said for a thousand years, know when to “seize the day” and make your move.
We talk a lot about what you can and cannot control. You can’t control who buys and who doesn’t. You can control your attitude, your process, and your strategy to be the solution again and again to help others.
Give others what they want and they will give you what you want.
Loyd Ford is president and chief strategic officer at Rainmaker Pathway Consulting Works (RPC). They help local radio with ratings and revenue. Reach him anytime at 864.448.4169 or [email protected]. Read Loyd’s Radio Ink archives here.
