Our Blog
The More You Know. The Stronger Your Brand. The More You’ll Sell .
Increase Your Personal Contact with Advertisers, And Sales Will Improve.
In-person advertiser sales contact has declined steadily over the past five years. That’s one of the many insights from a recently completed five-year trend analysis of our Advertiser Intelligence Reports (AIR). The analysis covered nine biannual waves of AIR, from 2007 through 2011. While we expected to see this trend among traditional media, where the number of media decision-makers has also declined, we were surprised to find that the fall-off in personal sales contact with advertisers is widespread across all media – print, television and digital. In fact, the analysis revealed that in-person sales contact among digital advertisers experienced the largest decline of all media measured. Why?
Last year I moderated a panel of leading digital media sellers and buyers, where we discussed a variety of methods for selling media. When it came to face-to-face selling, the sellers’ overwhelming conclusion was that they have intentionally shifted from the less efficient “in-person” media selling to more efficient electronic forms of contact (i.e. phone, email and IM). Most of the media buyers on the panel agreed, and many said that they preferred electronic communication. However, one of the buyers disagreed, stating that phone calls and email are fine, so long as a relationship has been established. Which, she went on to say, happens best with an in-person sales meeting.
AIR confirms it. Wave after wave shows the positive relationship between in-person sales meetings and advertiser buying intentions. Regardless of medium, those media brands with the highest levels of in-person sales contact also possess higher buying intentions than their competitors with lower levels of in-person sales contact.
To sum it up, media sellers need to increase the volume of in-person sales contacts with marketers and their agencies. Those that do will improve their advertising sales success.
Leave a Comment:
-
Wow… great information!
Comment by Frank Papsadore on October 28, 2011 at 6:04 pm
