Читать книгу Media Selling - Warner Charles Dudley - Страница 43

Adopting serving‐the‐customer and focus‐on‐customer‐success approaches led to a third new approach to selling in the digital era, that of selling as educating.

Media Selling, 4th Edition recommended a systematic approach to selling that broke down the sales process into six steps: (1) prospecting, (2) identifying problems, (3) generating solutions, (4) presenting, (5) negotiating and closing, and (6) servicing. These steps have changed because of the disruptions caused by the Internet. You have learned from reading about The Challenger Sale research above that the identifying problems and generating solutions steps are no longer viable in the digital‐era selling process because they put too much burden on prospects who do not have time for answering questions about their problems to which salespeople can offer ready‐made solutions. Prospects want customized solutions, but only after they understand more about the complexities and possibilities of advertising in the digital age.

Virtually all media selling today includes some element of cross‐platform selling, for example selling both the print and digital editions of The New York Times. Therefore, the old presenting step of selling has been replaced by an educating step because the presenting step was based on an assumption that prospects were familiar with the medium being presented and were able to evaluate one‐size‐fits‐all solutions.

An educating step makes no such assumption and focuses on teaching prospects about the complexities and opportunities of digital or cross‐platform advertising. Also, prospects and buyers want to be kept up to date on the rapidly changing media ecosystem and technology. In a 2018 column in Radio Inc, Beasley Broadcasting’s VP/Sales, Bob McCurdy writes:

I recall several years back when Kim Vasey, a Senior Partner Director of Radio at GroupM addressed our sales staff and reinforced this message, stressing the need to continue to “educate and re‐educate” clients and ad agencies, citing turnover and the difficulty of staying on top of all the new developments in media. This challenge is even more acute in 2018.¹⁹

Therefore, educating and re‐educating prospects, customers, planners, and buyers not only meets the needs of those selling media but also meets the needs of those buying media.