The Sales Sat Nav for Media Consultants: The Roadmap to More Revenue in the Sale of Advertising Materials 3658407336, 9783658407339

Table of contents :
Preface
Acknowledgment
Contents
About the Author
1 Follow the Course of the Road—The Preparation and Research Avenue
Abstract
1.1 Keep Your Sales Funnel Well-Filled
1.2 Qualifying and Disqualifying
1.2.1 Does the User Base of Your Medium Match the Target Audience of the Customer?
1.2.2 Looking at Your Existing Customer Lists
1.3 Where Can You Find New Customer Potentials?
1.4 In Slices or in One Piece? Call in One Piece!
1.5 Calculate Your Ratios
1.6 The Importance of Trust and How it Arises
1.7 Knowing Your Customers
Reference
2 Turn Right—Conversation Starter with Pattern Interruption
Abstract
2.1 The Phone Call with the Head Office
2.2 The Phone Call with the Assistant
2.2.1 The Technique of the Counter-Question
2.2.2 The Expert Technique I
2.2.3 Expert Technique II
2.2.4 The Methodology of Universally Transferable Statements
2.2.5 The Please-Help-Me Technique (Benjamin Franklin Effect)
2.2.6 The Role-Reversal Technique
2.2.7 The Amazement Technique
2.3 The Phone Call with the Decision Maker
2.3.1 Step 1: The Conversation Opening with the Anticipation Technique
2.3.2 Step 2: Building Trust
2.3.3 Step 3: Addressing Indisputable Personal Facts
2.3.4 Step 4: The Reason for Your Call
2.3.5 Step 5: Ask for Permission to Conduct Needs Assessment
References
3 Follow the Course of the Road—The Needs Analysis
Abstract
3.1 The Goal Assist
3.2 Be the Doctor
3.3 Shut Up and Listen!
3.4 Gain the Customer’s Trust
3.5 Who Asks, Leads
3.6 Top Sat Nav Questions in the Needs Analysis
3.7 The Power of Questions
3.8 The Popular One Asks Many Questions
3.9 Distance Zones According to Edward T. Hall—Each Question in its Own Time
3.10 Questioning Techniques in Sales Conversations
References
4 Accelerate—Making the Appointment
Abstract
4.1 Appointment with Reference Technique
4.2 Appointment with the Assumption Technique
4.3 Appointment Scheduling with the Perfect-World Technique
4.4 “I Can See You Through the Phone!”—Interview with Telemarketing Specialist Udo Peilicke
5 Diversions—Objections, Pretexts and Their Treatment
Abstract
5.1 The Law of Six
5.2 The Objection Handling as the Simplest Process in Sales
5.3 Handle Objections. Not Pretexts
5.3.1 The Pretext Terminator
5.3.2 Objection Handling Techniques
5.3.3 The Structure of Objection Handling
5.3.4 The Astonishment Technique
5.3.5 The Conditional Technique
5.3.6 The Provocation Technique
5.3.7 The Wish Technique
5.3.8 The Disaster Technique
5.3.9 The Perfect-World Technique
5.3.10 The Scenario Technique
5.3.11 Eleven Objection Handling Techniques at a Glance
Reference
6 No Speed Limit—Opening the Appointment with Trust Building
Abstract
7 Route Agreement—Have the Customer Confirm the Need
Abstract
8 Only a Few More Meters—The Presentation of the Offer
Abstract
8.1 Distinction of Feature, Advantage, Benefit
8.2 The FAB Technique in the Sales Conversation
8.3 One, Two or Three Offers?
9 Caution—Danger ahead—Techniques for Price Negotiation
Abstract
9.1 Is the Customer Bluffing?
9.2 Increasing Objectives Through Granting Discounts
9.3 The Blocking Technique
9.4 Unmasking the Offer from the Competition
9.5 The Customer has a Counteroffer—Detecting the Desired Supplier
9.6 Exploring the Willingness to Suffer through Renunciation of Performance
9.6.1 When the Customer wants to know the Price in Advance
9.6.2 A Well-Filled Sales Funnel Lets You Sleep Better
10 You have Reached Your Destination—Closing the Sale
Abstract
10.1 Looking for Buying Signals
10.1.1 Verbal Buying Signals
10.1.1.1 Yes, I Want to Buy
10.1.1.2 The Customer Asks Questions
10.1.1.3 The Customer Asks for References
10.1.1.4 The Customer Shares his Opinion with You Unsolicited
10.1.2 Body Language and Nonverbal Buying Signals
10.1.3 The Buying Readiness Question
10.2 Closing the Sale with the Next-Step Method
10.3 Closing the Sale with the AREA Method
10.4 The Technique of Irrelevance
References
11 The Service Stage for Successful Implementation of objectives
Abstract
11.1 Managing Too High Customer Expectations
11.2 Core Tasks of Advertising
11.3 The Design of Advertising Media—High Noon for Successful Advertising Impact
11.4 The USP As a New Customer Magnet
11.5 Asking the Customer for Service—Recommendation Marketing
References
Appendix

Citation preview

Ricky McKenna

The Sales Sat Nav for Media Consultants The Roadmap to More Revenue in the Sale of Advertising Materials

The Sales Sat Nav for Media Consultants

Ricky McKenna

The Sales Sat Nav for Media Consultants The Roadmap to More Revenue in the Sale of Advertising Materials

Ricky McKenna Buxtehude, Germany

ISBN 978-3-658-40733-9 ISBN 978-3-658-40734-6  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-40734-6 This book is a translation of the original German „Das Verkaufsnavi für Medienberater“ by McKenna, Ricky, published by Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH in 2022. The translation was done with the help of an artificial intelligence machine translation tool. A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by simi­ lar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Abraham-Lincoln-Str. 46, 65189 Wiesbaden, Germany

Preface

There is probably no pitfall that I have left out at the start of my career in sales. Here are some faux pas that helped me considerably in understanding the science of sales. I assume you know them well enough: • I go to the appointment, inform the decision-makers about the new exciting special advertising form on the radio and develop advertising campaigns for the sales team that offer both new and existing customers a great discount. • The customer finds the contest incredibly exciting and will discuss my sales materials with his marketing department and let me know. • That was a real lucky feeling for me at first. Great meeting with customers and even with a conversation result: The customer will discuss internally and report back to me. My boss will be thrilled. (That the customer usually does not report back, I do not need to mention.) or

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• The semi-annual reach results, virtually the bible for media companies, which were given to the sales team in the form of beautiful PowerPoint presentations for client meetings. • “We need as many appointments as possible with our customers. Look at the new reach results. If we don’t increase our sales with these numbers, then I really have no clue, what else we can do.” or • “Guys, we need appointments, appointments, appointments. How do we want to achieve our sales target if we are not out with the customer?” or • “Guys, in the next three months our focus is on new business. I have prepared lists of potential customers for you. And there is an extra bonus for those who make the most appointments and generate at least x.xxx € in sales.” This list can be extended many times and many sales efforts led to meager sales success. Many readers will confirm this hamster wheel frustration. In all these goals, I simply forgot the decisive importance of communication guidelines in the sales process at first. • What do I say to the purchasing decision-maker at the beginning of the conversation so that he or she recognizes the personal benefit in a joint appointment? • How do I remain deeply relaxed with customer objections and handle them with power and success? • How do I respond to the buying signals and how can I take a shortcut to closing the sale? Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a red thread that maps and explains the individual sales processes like a blueprint and guides the salesperson step by step to sustainable increase in sales?

Preface     vii

Is there a roadmap that also supports success in sales even in times of economic uncertainty? After more than 20 years of active sales work in the media business, I developed “my” red thread over time. Due to the recurring systematics in sales, the individual sales processes can be run through with an “if-then-else” formula in Excel. So how do I get from one sales stage to the next and what do I do if the follow-up activities are slowed down by resistance? There are many processes in sales: • The selection of suitable potential customers • The initial meeting • The needs analysis • Dealing with objections • Closing the sale • Customer service • Customer delight measures • … The idea of describing this red thread in the form of a sat nav route plan actually came to me while driving. On the way to a customer appointment, I got lost on the way to a customer appointment and was made aware of my mistake by the command from my sat nav—“Leave the motorway at the next exit and turn left.” For me, this sat nav announcement was so impressive because I was just listening to an exciting sales closing techniques audiobook and I was able to connect the sat nav announcement with the sales process. The path to the goal is decisive. Successful sales techniques pursue a clear goal. In a perfect world, of course, we naturally follow a straight line to closing the sale. In reality, we often have to take detours in sales conversations, but we also have the opportunity of shortening the sales process.

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Comparing the individual sales processes with the route taken by the navigation system shows one thing above all: First of all, I have to take this one road to then reach the next road. Of course, there are also construction sites and diversions that are unknown to my navigation system, and so it automatically calculates the new route if I deviate from the supposed path. Namely with tips on how to avoid construction sites (objection handling) and with the constant search for a suitable shortcut (recognizing or provoking buying signals). That’s exactly how I structured this book and I’ll take you from street to street to closing the sale. Always with the search for possible construction sites and shortcuts. • • • •

“If possible, turn around and then turn right.” “After 20 km, stay left and continue on the A 61 towards Mainz.” “Turn left, then sharp right.” “You have reached your destination.”

Or expressed in sales language: • “Determine the need by phone and turn right to make an appointment.” • “There is an objection coming in 2 kilometers. Bear left” • “Attention: Buy signal. Take the next exit and follow the shortcut to the destination.” Why should you read this book? This book focuses on B-to-B sales with personal contact between salesperson and buyer in the media business. So phone-to-phone and face-to-face. It guides you step by step from determining the suitable customer potentials via the initial contact to closing the sale with tried and tested conversation guides. The route entered in the navigation system always begins with the starting street.

Preface     ix

The order of chapters in this book represents the typical course of many thousands of sales conversations that I have experienced myself. I will describe my experience with examples from practice and with the necessary portion of theory. In this book I present you with different guides that I have formulated in my personal use of language. Remember: in my words. A guide is not a script that you have to repeat identically. Your credibility with the customer would then suffer faster than you think. For this reason you will find the corresponding blank documents on the website https://sales-farm.de/Buch-Sales-Navi/Leitfäden/ in order to write down the respective conversation guide in your own words. In addition, I would like to share some sales situations that I have experienced myself, which proved to be real eye-openers and in some cases even shortened processes in the initiation of business. How you should use this book Work your way through the book step by step from start to finish. You will see that the sales processes and roads build on each other. The philosophy of solution-based sales could be diluted if you “chapter-hop” and, for example, start with the eighth street and then switch to the second street. Therefore, let all processes take effect in their order to perceive the holistic principle “from street to street”. Of course, you can also take shortcuts on your sales route that are not foreseen in the route plan. As in real life, detours and diversions can only be mapped in the navigation system when they actually occur and are reported. Overview Be open to new approaches and sales techniques. Use the sample guides to write your own personal conversation guide. Use the described sales techniques in your daily business for at least two months. Through continuous practice, you will immediately recognize increases in appointments and sales.

x      Preface

Now fasten your seat belt and shift into first gear. I wish you a lot of fun and above all a lot of success on your journey to closing the sales. in May 2022

Ricky McKenna

Acknowledgment

I’ll be damned if I thank Corona. That is how I thought at first, unfortunately, there’s no way around it. Like many other sole proprietors in the service industry, I crashed my business model head-on into the wall due to the effects of the pandemic. Coming to a sudden full stop in business is difficult to digest at first. I had the idea for the sales navigator in 2020 and was able to further develop this idea into a new 3-day sales training during the pandemic. My special thanks go to Andreas Rohde, Sales Director MORE Marketing, who gave me the stage to test my new sales approach in several sales trainings. This was the actual trigger for writing this book. I would also like to thank Udo Peilicke, Peilicke Management Consulting TTC, Berlin, for his expertise in telephone sales, which he shared with me in the form of an interview for this book. Like no other, Udo Peilicke can explain the power and use of vocal communication elements in an understandable and practice-oriented way, how the telephone can be used as a tool for sales success.

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Contents

1

Follow the Course of the Road—The Preparation and Research Avenue 1 1.1 Keep Your Sales Funnel Well-Filled 3 1.2 Qualifying and Disqualifying 8 1.2.1 Does the User Base of Your Medium Match the Target Audience of the Customer? 9 1.2.2 Looking at Your Existing Customer Lists 10 1.3 Where Can You Find New Customer Potentials? 12 1.4 In Slices or in One Piece? Call in One Piece! 13 1.5 Calculate Your Ratios 15 1.6 The Importance of Trust and How it Arises 19 1.7 Knowing Your Customers 21 Reference 24

2

Turn Right—Conversation Starter with Pattern Interruption 25 2.1 The Phone Call with the Head Office 28 2.2 The Phone Call with the Assistant 29 2.2.1 The Technique of the Counter-Question 31 xiii

xiv      Contents

2.2.2 2.2.3 2.2.4

The Expert Technique I 31 Expert Technique II 32 The Methodology of Universally Transferable Statements 32 2.2.5 The Please-Help-Me Technique (Benjamin Franklin Effect) 34 2.2.6 The Role-Reversal Technique 35 2.2.7 The Amazement Technique 36 2.3 The Phone Call with the Decision Maker 37 2.3.1 Step 1: The Conversation Opening with the Anticipation Technique 40 2.3.2 Step 2: Building Trust 41 2.3.3 Step 3: Addressing Indisputable Personal Facts 42 2.3.4 Step 4: The Reason for Your Call 43 2.3.5 Step 5: Ask for Permission to Conduct Needs Assessment 43 References 45 3

Follow the Course of the Road—The Needs Analysis 47 3.1 The Goal Assist 47 3.2 Be the Doctor 49 3.3 Shut Up and Listen! 50 3.4 Gain the Customer’s Trust 51 3.5 Who Asks, Leads 52 3.6 Top Sat Nav Questions in the Needs Analysis 55 3.7 The Power of Questions 61 3.8 The Popular One Asks Many Questions 62 3.9 Distance Zones According to Edward T. Hall—Each Question in its Own Time 62 3.10 Questioning Techniques in Sales Conversations 64 References 71

4

Accelerate—Making the Appointment 73 4.1 Appointment with Reference Technique 74 4.2 Appointment with the Assumption Technique 76

Contents     xv

4.3 4.4

Appointment Scheduling with the Perfect-World Technique 78 “I Can See You Through the Phone!”—Interview with Telemarketing Specialist Udo Peilicke 82

5

Diversions—Objections, Pretexts and Their Treatment 89 5.1 The Law of Six 90 5.2 The Objection Handling as the Simplest Process in Sales 91 5.3 Handle Objections. Not Pretexts 92 5.3.1 The Pretext Terminator 93 5.3.2 Objection Handling Techniques 94 5.3.3 The Structure of Objection Handling 94 5.3.4 The Astonishment Technique 95 5.3.5 The Conditional Technique 99 5.3.6 The Provocation Technique 101 5.3.7 The Wish Technique 103 5.3.8 The Disaster Technique 106 5.3.9 The Perfect-World Technique 108 5.3.10 The Scenario Technique 109 5.3.11 Eleven Objection Handling Techniques at a Glance 110 Reference 113

6

No Speed Limit—Opening the Appointment with Trust Building 115

7

Route Agreement—Have the Customer Confirm the Need 119

8

Only a Few More Meters—The Presentation of the Offer 123 8.1 Distinction of Feature, Advantage, Benefit 124 8.2 The FAB Technique in the Sales Conversation 127 8.3 One, Two or Three Offers? 130

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9

Caution—Danger ahead—Techniques for Price Negotiation 135 9.1 Is the Customer Bluffing? 140 9.2 Increasing Objectives Through Granting Discounts 141 9.3 The Blocking Technique 142 9.4 Unmasking the Offer from the Competition 145 9.5 The Customer has a Counteroffer—Detecting the Desired Supplier 146 9.6 Exploring the Willingness to Suffer through Renunciation of Performance 150 9.6.1 When the Customer wants to know the Price in Advance 156 9.6.2 A Well-Filled Sales Funnel Lets You Sleep Better 158

10 You have Reached Your Destination—Closing the Sale 161 10.1 Looking for Buying Signals 163 10.1.1 Verbal Buying Signals 164 10.1.1.1 Yes, I Want to Buy 164 10.1.1.2 The Customer Asks Questions 164 10.1.1.3 The Customer Asks for References 165 10.1.1.4 The Customer Shares his Opinion with You Unsolicited 165 10.1.2 Body Language and Nonverbal Buying Signals 165 10.1.3 The Buying Readiness Question 167 10.2 Closing the Sale with the Next-Step Method 168 10.3 Closing the Sale with the AREA Method 170 10.4 The Technique of Irrelevance 174 References 175

Contents     xvii

11 The Service Stage for Successful Implementation of objectives 177 11.1 Managing Too High Customer Expectations 178 11.2 Core Tasks of Advertising 178 11.3 The Design of Advertising Media—High Noon for Successful Advertising Impact 180 11.4 The USP As a New Customer Magnet 189 11.5 Asking the Customer for Service—Recommendation Marketing 192 References 202 Appendix 203

About the Author

The author, Ricky McKenna,  is a self-taught sales trainer who, with enthusiasm, inhales the dust of street sales in regional advertising sales and, through his many years of sales experience, knows what makes a successful salesperson. And how to shape him. In 2006, Ricky McKenna, together with the New Zealand marketing company DMS, developed sales maximization programs for regional advertising media in the DACH regions.

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Since 2009, he has, among other things, been in charge of the affairs of the Media Sales Association GmbH, which, in addition to successful sales maximization, focuses on new customer acquisition and customer retention in media sales. Since 2019, he has expanded his company McKENNA’S SALESFARM with sales maximization programs that include targeted sales trainings to sustainably increase the success of these programs. The hobby musician has been playing the violin with enthusiasm since the age of 10 and performs with several country bands in northern Germany. He lives with his wife and two children in the fairy-tale town of Buxtehude.

1 Follow the Course of the Road—The Preparation and Research Avenue

Abstract  Preparation creates security and saves time. A seemingly self-evident wisdom that every salesperson should heed in his and her daily work. The more information you can find out in advance about your customer, the more efficient and successful the later communication with him will be. This chapter serves to introduce simple routines for defining the appropriate customer potentials that actually deserve your sales attention. The search for new customers is a highly strategic task in which the factors “chance” and “hope” have no place. Rather, important conditions must be met in order to lead the activities around customer search to successful sales achievement. A quick look at the company website, Googling the name of the decision maker, a short phone call and then off to the appointment. Is that enough? Absolutely not. Sales is a highly structured sequence of processes that must be followed in order to successfully close a sale. Just like with a car sat nav, you begin at the starting point—in sales you start with preparation and research. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. McKenna, The Sales Sat Nav for Media Consultants, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-40734-6_1

1

2     R. McKenna

In business-to-business (B2B) sales, factual preliminary information is the key to preparing for the initial meeting with the decision maker, in order to make a successful first contact. The difference to business-to-consumer sales (B2C) lies in the personal contact with the decision makers, because each company has different goals and issues that therefore require an individual solution. This is in stark contrast to B2C consumers, who usually purchase standardized products. Due to the sometimes very high level of competition, companies are forced to make investments in order to stay in the market and keep their competitors at arm’s length. Since these are often costly investments, several contacts with company decision makers are necessary until the order is placed. • • • •

First contact with needs analysis Presentation of the offer If necessary, offer optimization Order placement

The sale of communication solutions also belongs to the B2B business and is often subject to the same frequency of contact with the decision makers until a contract is concluded. Depending on the size of the company, several people and departments are involved in the decision-making process. It is essential that all decision makers of the company are involved in all sales meetings. During the first contact you must ask which persons are responsible in the decision-making processes in order to involve the right decision makers throughout all sales phases. The situation is similar with smaller regional companies. Very often, the managing director or owner does not make the purchase of advertising solutions alone. So the spouse, another family member, or the tax consultant may be involved in the decision-making process. This way, all decision makers can be pinpointed for the sales meetings. You probably know the situation in the presentation of the offer, where the customer tells you that he cannot make a sole decision at the moment. He still needs to consult with a family member or other person.

1  Follow the Course of the Road …     3

And you think to yourself: Why didn’t I ask about the decision-making process and other decision-makers in the first conversation? The problem now is that the sole decision-maker present has to inform the other people about the offer. They may not know the benefits of the advertising solution because the decision-maker present communicates them inaccurately, and thus the purchase is decided solely on the price. The other decision-makers cannot evaluate the price either due to the lack of knowledge of the benefits and all of your sales efforts are comparable to the expensive empty run of a truck.

1.1 Keep Your Sales Funnel Well-Filled The sales funnel (see Fig. 1.1) is formed from the individual sales processes or customer contacts and describes the route of the potential customer to the actually paying customer.

The sales funnel

Potential customers With each subsequent sales process, the number of potential customers is reduced due to their lack of qualification for further sales activities. Therefore, the sales funnel must be constantly filled with further potentials so that sales activities from initial contact to sales closure do not come to a stand still due to the lack of potentials.

First contact

Appointment

Appointment and offer Customer

Fig. 1.1  The sales funnel

4     R. McKenna

You need a constant stream of new potential customers in your sales funnel that you need to qualify for further sales activities. Some of these potentials will immediately disqualify or sift out for the next process of contact. The further you progress in your sales processes, the fewer companies qualify, until at the end of 100 potential customers you may only achieve five sales. If you don’t take any more potential customers into the sales funnel, then new customer acquisition will come to a standstill. In other words, if nothing comes in at the top, then nothing will come out at the bottom. The sales funnel is not a static structure, but it lives through the constant change of potentials. With the sales funnel you can measure your performance in the individual funnel phases and calculate your success rates. I will deal with the topic of quota calculation later in this book. I am often asked if there is an optimal funnel size. Optimal means that you can contact the potentials several times a year according to their importance. If the sales funnel is too big, many and possibly important leads remain unprocessed and generate no sales. If the funnel is too small, you may have the same leads too often in your contact follow-up and leave important potentials unprocessed because you do not have them in focus. The quality of the contact is the decisive core in the processing of the sales funnel. The way of communication decides about the successful potential processing. And not the sole size of the database, as shown in the following examples: Example 1 (see Fig. 1.2) • Seller A has 500 leads in his sales funnel. • Of these, he contacts 250 companies, i.e. 50% of all leads. • Of the 250 companies, he agrees with 63 companies to make an appointment, i.e. with 25% of all contacted companies. • Of the 63 companies, the seller makes an offer to 35 companies. This corresponds to 55% of all scheduled companies. • 14 companies buy the offer. This corresponds to 40% of all companies that received an offer. • If we relate the 14 customers to the 500 total leads, we get a success rate of 2.8%, i.e. 2.8% of the leads were converted to customers.

1  Follow the Course of the Road …     5

The sales funnel

Potential customers

Success rate: 2.8%

First contacts (50%)

Appointments (25%) Appointments with offers (55%) Orders (40%)

Fig. 1.2  Quotas in the sales funnel Example 1

Example 1.2 (see Fig. 1.3) • In this example, 80% of potential customers are contacted. • With a constant appointment quote (25%), you would now have 100 appointments. • While an increase in the contact rate requires optimization of time management, an increase in the appointment rate from 25% to 35% is due to the optimization of the conversation. Therefore, it makes sense to regularly check your existing conversation guide to convey to the customer even more strongly how he benefits from a meeting with you.

The seller can turn several adjustment screws to optimize the quotas of the individual processing phases and increase the conversions of the leads to customers.

6     R. McKenna

The sales funnel

Potential customers

Success rate: 7.6%

Initial contacts (80%)

Appointments (35%) Appointments with offer (60%) Orders (45%)

Fig. 1.3  Quotations in the sales funnel Example 2

1. Improve the quality of the pre-selection In the first step of quota optimization, the database of leads is to be analyzed. You only want to include companies in your funnel that really deserve your sales attention because they have a high probability of success for a sales transaction: • For example, the company advertises for its products or services in a competing medium. • The users of your media correspond to the target group of the company. • The company is expanding and needs to make its new branch known. • You already have customers from the same industry as your potential customers, whose goals have been successfully achieved with your communication solution. (See also Sect. 1.2 “Qualify and Disqualify”) Leads are divided into cold, warm and hot leads:

1  Follow the Course of the Road …     7

Cold leads are companies that have never contacted you and of which you have no further knowledge beyond general information from the internet. Warm leads have already had a—albeit impersonal—contact. Perhaps your social media profile was visited, perhaps even your newsletter subscribed. A personal contact with the companies is still neccessary, and these leads are to be processed first, as the reason for the first contact with you may lie in the search for new advertising solutions. Hot leads are your most important potential and qualify for immediate or further contact. You are already in contact with this company category and have knowledge of their past advertising activities and their corporate goals. You know that there is a need for advertising and who makes the marketing decisions. If your company uses digital tools for lead generation, such as e-mail or social media marketing, this does not replace personal contact with them. Rather, the technology supports the personal contact with the leads and improves the quality of your database considerably. 2. Improve the number and quality of acquisition telephone calls In Example 1, 50% of potential customers were contacted and a meeting was arranged with 25% of the companies contacted. Just increasing the contact rate while keeping the appointment rate constant would automatically increase the number of appointments. The following chapters describe effective techniques for sustainable improvement of the quality of conversation and thus for increasing your customer quotas. 3. Increasing the number of offers With the optimization of your conversation guide and a perfectly aligned argumentation chain, the number of your offers can be increased very quickly. While in Example 1 a total of 63 appointments resulted in 35 offers, in Example 2 a total of 84 offers are submitted, even though the offer rate was only increased by 5% (55% to 60%). The previous quota increases play the decisive role here. This book will

8     R. McKenna

show you different methods and techniques for increasing your offer volume in the market. 4. Increasing your success rate: Imagine that you increase your success rate by refining your argumentation and using new closing techniques from 40% to 45%, as shown in Example 2. Then you have almost tripled your sales with all previous quota improvements. OK, you might think now, that’s just an unrealistic numbers example. Even if you already know and use many sales techniques, I promise you that you will also significantly increase your sales, if you only increase the number of acquisition telephone calls while maintaining the same quotas.

1.2 Qualifying and Disqualifying The most important goal before the first contact is to check whether the respective customer deserves your sales attention at all or not. Is it worth the effort to contact the customer? Or are there other companies that have a much greater potential? In media business, we don’t only want to qualify companies that have an advertising budget or that have advertised their offers in the past perhaps with a competitor. However, this potential belongs to the most important market segment, because they already understand the importance and necessity of communication and advertising to achieve their goals and consider their communication measures as an investment for the future. Thus, this segment is significantly easier to contact and convert into customers due to its predominant advertising know-how than companies that lack this knowledge and have to be educated about the advertising effect. Your actual task begins before you contact potential customers.

1  Follow the Course of the Road …     9

You have to invest your valuable time in contacts with high probabilities of success and not half an hour in a one-person nail studio that has never advertised and sees advertising as a single cost factor.And that’s exactly what qualifying or disqualifying is all about: taking the best potentials for your sales activities into the sales funnel in the first step and converting them into customers in the following sales processes. You have to make sure that the readers/listeners/viewers/users of your medium correspond to a large extent to the target group of your desired customers.

1.2.1 Does the User Base of Your Medium Match the Target Audience of the Customer? The demographic and psychographic characteristics of the media users ultimately decide to what extent a company is suitable for an advertising appearance in the respective medium. A 3-star restaurant will certainly not advertise in an area with high unemployment. All advertising media have precise demographic and sociographic descriptions of their users, which greatly facilitate the pre-selection of the companies to be contacted. The most important demographic user characteristics include age, marital status and gender. The most frequently used sociographic characteristics are education, profession, income and place of residence. Of course, the psychographic user characteristics such as attitude, values and status consciousness are also excellent for searching analogies with the target customers of the companies. If the user base of the medium differs greatly from the target audience of the advertising client, we speak of wastage. Here, too many people outside the target group of the advertising client are addressed with the advertising. This reduces the probability of success of achieving the objectives to a large extent. Which in turn reduces the chances of follow-up business with the customer.

10     R. McKenna

That is the reason you need a professional needs analysis in the first telephone contact. You will either qualify or disqualify the prospect for the next sales processes in this important phase of pre-selection.

1.2.2 Looking at Your Existing Customer Lists In addition to classic new customer acquisition, you need to analyze the development of your existing customers. When analyzing customer sales for the past three or four years, you have a true treasure trove of information that you can turn into cash. The development of your existing customers shows which customer sales, for example, are declining and which companies are inactive compared to previous years and have completely stopped their advertising with you. Practice tip Sort your existing customer lists in descending order of their sales importance for the past year and compare the sales development over time. To make the sales status comparable, you also need to analyze the balance sheet date comparison. (see Fig. 1.4). So, if you analyze the sales on February 10, 2022, you also need to show booking balances from the previous years on February 10. This way you can see at a glance which sales your existing customers booked with you on each February 10. While some customers make their total bookings and orders for the current year at the beginning of the year, the majority of customers book multiple small campaigns punctually according to their current advertising needs. Contact the companies with declining sales in the BALANCE SHEET DATE COMPARISON and find out the reasons for the reduction in sales. It happens more often than you think that the drop in sales is the result of lack of service contact. Especially in the competitive advertising market, the lack of contact and service very quickly leads to a switch to a competing medium by the affected customer.

, , , , ,

Full year 2019 , , , , ,

Fig. 1.4  Balance sheet date comparison

Customer City markeng Webel Winegrowers' cooperave Allergut eG Interior design Ebers GmbH Furnishing house Münsterfeld GmbH Elektro Weber GmbH , , , , , , , , , ,

Full year 2021 Key date comparison , , . , , . , , . , , . , , .

, , , , ,

,

, , ,

. . . . .

Key date comparison

Contact Raumgestaltung Ebers to discuss follow-up campaign.

Winzergenossenscha Allergut eG postpones campaign to May 2022, full-year results from previous year pledged.

City markeng Webel reduces budget since 2020 due to pandemic

Explanaons / To do:

Full year 2020 Key date comparison , , . , , . , , . , , . , , .

Key date comparison 02/10/2022 vs. previous years

1  Follow the Course of the Road …     11

12     R. McKenna

1.3 Where Can You Find New Customer Potentials? There are many sources that are suitable for regional new customer search. • New openings – Food for thought: Is the company’s objective to increase awareness and win new customers? Are there examples of best practice campaigns for new openings that are outstanding? • Job postings – Food for thought: Is the company expanding and is the company’s objective to win new customers? Can your medium support the company in its search for personnel? How? Do you have successful reference examples? • Commercial or trade construction sites – Food for thought: Is the company’s objective to increase awareness and win new customers? Do you have a catchy campaign idea? • Advertising on sports club billboards – Food for thought: Do you reach the target group of billboard advertisers? Which advertising objectives do the companies pursue that you can implement in an individual campaign solution? • Personal networking – Food for thought: Do you know company decision-makers personally who you can approach with your communication solution? Do you know company decision-makers personally who can support you in making contact with third parties? Do you have access to business meetings to make new contacts with decision-makers? • Trade fairs – Food for thought: Can you make contacts and appointments with decision-makers at the trade fairs?

1  Follow the Course of the Road …     13

• Regional section of daily newspapers – Food for thought: Which companies are reported in the local and regional section and in PR ads? Are future business plans reported? Can company goals be derived from the reports that could be implemented in a campaign? • Media monitoring advertising – Food for thought: What is the advertising objective in the competitive media? Do you have a brilliant creative idea how you can better stage the advertising message? • Recommendations – Food for thought: Which existing customers can you ask for a recommendation? see recommendation marketing Look for creative ways to stage new customers in advertising.

1.4 In Slices or in One Piece? Call in One Piece! Acquiring new customers is one of the sales’ strategic tasks and has a high priority in shaping your working time. The more often you contact potential customers by phone, the better and smoother the conversations will go. Of course, the requirement is that you make many phone calls in a row. Everyone experiences routines when they repeat an activity multiple times. For phone calls with potential customers, you should define a time window in which you concentrate exclusively on this activity. Before making phone calls, you have to warm up first so that you can hold conversations at optimal operating temperature. Like a top athlete or concert musician who warms up first and practices for hours every day to improve their performance. The warm-up in this case means preparing for the new customer conversation.

14     R. McKenna

• For a telephone session, have the contact details of at least 20 companies and decision-makers ready, so that you can work through this list without a break. • Before your telephone session, read through your personal guideline to remind yourself of the logic of the conversation flow. • Start your morning telephone session with a known existing customer to get into the conversation flow. I recommend a time window of 2–3 h for a telephone session on two days each week. Choose one morning and one afternoon, as you will be able to reach some industry contacts in the afternoon and others in the morning or early morning. A decision-maker at a construction company will often not be available until late afternoon or evening, because they are already working on construction sites early in the morning. Start your telephone day with an early shift at 7 am or 8 am. In many cases, the decision-makers are still the only one in the office and answers the phone call themselves, because their assistant is not yet in the office to take your call. Stick strictly to your telephone session and do not let yourself be distracted by other activities. If a customer contacts you, inform them that you are currently in a meeting and will call back immediately. When a customer calls, many salespeople drop everything and take care of customers concerns. During your telephone session, you should only focus on your current task and not answer calls directly. I recommend that you redirect the call to the team assistant or a colleague, so that you can maintain your rhythm uninterrupted and work through your calls like in a call center. To be honest, how often has a customer told you to call back later because he doesn’t have time right now? You probably found that understandable. Your customers won’t hold it against you if you’re in a meeting and can’t give them your full attention right away.

1  Follow the Course of the Road …     15

1.5 Calculate Your Ratios In front of you is a large pile of sand, in which 20 diamonds are hidden. It is your task to shovel away the sand and find the diamonds. Each shovelful of sand you remove will give you a natural feeling of happiness, because you know that you are now one shovel closer to a diamond. Just as with the diamonds, the same is true for the phone calls. If you know that, on average, for example, you convert 25% of the phone calls into appointments, then you will be able to make five appointments from 20 phone calls. Even if you feel like a real loser and have to endure some rejections in a row, always think of your previous quote that you have calculated. Just as a swallow does not make a spring, you cannot determine a secure ratio based on a single phone call. According to the law of large numbers, you can only calculate your secure ratio based on a large number of phone calls. The range of your ratio decreases with the increasing number of phone calls. • How often do you have to dial a number before you can have a qualified conversation with the company? • How many conversations do you have to have before you can make an appointment? • Do you know how many proposal appointments you need on average before you can close a deal? • How many phone calls with companies do you have to make in a year to reach your sales target? Ratios calculate more than just the success probabilities of sales actions. They also help you to define and solve personal weaknesses. Most sellers do not know their ratios and do not attach any importance to these figures. Why should they? Most of the sales managers I know do not see the benefit in ratio calculation, which is also reflected in the use of numerous CRM systems. It is simply not stated, although it represents the most important figures of the seller in everyday

16     R. McKenna

business. Take a piece of paper with you during your next phone session and calculate your ratios using checklists. The Table 1.1 illustrates different quotas over a period of 4 weeks. Number of phone calls: • In my experience, you have to dial a number 3–5 times to speak to the right person. • In the monthly analysis in Table 1.1, 47% of the calls led to a qualified conversation. • Of the 112 conversations, 42 appointments were made. Therefore, the appointment rate is 38%. • Of the 42 appointments, 16 were completed, so the completion rate is 38%. How many phone calls do you need for a sales plan of 800,000 €? I admit that I am a very ratio-conscious person and for this reason I have developed a ratio calculator in Excel (see Fig. 1.2) which calculates the number of phone calls required for a given annual sales objective. Knowing your personal sales rates divides a seemingly mammoth task, in this case the annual sales objectives, into easily digestible sub-tasks. Here it is the number of phone calls required, which are represented in time units. Question: How do you eat an elephant? Answer: One forkful at a time. Three additional key figures are required for the calculation of telephone calls. 1. Part of the annual turnover is generated WITHOUT the media consultant having to work actively for it. The customer bookings are made automatically. In the lower graph, this automatic booking volume amounts to 300,000 €. 2. The number of working days has been set at 235. This is calculated by subtracting weekends, public holidays and 20 days of vacation. 3. The average turnover volume in this example is 5,600 €, which each customer invested in advertising activities last year. Of course, you

Number of phone calls Number of qualified interviews Number of appointments Number of orders

45% appoint- 8 ment rate

40% completion rate

5

2

3

44% conver- 25 sation quote

11

CW 3 2022 60

Rates

25

KW 2 2022

Table 1.1  Different quotas over a period of 4 weeks

38%

32%

42% GQ

Rates

4

12

36

75

CW 4 2022

33%

33%

48% GQ

Rates

7

17

40

80

CW 5

41%

42%

50% GQ

Rates

16

42

112

240

38%

38%

47%

CW 2–5 Rates

1  Follow the Course of the Road …     17

18     R. McKenna

generated significantly less turnover with many customers, while with other customers the turnover might have been 20,000 €. Simply divide your generated turnover from the previous year by the total number of your customers. If your appointment rate is 25% and your closing rate is 20%, you need to make a total of 1,786 qualified phone calls according to the following example. Divide the total number of required phone calls by the number of working days (235). This means that you have to make an average of 8 phone calls per day. Of these 1786 phone calls, you agree on appointments with 447 companies (25%). Of the 447 appointments, 89 companies (20%) close a sale. With an average turnover of 5,600 €, you achieve an order volume of 500,000 €. With the expected turnover WITHOUT active contact taking of 300,000 €, you reach your sales target of 800,000 € (Fig. 1.5). Now you have some very important adjusting screws with these rates to increase your sales even further: The ratio calculator blue fields please fill in

Total sales objective

Expected booking without quotation Enter the previous year's sales.

, ,

Turnover without contact

,

Number of phone calls Number of daily telephone calls (235 working days) Ratio: Phone call to appointment/offer Number of dates/offers Closing ratio Number of closings Ø budget per customer

,

Total sales to be acquired directly

,

Fig. 1.5  Ratio calculator

Turnover through contact and offer

1  Follow the Course of the Road …     19

1. You can increase the number of phone calls per week. With constant conversation, appointment and closing rates, you automatically increase your sales. 2. You can focus on increasing the number of appointments and develop a (new) guide to improve your argumentation. More appointments with constant closing rate automatically mean more sales. 3. You can improve your closing ratio. In this case as well, your performance in the final meeting is to be improved with new and benefit-oriented arguments in order to lead to more offers for the order. In the following chapters I will introduce you to guides for increasing your appointment ratio and closing techniques for increasing orders.

1.6 The Importance of Trust and How it Arises If you want to win a new customer, you first have to win the person. The way to business runs through the person. You win the person when this person builds a basic trust in you and gets involved in a relationship with you. We always orient ourselves to people who are similar to us: People like me, like me! And I like them. That’s how business works. In sales, we have to adjust to a variety of different customer characters. If, for example, I have an appointment with a factual and reserved conversation partner, I will definitely not score with him if I have “a clown for breakfast”. So I adjust to him or her. You definitely know the saying that someone has shown “the best side”. This “best side” is of course evaluated differently by the different characters. Because this “best side” generally resembles the side of the respective conversation partner. With language and body language we can adjust to this.

20     R. McKenna

When we have an appointment with a person who differs greatly from us, then “adjusting to this person” is particularly useful because the conversation partner automatically feels more comfortable. We mirror our conversation partner, so to speak. Be it in the choice of words, volume, flow of speech, pauses in speech, gestures, facial expressions or body language. Mirroring is a method from NLP that enables a rapid positive relationship building by adapting to the behavior of the counterpart. NLP defines itself according to Wikipedia: “Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP for short) is a collection of methods and communication techniques that are supposed to influence mental processes in humans.” (Wikipedia, 2022). “Just a moment,” you might think, “that’s no different from manipulation.” That’s exactly right. But here’s a little secret: We manipulate everyone and we always manipulate. With clothes, laughter, tears, praise and gifts, as well as with our gestures and facial expressions. Both in private and in business life. Think about how we show ourselves in the best light when we like or love someone. Trust is the lifeblood of any good relationship. Only trust welds the relationship together. It leads to stability and security. Imagine you’ve just seen the person of your dreams. You don’t know each other, and you want to change that right away. Maybe you have mutual acquaintances who can supposedly give you important information about this person. So you ask the mutual acquaintance about the relationship status of the beloved, the hobbies, where this person likes to drink coffee or which club they mainly go to. You find out that this person is single, likes to go to the movies and theater and even loves red wine. This way you make the first picture of this dream person and absolutely want to get to know them better. Hey, you think to yourself, I also like to drink red wine and go to the movies. Now isn’t that cool! What you’re thinking right now is exactly what everyone else does: They actively search for analogies. Let’s say you get into a conversation with this person and notice that this person also has a great sense of humor. And another point on the

1  Follow the Course of the Road …     21

list of similarities. Then the same age. Cool. And the love of action movies with Bruce Willis. Amazing. So the person is 25 years old, loves action movies and red wine, goes to the theater 2 times a year and also looks great. People cultivate similes and neglect the rest that is not important at the moment. Would you perhaps think that this person might be a serial killer who, at night, looks for new victims in the narrow alleys by the harbor? Or would you think that this person might be a hoarder? Or that they are wanted by Interpol for financial fraud? Of course not. You say to yourself: “So, if they like red wine as much as I do, if they dress the way I do, if they like the same movies as I do, then it will all be consistent and good.” So nothing other than bought. And this line of thought takes place in most cases in the subconscious. I do not assume that you carry a 20-page questionnaire with you when you are looking for your life partner and take notes and check boxes during the conversation. And I assume even less that you then compare all the answers with the answers of the other 150 dates and determine the suitable partner for you by means of a pivot table in Excel. We don’t have time for that. We would have to do a life-time research work on finding our future life partner and wouldn’t have time for anything else. Ergo: If important features fit, we are ready to buy the whole package with many unknown factors.

1.7 Knowing Your Customers You have only followed a small part of your route so far, but you have come a long way. The rear-view mirror is set, there is enough fuel in the tank and you have your goal in sight: the closing of the sale In addition to looking at the company website, it is extremely useful to obtain information about the decision maker. Social media platforms such as Xing, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter offer you unprecedented insights into their inner lives. Hobbies, “friends”, opinions and other posts often give first and good impressions of the decision maker.

22     R. McKenna

In addition, the world is a village—we may have common friends or acquaintances. So we’re always looking for similes. In addition, set up a free Google Alerts account. Google Alerts allows you to find pages with your predefined search terms by being contacted by the service via email. This function is particularly helpful because you don’t have to do the manual search yourself. In addition to the company name, enter the name of the decision maker as a keyword. Overview In 2018 I had an appointment with the advertising manager of a publishing house. In my research in 2018 about the advertising manager I found out about his pages on Xing, LinkedIn and Facebook that he • • • •

is father of two children, loves to play golf abroad, often goes on vacation with his family in Carinthia and Styria, his wife regularly attends yoga classes.

I did not know which trump card to play at the first meeting: A large part of my family plays golf. I lived in Austria for 12 years and love the mountains. My wife has been a yoga teacher for over 15 years. At the end of our meeting, I told him that when I prepare for an appointment, I always visit the LinkedIn and XING pages of the person I am talking to. With him I noticed that he plays golf and I am the only one in my family who does not play golf. But when I visit my parents, I often caddy for my father. I asked him if he had already played in Scotland, the birthplace of golf. He had not played in Scotland, but had played golf in Ireland. (Cool. I have Irish ancestors, studied there for a year, love Irish folk and Irish pubs. I’ll talk about that right away.) I don’t want to go into too much depth, but the preliminary information from my research on the respective decision-makers was often very helpful for the meeting because it allowed a flow of conversation to build a relationship. These analogies between decision-makers and me are predestined to build a positive relationship in the first conversation. Background information on the decision-maker led me to a deeper level of conversation in which we could exchange ideas that facilitated the development of the relationship with each other.

1  Follow the Course of the Road …     23

In the following chapters, I will introduce you to some guidelines that will lead you step by step to the desired process success in a comprehensible way. Whether it is opening of the conversation with the assistant or decision maker, be it the appointment scheduling, the presentation of the offer or the sales completion. Guidelines form the core of the route description in sales processes, as they usually suggest the optimal way to the goal. Of course, there are always unforeseen construction sites and detours that stand in the way of your perfect route and have to be met with a route change. If the word “guide” makes your hair stand on end, I would like to calm you down at this point. A guide is not a script that you have to learn by heart. It is a recommendation for action and procedure to give you orientation on how to deal with certain conversation situations. I assume that you have made calls to customers and then did not know what to say next. The reason is quite simply the lack of this guide, which gives you directions to different situations. Imagine that a customer asks you if you can give a short presentation on the advertising effect of your medium at your joint appointment with his new employees. How would you prepare? Would you make some short notes beforehand and then hope at the appointment with the sheet of paper in your hand that the enlightenment puts clear sentences on your tongue? Or would you formulate it and read it a few times so that the dramaturgy is in place? I hope you choose the second option. Every telephone call with a new customer potential must be prepared just as intensively so that you reach your goal, for example an appointment. It is quite different with actors. They are given a script, learn it by heart, perform on stage and the audience does not notice that they have the script word for word in their heads. The conversation is fluid and natural. Even if the actors did not write this script. It was presented to them for memorization. No audience notices this because the actor has read this text several times and prepared for his role. When I introduce my guidelines in my sales trainings, I hear unisono from the participants: “Ricky, you can’t say that in our region. That can’t work for us.”

24     R. McKenna

Of course, Tyroleans may find my northern German tongue very direct, perhaps also demanding, and I would be shocked if a media consultant memorized my personal guideline word for word. It is much more important to me in presenting my guidelines that the sequence of phases of the conversation is understood in its logic and above all adhered to. It is highly desirable that they are conveyed in the own words of the respective salesperson After all, you should feel comfortable with these guides. However, the feel-good factor by using one’s own words is to be critically viewed when the desired effect and impact of the arguments are weakened. Compare the two following statements with each other. 1. Original version: “You’re only saying that because you want to end the phone call with me, isn’t it?” 2. Dilution: “I feel like I’m calling you at the wrong time.” While the original version is formulated assertively and is supposed to lure the customer out of the reserve by the question “Isn’t it?”, the diluted version resembles a toothless withdrawal maneuver. Therefore, pay attention to the desired effect of the original version when reformulating. My guidelines are tried and tested a thousand times and give you orientation in different conversation situations—just like a navigation system gives you orientation and guides the way. The secret of their successful use lies solely in the practice and their regular application. Before I personally make cold calls, I read my guideline to get myself in the mood for the expected conversation phases.

Reference Wikipedia. (2022). Stichwort Neuro-Linguistisches Programmieren. https:// de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-Linguistisches_Programmieren. Accessed 7 Apr 2022.

2 Turn Right—Conversation Starter with Pattern Interruption

Abstract  During my school days, my teachers either loved or hated me. I was always—even at inappropriate times—ready for jokes, and with many teachers I was a kind of reminder of what their own children should not be. For other teaching staff, my style was rather refreshing and positive. When my nephew, Adrian, visited the same school over 30 years later and talked in class, he was screamed at by my old teacher with the words: “Richard, shut up!” Even if this is a negative example, I deduce the thesis for the sales business from it: Be different from the others! In business life, the streamlined form often doesn’t lead to the desired success. If you sound like everyone else, you run the risk of becoming just a number. Take on corners and edges that make you noticeable and thus attention-grabbing. Interrupt common and predictable patterns. You are driving on your predetermined route and become aware of the noise from the sudden change in road surface. This is how your conversation partner should feel: He should focus his full attention on you right from the start of the conversation. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. McKenna, The Sales Sat Nav for Media Consultants, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-40734-6_2

25

26     R. McKenna

If you want to stand out from most salespeople at the start of the conversation, you should break the common pattern in the customer’s perception. This automatically gives you high attention. The reason for the immediate perception of new or extraordinary is due to the function of our brain. The reptilian brainis the oldest part of our brain and was developed hundreds of millions of years ago. It only has one goal: SURVIVAL. You can compare the reptilian brain to a dog in your head that is always in motion and always on the lookout, sniffing, growling. Always on high alert and without us noticing it. Completely subconciously. It checks all external stimuli for danger, for extraordinary and for new. Always subconciously. And if something is extraordinary, there is an alarm in the brain. Everyone knows the situation in which they were pulled out of an action by an external stimulus and immediately focussed on a new situation. Here is an example: You are talking to your passenger while driving and the radio is playing very quietly in the background. During the conversation with the passenger, you suddenly hear two words from the very quiet radio: “Nuclear power plant” and “Crisis.” And what do you do? You stop the conversation and turn up the volume of the radio. What just happened here? The reptilian brain is constantly asking itself whether something is new, extraordinary or dangerous. We don’t notice this at all. It happens in the subconscious. And then it “wakes up” the consciousness in milliseconds so that we can deal with the situation. In this example, your reptilian brain has perceived the two words nuclear power plant and crisis and has given you the order to deal with this extraordinary incident. BUT WITH FULL CONSCIENCE. The interested reader with extended knowledge of biology and brain may forgive me the simplicity of my above presentation of the function of the reptilian brain. The reason for this discussion of the brain is a very specific one: If you are having a conversation with a customer, it is important that you already press the alarm button in the customer’s head at the start of the conversation.

2  Turn Right—Conversation Starter with Pattern Interruption     27

If the seller or saleswoman sounds just like everyone else in the same profession, then the reptilian brain simply does not react. It is nothing new, nothing extraordinary that it has to turn to. Once again: The reptilian brain loves the bright colors and ignores the gray. So if you sound like everyone else, you’re automatically graycolored in the customer’s head and don’t deserve full attention. Thats the time when you hear the automatism from the customer, in which he says: “Sorry, I don’t have time.” Or: “Sorry, I’m not interested.” And that’s why it’s so important that I look like a bright red or blue to the customer. It is then, when I have the full attention of the customer. And the curiosity. In my sales trainings I do a role-playing game with the participants. We sit facing away from each other and simulate a phone call in which the participants open the conversation. Normally, they sound like this: Schema F: Good day, Mr. McKenna, my name is Petra Müller from the media company XYZ. Nice to have you on the phone. I wanted to ask if I could make an appointment with you because we have developed a new advertising solution to increase awareness. Or: Good day, Mr. McKenna, my name is Petra Müller from the media company XYZ. Nice to have you on the phone. I am a media consultant and responsible for the automotive industry. We have developed a new form of advertising on the radio to increase awareness… Or: Good day, Mr. McKenna, my name is Petra Müller from the media company XYZ. Nice to have you on the phone. You placed three ads in our special on health last year and we will be publishing a five-page report on health and nutrition in three weeks. I wanted to ask if you’re going to be advertising again…

28     R. McKenna

Or: Good day, Mr. McKenna, my name is Petra Müller from the media company XYZ. We had a phone call half a year ago and agreed that I would contact you again this month. Are these conversation starters bright colors for the reptilian brain or rather gray? Of course, they are more gray and do not really invite an exciting dialogue. They are typical conversation starters that customers often hear and do not stimulate attention. And then, as an automatism, these answers often come from the customer: • “No, we have no budget left.” • “No, we are not interested.” • “Please excuse me, but I just don’t have time for this right now.” Regardless of who you have on the line, whether it’s the switchboard, the assistant, or the decision maker, the greeting should be limited to your name and company. No more. Good day, Mr. McKenna, my name is Petra Müller from the XYZ media company. Do not ask how the conversation partner is doing, do not say that it is nice to reach him on the phone. We are in cold acquisition and the question of how he is doing is a personal question. It assumes that you know each other. If you do not know the telephone number or the name of your contact person, you usually address the switchboard. Below I will introduce you to different conversation starters that clean up the verbal everyday gray and make the conversation appear in a flashy and attention-grabbing color.

2.1 The Phone Call with the Head Office If you know the contact person, then it is very simple: Good day, Mr. Müller, my name is Petra Müller from company XYZ.

2  Turn Right—Conversation Starter with Pattern Interruption     29

Can you please put me through to Mr. McKenna. Mr. Müller’s task is to connect people to other people. It is not his task to ask what it is about. For this reason, the transfer is self-evident for the central office. If you do not know the contact person, ask for the head of the desired department. Salesperson: “Mr. Müller, maybe you can help me. Who is responsible for marketing in your house?” If Mr. Müller only gives you the surname, actively ask for the first name. Salesperson:  “Thank you. Can you please tell me his first name?” Do not forget to ask for the extension of the contact person and give a reason for it. Salesperson:  “How can I reach Mr. … directly if he/she is not there right now? Do you have his email address and his extension?” Some companies are very restrictive with phone numbers: In some cases you will not get the extension, in others you will. Salesperson:  “Thank you. Can you please put me through to him?”

2.2 The Phone Call with the Assistant In a perfect world, the contact person is at work and takes the phone call. In the real world, you will very often talk to the assistant who blocks the call according to its importance for the decision maker or forwards it to the boss. An important task of the assistant is to filter incoming calls and information according to their current importance for the superior.

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Overview There are a lot of names for assistants circulating among salespeople. Gatekeeper is one of the nicest ones in my opinion, and the term describes their job to the point. Translated from English Wikipedia: A gatekeeper is a person who controls access to something, for example, through a city gate or a doorkeeper, or more abstractly controls who has access to a category or status. Why many salespeople denigrate the assistants with the terms pit bull or dragon lady is beyond me. They do their job—we do our job. And it is their task to keep the boss’s back free, to give priority to urgent and important matters and to manage appointments. And precisely because they want and have to do their job well, it is our task as a salesperson to do our job even better, so that they are willing to put us through to the decision maker. The internet platform sekretaria.de, a website for secretaries, deals with career information, office organization or tips for relieving the boss, as well as tips dealing with annoying callers who want to be put through to the boss. Assistants and secretaries network in forums and share new techniques from salespeople who absolutely do not want to say why they want to talk to the boss. They too know the different techniques that salespeople use to get them through to the boss.

The classic in the phone call is the question of the assistant: In which matter do you want to speak to him/her? Often this is followed by a state of shock with many salespeople who would otherwise like to prove that they are not at a loss for words. Here it’s different and the question “In which matter…?” leaves many salespersons gobsmacked. Let’s look at the classic conversation between sales and assistant: Sales:  “Good day, Mrs. Assistant, my name is Ricky McKenna from Media XYZ. Can you please put me through to Mrs. Boss?” Assistant: “ In which matter do you want to speak to her?” There are a number of very good techniques that you can use to answer this question and that will greatly improve your chances of getting through to the boss.

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2.2.1 The Technique of the Counter-Question Assistant: “In which matter do you want to speak to her?” Sales:  “When is the best time to talk to her about increasing sales in difficult economic times? It will only be for five minutes.” With the technique of the counter-question, we answer the question with a benefit for the company (increased sales, i.e. more revenue) and at the same time would like to know when the appropriate time for the conversation with the boss is. At the same time, we share the short duration—5 min—of the conversation with. Here we show the assistant that we do not want to waste time.

2.2.2 The Expert Technique I Assistant: “In which matter do you want to speak to her?” Salesman:  “It’s about the marketability of DAB+”. And I would like to have her opinion on the communication suitability. Can you please put me through? Thank you very much. Thank you.“ Who doesn’t hear an expert at the other end of the line here? Possible train of thought of the assistant: marketability of DAB+? That must be a specialist for sure. So, if this conversation partner already talks like my boss, then he/she is also a decision-maker. That must be important. “I would like to have her opinion…” can imply that they have already exchanged views on this topic. And then this double thank you at the end. The double thank you is like a door that is now double-locked—further conversation with the assistant is not welcome. It is mainly used by executives in everyday language. And here again the possible train of thought of the assistant: Boss wants to talk to boss. Must be important.

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2.2.3 Expert Technique II Assistant: “In which matter do you want to speak to her?” Salesman:  “It’s about increased return on investment with unchanged ad spendings. Can you please put me through? Thank you. Thank you.” If I translate the sentence into “normal” language, it just means: “It’s about achieving more sales with the same advertising budget.” This translation would probably make the reptilian brain fall asleep. Everything gray. And then the automation would come: “We don’t need that right now.” Sometimes, using “technical jargon” automatically leads to an unconscious high valuation of the sender. Here again the receiver’s unconscious thought: This person is a specialist/decision maker and it sounds very important …

2.2.4 The Methodology of Universally Transferable Statements Our trust belongs above all to those who have the same thought processes, ideas, and desires as we do. For me, building trust is the most important task of the conversation opener with customers and potential customers. Trust opens people. They willingly give information and are open to new information, products, or solutions. Universally transferable statements are statements that are likely to apply to or be confirmed by a person. The use of this methodology is intended to show analogies and provoke confirmations. Everyone knows universally transferable statements, also called beliefs or indisputable realities. • • • •

No pain, no gain You can’t work on an empty stomach A place for everything and everything in its place Pride comes before a fall

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Nobody doubts these statements, and we all use them in our communication. The use of universally transferable statements is excellent in conversation with the assistant. Here are two examples that I explain in more detail below: 1. Salesperson:“Good afternoon, Mrs. Assistant. My name is Petra Müller from Media XYZ. Is Maria Schulze back from lunch yet?” 2. Salesperson:“Good afternoon, Mrs. Assistant. My name is Petra Müller from Media XYZ. I assume that Maria Schulze is back in a meeting. Or am I wrong and she is available to speak to me?” In these two introductions, I work with the psychological element of the universally transferable statement, that is, with a fact that can apply to the desired contact person 100%. Let’s take a closer look at the first introduction: “Is Maria Schulze back from lunch yet?” 1. Everyone has to eat, everyone takes breaks—even Maria Schulze. Of course, I only use this approach in the early afternoon, not at 11 a.m. in the morning. 2. I ask the assistant a question that provokes an answer. And so I have a conversation with her. No matter what she says, I can react to it and continue the conversation positively. Let’s continue the conversation in our heads: Salesperson: “Is Maria Schulze back from lunch yet?” Assistant:  “Ms. Schulze is not in the office. (critically questioning) Do you know her? What’s this about?” Possible answer Salesperson:  “I don’t know Ms. Schulze but I assumed that, like others, she is taking her well-deserved lunch break.”

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When is she available to discuss the subject of increased return on investment at constant ad spending? So if the assistant thinks she smells a rat and the salesperson is only suggesting that he knows Ms. Schulze, take the wind out of her sails with the universally transferable statement—everyone needs a lunch break. In the second approach—“I assume that Maria Schulze is in a meeting again”—the undeniable reality is that managers are very often in meetings. Here, too, confirmation is virtually programmed and leads to the positive continuation of the conversation.

2.2.5 The Please-Help-Me Technique (Benjamin Franklin Effect) If you ask someone for help, you put the contact person in a position of superiority. You give him power in his hand, his self-esteem rises and the person thanks you with the desired help. And you become more sympathetic! The Benjamin Franklin effect (Wikipedia, 2022) describes the psychological feature that we humans find more sympathetic when we do them a personal favor and are helpful. In an experiment, psychologists Jon Jecker and David Landy in 1969 (Jecker & Landy, 1969) asked people to take part in a knowledge quiz with a chance to win money. One third of the winners were told that they had won, but were asked to forego the money because the director of studies had to pay the prize out of his own pocket. Otherwise, the study would have to be stopped for financial reasons. Another third was asked if they could donate the money to a research fund because the money was running out. The remaining third was not asked if they would give the money back. Those test subjects who were asked by the director of studies to forego the money rated the person significantly more sympathetic than the other two groups. The justification lies in the assumption of our brain that we only do a favor to those people who are sympathetic. So if an unknown person

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asks for a favor and we help him, then the brain thinks that this person must be sympathetic. Otherwise one would not have helped. Salesperson:  “Good day, Mrs. Assistant, my name is Petra Müller from Media XYZ.” “Mrs. Assistant, I need your help.” Assistant: “What can I do for you?” Salesperson:  “I need a 5-min conversation with Mrs. Schulze about the return on investment with unchanged ad spending. When do you think she will be available for me?”

This conversation starter has all required information. Name, company, conversation topic and duration. So you even are ahead of the question—In which matter do you want to speak to her?—. The assistant may not be able to understand you, but the topic definitely sounds like expertise. Assistant:  “Send us documents. We will then contact you!” Another classic way to get rid of a salesperson in the telephone. I guess you probably have experienced that yourself. And to be honest, how often have you sent documents and then received a call back? Never? Welcome to the club. In this situation, many assistants simply want to throw the salesperson out of the line and use this objection, even though it is not an objection. It is no more than a white lie, diplomatically speaking, it is an excuse. If you are ever confronted with this brush-off statement, just try the role-reversal or the amazement technique.

2.2.6 The Role-Reversal Technique Assistant:  “Please send us the documents first. We will then get back to you.” Salesperson:  “Assistant, many of my customers would like to have documents in advance to read before a meeting. I can

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understand that. So that we can deliver the information that is currently relevant to you, please help me. What topic would you like me to send you documents on if you were in my place? Increasing ROI with unchanged ad-spendings? Or do you rather want further information on further increasing your brand awareness? I would like to quickly clarify that with Mrs. Schulze.” You upgrade the assistant by asking for their advice or opinion. In this case, the excuse of sending documents is often neutralized because you position yourself as an expert with the selection of possible answers. The likely thought process is: Increased ROI with stable Ad-Spendings … I have no idea what that means, but it sounds important … If the assistant does not give you an answer, ask again if you can be transferred to the decision maker. After all, you want to clarify beforehand which documents are particularly important to him.

2.2.7 The Amazement Technique The amazement technique is one of my favorite techniques because the objection is turned into the most important decision-making argument. You can use it for a variety of objections and it works very well because my conversation partner is first of all totally baffled. Think of the reptile brain. Awe creates the highest attention. Assistant:  “Please send us the documents first. We will then get back to you.” Salesperson:  “Mrs. Assistant, that’s exactly the reason why I want to speak to Mrs. Schulze. (Mini break) BECAUSE I have to ask her to which topics she needs further information and documents right now.” Here’s another example: Assistant: “Mrs. Schulze has very little time in the next few weeks. Please try again in the week after next. It would be best if you sent us the documents first.”

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Salesperson:  “Mrs. Assistant, that’s exactly the reason why I want to talk with her for a minute. BECAUSE she doesn’t have time.” The assistant is now probably thinking: What kind of a statement is that? I’m curious how the salesperson justifies it. Salesperson: “I need her opinion on your advertising objectives because we design our documents individually according to the current customer requirements. Can you put me through for 2 min?”

2.3 The Phone Call with the Decision Maker You finally have the decision maker. But believe it or not: You are disturbing. You are disturbing the decision maker in his current activity. Maybe he’s writing an email, maybe he’s having a meeting with an employee or supplier. Maybe the person just wanted to call someone or drive to a customer appointment. And so an automatism in the form of three questions runs through the decision maker’s head when the phone rings: 1. Who is disturbing me? 2. What’s it about? 3. What’s in it for me? These three questions must be answered and satisfied in the first sentences of the conversational opening. Only then do we receive the undivided attention of the contact person, which is reflected in more time given to you. The first two questions: “Who is disturbing me and what’s it about?” can be answered very easily. The third question deals with the benefit of the conversation for the decision maker. So this is about the question of how the person can benefit if he talks to me.

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Compare the beginning of the conversation with the fuel consumption of a rocket to the moon. For the Saturn V rocket launch, up to 23% of the fuel is needed to reach an altitude of about 60 km and slowly escape the Earth’s gravity. For the remaining just under 384,000 km, only a fraction of the fuel is needed per km compared to the first 60 km. When opening the conversation, you have to invest most of the (mental) energy so that the contact person wants to continue the conversation with you. Always think of the bright colors that the reptile brain likes so much. We have to sound extraordinary and full of contrasts. If we are gray, we will be rejected immediately. “Sorry, no time.” “Sorry, we already have an advertising partner.” “Sorry, no budget.” These are statements that are recited like a litany because they are attracted by the color gray. Avoid the following statements in your conversation opener: Salesperson: “Good day Mrs. Schulze, my name is Mr. Sales from Media XYZ. I hope I’m not disturbing you right now/ please excuse me if I’m disturbing you right now.” Salesperson: “Good day Mrs. Schulze, my name is Mrs. Sales from Media XYZ. Do you have 3 min time for me?”

Overview What does the salesperson want to know from the customer with these no-go questions? Does the salesperson believe that the customer will reply: “I’ve been waiting for ages for your call. You only want 3 min of my time? You have all the time in the world.”? These gray conversation openers of the salesperson are nothing more than clichés that do not grant any added value. They motivate the customer to dismiss the caller. Seriously: You have the decision maker on the phone for the first time, introduce yourself and ask if you are disturbing him? The impression you are giving does not reflect a conversation at eye level.

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Salesperson: “Hello Mrs. Schulze, my name is salesperson from Media XYZ. I wanted to ask if you received my email.” Of course it is useful to announce your phone call by email. But the question does not add any value for the customer. It is just a cliché.

Salesperson: “Hello Mrs. Schulze, my name is seller from Media XYZ. How are you?” This question really gives me the creeps. It is reserved for friends and acquaintances. Of course also for psychologists in an opening question. But I am not a patient and not an acquaintance. If it comes to building credibility, this question is an absolute no-go.

Salesperson: “Hello Mrs. Schulze, my name is Mr. Sales from Media XYZ. We have developed a new form of advertising technique and I would like to present it to you in a meeting. When would be a convenient time for you next week?” What value does this conversation have for the customer? What does this info give him? Absolutely nothing. This introduction makes it easier for the customer to answer with “We don’t need any advertising”, “We already have a supplier”.

It is time to sound different than everyone else. Below I will explain how the customer is led to an appointment step by step with logical arguments in the conversation. You pursue two goals with your conversation opening: 1. You want to create a positive conversation atmosphere for the customer in which he feels comfortable. 2. You want to lead your customer into the second conversation phase, in which he answers your questions about his goals and pains in detail.

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2.3.1 Step 1: The Conversation Opening with the Anticipation Technique What do you know about the decision maker? Right: • That you are just disturbing him. • And that he has no time. • And of course his aversion to gray. With the anticipation opening you will definitely receive the first positive approval. Salesperson: “Hello Mrs. Schulze, my name is Mr. Sales from Media XYZ.” Customer: “Hello.” Salesperson: “Mrs. Schulze, if it’s okay with you, I’ll keep it short and get right to the point. Is that okay with you?”

So you turn right to avoid a possible construction site, in this case it would be a possible objection. This deviation from the schedule saves you valuable time and you will always receive positive feedback from the conversation partner. “Dear passenger, experience has shown that an objection construction site is coming up soon, which I can avoid if I turn right here and get ahead of you. That’s okay with you, right?” Overview With this opening you signal to the customer that you do not want to waste his time and the objection: “I do not have time!” won’t be heard. In addition, you leave the decision to the customer by asking him if it is okay with him. With this opening question I only receive the approval of the contact person. “Fire away!” “What can I do for you?” “Yes, that’s fine.” With these confirmations you already have his undivided attention and a relaxed customer who knows that the phone call will not take long.

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2.3.2 Step 2: Building Trust Sympathy and trust are in a strong interaction with each other. Sympathy promotes trust and thus strengthens the power to move other people to action. In his much-noticed bestseller book “The Psychology of Persuasion” the American author and psychologist Robert B. Cialdini (Cialdini, 2009) sheds light on different factors why people find other people likeable. One decisive factor is the compliment. Of course, every human being likes compliments, because they strengthen our self-confidence, and give the praised thing a golden shine of appreciation. We feel good and find the person that gives us a compliment sympathetic. Of course, a compliment in business has its limits when we realize that someone is chumming up and pursuing their own benefit. Then sympathy and trust fall by the wayside. In this second step, I will introduce you to a trust-building model that you can use immediately after opening the conversation and lead the customer directly into an open conversation. This 3-step model is used in employee management and serves to strengthen motivation: • Step 1: Compliment • Step 2: Reason • Step 3: Open question Use this trust-building model after you asked whether you can jump right into the topic. • Stage 1—Compliment: Salesperson:  “Mrs. Schulze, I must say that I admired your new branch very much when I drove past it last week.”

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• Stage 2—Reason: Salesperson: “The building is very modern and resembles a UFO with its antennas and window front. I find that very extraordinary.” • Stage 3—Open question: Salesperson:

“What was the reason for choosing this building design?”

(or: “What do your customers actually say about your new branch?”) If you were only to give a compliment, the credibility of this praise would be lacking. In order to prevent this, give reasons for your compliment and ask a sincere open question about the subject of the praise. The customer will not doubt the seriousness of your praise and will answer your question. While many salespeople like to talk about their product at the beginning of the conversation, they put the customer and his or her opinion in the foreground.

2.3.3 Step 3: Addressing Indisputable Personal Facts Next, follow up with another customer-related statement by addressing facts that apply to the contact and/or the company.

Salesperson: “Mrs. Schulze, you are the marketing manager of company X and you just launched your new product line ABC last month.” With these indisputable facts, you signal to your conversation partner that you are informed (plus point for homework done), the facts cannot be denied and the conversation still proceeds outside the ordinary. Proceed to step 4 immediately and without a pause.

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2.3.4 Step 4: The Reason for Your Call Now is the time to let the cat out of the bag and tell the customer your reason for for your call: Salesperson:  “We cooperate with many companies in your industry that are finding it increasingly difficult to execute well-functioning advertising solutions with reduced advertising budgets. Here we have already been able to inspire many marketing managers with our solution approaches and support them in achieving their advertising goals.” Overview If Mrs. Schulze has no problem at all with her advertising measures, she will not feel stepped on her toes because you have spoken about third parties at this point. In addition, she learns in this part of the conversation that your contacts are on her hierarchical level.

2.3.5 Step 5: Ask for Permission to Conduct Needs Assessment Salesperson: “Mrs. Schulze, and that’s the reason why you were contacted by me today. To present you with an advertising solution that increases your awareness and thus brings new customers into your business.” And to be honest: The presentation of our advertising solution only makes sense to me if it also supports your current goals. And I have two or three questions. May I ask them briefly? Overview While I have already signaled to Mrs. Schulze in the first step of the conversation entry that I have no time to waste, this was repeated in the fifth step: I only want to present the advertising solution if it is currently relevant to her goals and is therefore urgent.

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No guideline no matter how good it is, is a guarantee that you will achieve your current sales goal with it. However, I can guarantee that you will achieve significantly more appointments and orders by creating your personal guideline Many salespeople are surprised that most decision-makers allow further questions at this point and the salesperson can turn into the next street of the needs analysis. But to be honest—it is not at all surprising because we are slowly approaching our goal and always giving the customer good reasons why he should stay in the conversation. Some decision-makers tell you that they only have very little time. Maybe they really don’t have time, maybe they just say it so they can end the conversation with me. Whether true or not: The solution to this situation is a verbal contract that you can offer them. Let’s assume that Mrs. Schulze says the following to you: Decision-maker:  “Mr. Salesman, I have a meeting in a couple of minutes and really don’t have much time left.” Then you can use the contract method: Salesperson:  “Mrs. Schulze, what do you think? You give me 3 min of your time and I’ll ask my questions briefly. If you feel that the conversation is not worth it, we’ll break it off immediately. Is that fair to you?” People love contracts. They give them security due to the agreed terms and conditions. Therefore, the deal with the three additional minutes. The final question “Is that fair to you?” leaves the decision up to the customer and doesn’t put him under pressure. This contract method is also one of my top pattern interrupters that is rewarded with the customer’s high-levelled attention.

“No wind is favorable to him who does not know where he is sailing.” This quote by Michel de Montaigne hits the nail on the head. You always have to have the respective intermediate goal in mind. When you first contact someone, you have several goals: On the one hand, you want to talk to the decision maker. On the other hand, you want to build a positive relationship so that you can make an appointment with him at a later stage.

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References Cialdini, R. B. (2009). Die Psychologie des Überzeugens (6th ed., p. 215 ff.). Hans Huber, Hogrefe AG. Jecker, J., & Landy, D. (1969). Liking a person as a function of doing him a favour. Human Relations, 22(4), 371–378. Wikipedia. (2022). Stichwort Ben Franklin effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect. Accessed 7. Apr. 2022.

3 Follow the Course of the Road—The Needs Analysis

Abstract  Determining the actual customer need is the most important prerequisite for a successful sales pitch. If you don’t know the customer’s pains and goals, then your sales arguments are worth as much as a lost piece of bread in the fondue. The customers buy exactly when they want the offer. And they want it when they recognise a clear personal benefit in the offer. And the benefit is defined by the satisfaction of the need. For success in sales, it is essential to know a) which gap the customer has, and b) whether my offer can close this gap. This chapter presents appropriate questions and questioning techniques to determine the actual customer need in a short conversation, which is subsequently used to conclude the sale.

3.1 The Goal Assist In the early 2000s, I had a regular exchange with the sales manager of a Lower Austrian radio station who summed up the most important basic principle of sales in two sentences. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. McKenna, The Sales Sat Nav for Media Consultants, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-40734-6_3

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“I can’t sell you anything if I don’t know whether you need what I have to offer. And that’s why I have to ask a few questions.” Through this one basic principle, I developed further basic principles that were also new to me. • “I can only make an appointment if I provide you with a relevant benefit for the meeting in the phone call.” • “I can only hear your pain and goals if you, the customer, talk most– and I mostly listen.” • “I can only be at eye level with the customer if I build trust with my questions.” • “I can only win you as a customer if I ask you goal-oriented questions in advance and my offer reflects the direct reference to your answers.” • “I can only win you as a customer if I have won you as a person before.” These are all basic principles that are akin to an if-then-else formula in Excel. And indeed, sales have a lot to do with mathematics and statistical probabilities. Just think of the quota calculations. The needs analysis in cold calling is, in my opinion, the most important process in the entire sales process. Its high significance is due to its consolidation and condensation of information that is necessary for the further course of the sales process and the successful closing argumentation. This chapter gives you the answers to the following questions: • What questions about the needs and pains increase the chances for a customer appointment? • How do I make sure that a complete stranger tells me his company’s goals in detail? • Am I currently focusing too much on talking and too little on listening? • Do I fixate too much on the one offer that I want to sell to the customer and fail to realise that my offer is unsuitable for the customer’s goal? • Which questioning techniques are suitable for the needs analysis to open up the customer?

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3.2 Be the Doctor The needs analysis is the heart of the customer meeting. You have to take a close look at the customer’s current goals and pain. Do not forget that a customer only buys when he needs something. No pain—no sale. Position yourself as a doctor who examines the patient. If the patient tells the doctor that he has severe back pain, the doctor will not immediately reach for the prescription pad and write a prescription. First, the doctor has to examine. Based on the examination, the diagnosis is made and only then a prescription is issued. No diagnosis without examination. No prescription without diagnosis. At the same time, in most cases, the patient won’t question the diagnosis and the prescription. He won’t ask for blue pills because he doesn’t like the green color of the prescribed pills. The doctor is an expert. You have to position yourself in sales in the same way. You are an expert and have a clear recommendation for treating the “pain” of the customer after the needs analysis. Overview Shortly after I took over the management of a Vienna radio station, I received a call from a media consultant from a daily newspaper. Even though this phone call is over 15 years ago, I can still remember the wording very well. Salesperson:  “Hello, Mr. McKenna. My name is newspaper salesman from the newspaper XYZ. I’m glad to have you on the phone. We had an advertising framework agreement with Mr. predecessor last year for xx.xxx millimetres, which were taken according to the communication needs. I’m calling to see if you want to continue that this year. With this contract, we of course continue to grant very favorable conditions.”

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My first thought: Just get rid of this media consultant. His needs analysis revolved solely around the question: “Do you need xx.xxx millimeters again?” By the way, these are the typical ego-phone calls with the very largest share of the conversation on the part of the salesperson (“We are the biggest, we have the best price, we have been market leader for years”). During the phone call, I asked myself the simple question: How do I benefit as a customer? What’s in it for me? This “What’s in it for me?” is equivalent to “Where is the benefit for me?” The story goes on … My predecessor had also cooperated with other media. The next call did not take long: Seller:  “Hello, Mr. McKenna. My name is trade magazine salesman from the publisher XYZ. We do not know each other yet. With Mr. predecessor we had agreed on a framework agreement in the past, in which you booked an advertising budget last year and placed ads on different topics in our magazine as needed. I’m calling you because I’d like to know more about your communication goals this year. Then I know wether and how a cooperation can be established. Is it possible for you to arrange a short appointment so that we can talk about your future projects?” This media consultant was so on spot with his statements that we met shortly afterwards for a meeting. And we agreed on another annual cooperation. Notice how easy it is to build trust in a short sales phone call?

3.3 Shut Up and Listen! Everyone knows this wisdom and it should be reflected in the customer’s share of the conversation. According to the motto: “A salesman must be able to talk well—not much”, you should always make sure that the customer has a much higher share of the conversation. After all, the customer is to be qualified and you should not tell your life story. Of course, your share of the conversation is higher when presenting the offer than when analyzing the need. Searching for a rule of thumb, I always come across the 30:70 formula on the Internet.

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30% conversation share from the salesperson and 70% from the customer. This seems like a healthy relationship to me. I can’t prove this healthy relationship, but at least a good customer conversation is made up of many salesperson questions and customer answers. And the customer answers should dominate the time. Overview During my time at a Vienna radio station, I arranged a meeting with the owner of a clothing company. After the first meeting with a trade company for exclusive men’s clothing, the owner thanked me for the really great conversation. Conversation? In truth, this appointment was more of a monologue by the customer, who, in addition to answering my questions, also told me his entire life story. I noticed that the higher share of the customer’s conversation was indeed a positive aspect in his perception. If I already want to collect important information from the customer, then my own voice should also be silent for a while. The power of active listening and the right question also characterize a good salesperson.

3.4 Gain the Customer’s Trust When you ask the customer questions about his company, you simultaneously signal active interest in the customer and his environment. Above all, this expression of interest promotes the customer’s trust in the salesperson. The customer does not buy from the company you represent. He buys from you as a person. In the business world, many products, services and solutions are interchangeable. Comparable price, comparable quality, comparable delivery time. You could also go to the competition and often buy the comparable product or the same solution. The more expensive and consultation-intensive a product, service or solution is, the stronger the positive feeling must be for the customer,

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that he is giving his money and trust to the right provider. And here it is a matter of immersing into the customer’s world through intelligent questions and understand which current motives and goals are in the foreground for the customer.

3.5 Who Asks, Leads In the last 20 years, the sales philosophy has been to ask the customer’s needs and then to establish a logical and meaningful connection between these needs and one’s own offers. This is classic solution-oriented sales. The aim of the sales conversation is to find out the customer’s needs through open, closed and hypothetical questions, in-depth questions, probing questions, deferral questions and numerous other types of questions. But what if the customer does not know what he or she currently and urgently needs? Example: A glazier wants to increase his turnover in the private customer segment. In the conversation with the salesperson, the customer lists the measures implemented so far to achieve his goal: Twice a year, the company sends a mailing with special offers to its customers. In addition, it places two ads in the weekly newspaper and sells self-blown Christmas tree decorations during the Christmas season. The Christmas decorations are not advertised separately because they are pictured on the company’s homepage and have already been advertised in the customer mailing. The salesperson asks how high the share of regular customers to total sales is. With just this one question from the salesperson, it is clear that he has a more diverse problem than he originally thought: The customer replies that more than half of the total turnover is generated by two industrial customers.

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He has a more urgent new customer problem than he was aware of in advance, because with his mailing campaign he only contacts his existing customers, i.e. those who already know him. This is comparable to framed certificates of outstanding performance that the company hangs up in the sales room. They are only noticed by people who have already decided to visit this company. The outstanding performance must be transported to new customer potential for new customer acquisition. With two classified ads per year, strategic thrust is missing to attract new customers. In addition, his dependence on the orders of two major customers is extremely dangerous. Do customers want to be lectured by salespeople? But of course. They are the experts in their field and have important things to say. This is also your self-image as a salesperson: You are the doctor and give the patient a clear recommendation in the form of a prescription. You know the effect of the different advertising forms. Many customers do not. You know how to create attention with a creative ad. Most customers do not. You are familiar with the high impact of storytelling in a radio spot or the design guidelines for an effective ad or TV spot. Hardly any customer knows that. You are the specialist for online advertising and know how to flexibly adapt the current online campaign to potential customers through precise monitoring. Only few regional companies know that. It is important that you, as a specialist, put your finger in the wound and tell the customer after the needs analysis that he may have a different problem and should possibly persue a completely different goal. This is exactly what strengthens the reputation of the salesperson and the customer does not flinch when the salesperson asks for the order and holds out his hand. It is not the question of the customer’s needs that is in the foreground. It is identifying and revealing the true customer needs. In the media business, the question of the main goal in the next six or twelve months is of course very sensible, but as a salesperson you must not be satisfied with the answer “more sales, more customers, more awareness, higher utilization”. These are the common goals that we hear over and over again in discussion with customers. A needs analysis isn’t necessary to find out that the customers want to grow.

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Don’t be satisfied with inaccurate customer answers because the scope for interpretation is very large and a precise diagnosis with a “prescription” isn’t possible. Now you could object that the goal of increasing sales, perhaps even with a quantification of 10%, is completely sufficient as target information. However, there are still some unanswered questions here: • We do not know whether the increase in sales should take place solely with the acquisition of new customers. • We also do not know whether the increase in sales should be generated with a particular product group and thus with a specific target group. • Is the 10% increase in sales to be achieved by advertising promotions and seasonal highlights? • In which period of time is the sales to be increased by 10%? • Is the target of the sales increase due to the lack of awareness? • … You will notice from the different questions that there are different and strongly divergent approaches to solutions and campaigns to achieve the sales increase of 10%. While promotion advertising is based on seasonal highlights—i.e on the WHEN—a advertising solution to increase awareness will focus primarily on the WHAT in the campaign. Overview At a media event in Vienna, I met the owner of a men’s clothing company for exclusive men’s fashion. So far, no media consultant of the radio station had asked for an appointment and so I was pleased that we stood together in the evening and got into conversation. Of course I asked him for an appointment and was amazed at his answer: “Every time I get the same questions from the media consultants. It hardly matters which medium they come from. Always the same questions. I don’t believe them that these questions are really important. And I always have to explain the same thing to them. When we order the collections, which seasons are particularly important for us, where we advertise, who our core target group is. Do you know what I want? I would

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like to have a media consultant in the store who tells me something new and important. If he already has something to do with other clothing companies, then of course it is also interesting for me to see which goals they pursue and above all how they achieve these goals through their advertising.” If information is the most important asset for growth and development, then it goes without saying that the salesperson at least must have a basic knowledge of the customer’s industry. A welcome salesperson provides his customers with new information about their industry and scores points with them through this knowledge. He recommends himself as a conversation partner at eye level with the customer and thus wins his trust.

3.6 Top Sat Nav Questions in the Needs Analysis The needs analysis at the initial meeting serves as a springboard for the appointment where you place your offer. If you know the customer’s goals and pains and have the means to relieve the pain with your offers, you can use this knowledge to make an appointment much more easily. The main objectives of the advertising customer are: • Increase in sales • Acquisition of new customers • Optimize utilization (e.g. strengthen weak seasonal business for hotels) • Announce actions • Announce new products • Find new staff • Increase awareness • Clearance sale Here is my personal hit list of the top sat nav questions in the needs analysis phase. Many of these questions don’t need to be asked because

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they been have been discussed on the basis of previous answers from your customer. 1. What is your most important goal in the next 12 months? What is the actual burning issue of the customer? Are there any particular “pains” that he would like to get rid of? You can guide the customer in giving him a choice of possible answers. Example: Salesperson:  “When you think of your most important business goal for the next 12 months, what comes to your mind first?” Customer:  “New customer acquisition and staff recruitment are the most important goals we are pursuing this year.” Salesperson:  “Which of these two goals you mentioned is particularly important to you?” Customer:  “Well, new customers are particularly important to us right now. But we need additional staff so that we are able to supply new customers with our services at all.”

So, now we know the main goal: New customer acquisition And the main pain: Not enough staff 2. Can you please explain this to me in more detail? “Saying is not understanding.” Dig for more information about the goals. • How can the typical customer be described? • Is the search for new customers perhaps due to a different kind of problem, e.g., that the regular customers are slowly getting older and the acquisition of new customers has been neglected in the past? • For which occupational group is he looking for new employees?

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• Is the company in the process of expansion and therefore in need of new employees? 3. What other goals are you pursuing in addition? Make your customer think and actively support him with examples if necessary. Example: “Many similar companies in your industry have their sumSalesperson:  mer clearance sale to make room for the new fall collection. What other goals do you pursue in addition? Increasing your sales, or other goals?” 4. When do you want to achieve this goal at the latest? A common reason why customers do not buy is often that they do not consider the achievement of the goal or the current pain relief to be urgent. With this question you will find out how urgent the goals actually are for the customer. Salesperson: ”How quickly do you want to achieve these goals? Does one of these goals currently have top priority?” Or: Salesperson: “Let’s say I show you a communication solution that meets all your conditions—when would you want to start the campaign at the latest?” Customer:  “Let’s put it this way, if we can’t find any more staff, we don’t have the option of taking on new customers at all.” Recruiting staff has become a serious bottleneck in the further development of companies in many industries. Specialist staff is scarce and this shortage is hampering the growth of many companies. This customer statement has now become a classic in the needs assessment phase. In this example, we learn of two goals that the

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customer apparently wants to approach in two stages. First find the staff and only then win new customers. This suggests two time-delayed campaign solutions. Only if we ask the question of top priority in goal achievement can we also deduce its urgency. 5. What measures have been taken in the past to achieve the goal? We need to know what advertising measures were taken and how often advertising was done with which medium. Thus we can determine both the customer’s affinity for advertising and his approximate advertising budget. Salesperson: “That’s interesting. Tell me, what have you done in the past to find new staff?” Customer:  “We regularly place online ads on the portals abc and xyz and also place print ads in the weekly paper and in the daily newspaper from time to time.” Salesperson:  “How often do you actually place these job ads per year?”

This question is particularly important because you now want to roughly determine the advertising budget available. The question of the advertising budget is delicate because the customer has not had any contact with you in the past and a relationship of trust still has to be established. With the pricing information on the websites of the respective media, it is very easy and above all very accurate to determine the minimum volume of the customer’s advertising budget. Let’s assume that the customer has placed an ad 5 times on a significant advertising portal. Then that’s 5 times at least, for example, €900 per ad. If an ad is placed equally often in a daily newspaper, the budget can multiply depending on the size of the ad and may sum up to perhaps €20,000. Reduce this amount by the usual discount of the media category and you are close to the true budget.

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6. How well did these measures work for you? The customer’s answer to this question decides which direction you now take for the appointment. If the answer is negative and the measures taken did not lead to success according to the customer, then the subsequent question about the appointment is entirely different than with a positive answer to this question. Negative variant—no advertising success achieved in the past Salesperson: “And what are your experiences with the job ads in the weekly newspaper, in the daily newspaper and in the online portals?” Customer:  “Let’s put it this way: it wasn’t exactly successful. There’s still a lot of room for improvement. We hardly had any response.” Positive variant—good advertising success achieved in the past Salesperson: “And what are your experiences with the job ads in the weekly newspaper, in the daily newspaper and in the online portals?” Customer:  “We are very satisfied with the response and were able to fill some vacancies both with the daily paper and online.” 7. What makes you exceptional?—The question about the USP Unique Selling Points (USP) highlight the unique benefits of the offer that the competitor cannot provide. It is the so-called unique selling proposition of the company. In a nutshell, you could formulate a USP as follows: Dear customer, what you get from me and that the competitor cannot deliver, that is … It is especially important that the customer also sees a real benefit in it. The question of the USP is therefore very important because it plays the central role as a sales argument in the communication solution.

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If the advertising customer knows that his customers buy his products, for example, because of an extraordinary service or design, then he has exactly the right bait for his advertising activities to attract new customers. Salesperson: “Do you offer your customers something extraordinary that no other competitor can provide and that your customers really appreciate?”

Customer: “We expanded our billing system half a year ago and our restaurant guests can now eat on account. They give us their contact details, we send them the invoice by e-mail and they transfer the amount due within a week. This was immediately well received and we have been able to increase our turnover by 15% since then.” Often, small, locally based companies do not know their USP and do not know why customers buy from them and not from the competition. Knowing the relevant unique selling proposition is the actual road map for companies with growth targets. It determines the direction of communication and represents the actual “reason why”, i.e., the reason to buy. Especially in competitive industries the importance of the USP increases, which is the ideal compass for its core message in advertising. In the entire process of needs analysis, you align your sat nav with the customer’s respective answers. Only the knowledge of the need and the prevailing pain gives you the exact current location and the destination. You know the customer’s main goal. Perhaps the customer is pursuing additional goals at the same time that need to be achieved together with the main goal or require an additional route. For this reason, the needs analysis is the most important element in the entire sales process. The topic of USP is covered later in this book in more detail.

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3.7 The Power of Questions In hardly any organization are questions as important as in sales, because they directly influence turnover. Lawyers and doctors are trained early in questioning techniques, because the answers guide their respective investigation, strategy or diagnosis. Asking questions means exchanging information and is one of the most important communication elements in personal and business development. Managers ask employees, suppliers and customers questions throughout the day in order to drive improvements for their company and minimize risks. Questions also strengthen the relationship and increase trust in each other. If you have been cooperating with customers for a longer period of time, then you know their goals and pains through the questions you asked in advance and you know their expectations and their competitive environment. If you are in regular contact with them, update their needs by asking questions so that the customers increasingly trust your solutions. My personal question game for kids in restaurants When our kids were still in kindergarten, I played a special question game with them in restaurants. First I would dig some change out of my pocket, put it in front of me and set them a task to win the money. Their task was to approach a guest or a group of visitors and ask them their name, where they live and what they ordered to eat. You can probably imagine how exciting such a task is for children. First of all, you have to overcome the inner bastard that whispers to them that you shouldn’t do something like that. But then there was the 50 cents on the table, which I sometimes even doubled to influence their decision. It is even more interesting when the task is made more difficult and consists of telling a person that they “really look great” and then asking them for their names. What actually looks like a small dare is nothing other than a practical training for the power of communication “If you don’t ask—you don’t get it.” There was a double benefit for the kids: On the one hand, our children got money for asking and on the other hand they also got the information they wanted.

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My wife and I observed the scenes and we were often speechless with the information our children came back to our table with. Admittedly, they sometimes told the people that it was a dare and also pointed their fingers at us. All we could do was wave and smile mischievously and the respondents willingly and cheerfully gave our children the answers. At that time this game was really nothing more than a funny dare, but in the following years I understood the outstanding importance of the often used saying: If you don’t ask—you don’t get.

3.8 The Popular One Asks Many Questions In the process of updating my training sessions, I came across a highly interesting study on questions that Harvard University published in September 2017 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In this study speed dating was used to analyze the effect that the number of questions has for receiving a second date. (Huang et al., 2017) The result of this study shows the clear trend that the probability of a 2nd date increases with the number of questions asked. Thus, two basic functions of questions become clear: on the one hand, asking questions serves to gain information, on the other hand, the affection of the respondent to the questioner increases. Why does affection increase with the number of questions? According to a study (Dunbar et al., 1997), people talk on average two-thirds of the conversation time about their own opinions and experiences. So when an interlocutor asks many questions, he invites his counterpart to do exactly what he likes to do anyway. Talking about himself. And that makes the questioner sympathetic.

3.9 Distance Zones According to Edward T. Hall—Each Question in its Own Time The well-known wisdom—who asks, leads—describes numerous facets in the art of questioning.

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In addition, I see in the wisdom a new interpretation: “Who asks, leads. Who answers, wants to follow.” I lead the conversation in a desired direction with my questions. At the same time, the questions must invite the respondent to also follow this route. Therefore, when choosing the questions, you should always make sure that you do not step on the toes of the interlocutor. The better you know a person, the more direct and personal you can formulate your questions. To illustrate this, I would like to use the description of the distance zones. The distance zone defines the spatial distance of a person to another so that this person does not feel oppressed or uncomfortable. The American anthropologist Edward T. Hall (Hall, 1976) determined four distance zones in which the distance to the other person decreases with the degree of familarities. The better you know each other, the smaller the distance zone between the people. The four zones at a glance: 1. In the public distance zone, I feel comfortable with a distance of more than 3.6 m to the unknown person. 2. The social distance zone measures the comfort distance with 1.2 to 3 m. These are also unknown persons, but I communicate with them in a more impersonal way. Places for the social distance zone are, for example, shops, restaurants or industry meetings. 3. Friends and family move in the personal distance zone with a distance of 0.6 to 1.2 m. 4. The intimate distance zone only needs a distance of up to 60 cm. This space is reserved for really good friends and people we love. This is where we feel comfortable. Even with body contact. Most of us go through all four distance zones when we get to know our future partner. And we wouldn’t talk about wanting children and herpes blisters on the first date. That’s just too intimate. It’s the same way with a cold call. If you ask the decision maker in the first conversation about the size of his advertising budget, the answer will probably be: click. The distance is too small for the customer.

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At the first date we start with an innocuous exchange. Only after this getting-to-know-phase do we have the first information about him or her and about the person’s goals and pains and can slowly dig deeper. Ask the right questions at the right time. This will lead the sales conversation in the direction you want and the customer will thank you with qualified answers. You know the saying: There are no stupid questions. Only the timing should be right. The better the timing, the better the customer’s answers. All questions in my conversation guidelines follow this strategy: From the general and innocuous to the actual pain and goals. Step by step.

3.10 Questioning Techniques in Sales Conversations Questioning techniques are open or closed questions that aim to gain information and control the conversation. Open questions Open questions allow answers that are not reduced to a yes or no. They open the customer and motivate to answer the questions in detail, thus giving away valuable information. • • • • • • • •

Who …is still involved in marketing decisions? How …would you describe your current competitive situation? What …can I do to support you? When …should your campaign start at the latest? In what …ways does your company differ from the competition? How …will you know if the campaign was successful for you? What …advertising measures have you carried out in the past? What …must our solution achieve for you to be successful?

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Closed questions With closed questions you give the reduced answer options “yes, no, I don’t know, it depends” in advance. They are used when, for example, you want to confirm something with a confirmation question. • • •

You want to make sure that you have understood the customer: “If I understood you correctly, you need …, is that right?” You ask for a quick and binding decision: “If we agree on the price, are we in business?” You want to move on to the next phase of the conversation: “Do you have any further questions on this topic?”

If you hear a “no” or “it depends” to a question, you should immediately respond with an open question. • Salesperson: “If we agree on the price, are we in business?” • Customer: “I can not say that yet.” • Salesperson:  “Mrs. Schulze, what other open points still need to be clarified to your satisfaction, so that you would decide for this solution?”

The following list shows the most frequently used question forms and their time of use in the course of the conversation. Here I would like to refer again to the sat nav idea, because questions at the wrong time can also lead to a dead end. For example, the direct question about the available advertising budget can lead to a lack of understanding on the part of the customer and negatively influence the further course of the conversation. The Permission Question • Salesperson: “Hello Mrs. Schulze, my name is Mr. Sales from Media XYZ.” • Customer: “Hello.”

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• Salesperson:  “Mrs. Schulze, if it is okay with you, I would like to be brief and get to the point straight away.” “Is that okay with you?”

Usage: Telephone conversation opening with the customer. • Salesperson: “The presentation of our advertising solution only makes sense if it also supports your current goals. And I have two or three questions for you.” “Can I quickly ask them?” Usage: Another signal that we do not want to take up too much of the customer’s time. The alternative question With the alternative question you provide the customer with alternatives from which he can choose his favorite. The key to the alternative question lies in the restriction of the alternatives. Give the customer only two to a maximum of three alternatives to choose from. • Salesperson: – “When would you like to meet with me? On Thursday at 5 pm or on Friday at 12 noon?” – “Which of these two offers do you tend to more? The smaller basic offer, or the extended offer with the faster reach building?” Usage: The alternative question is used above all when making appointments and when closing the sale. The in-depth question If you ask the customer about his goals in the next 12 months, he will answer the question with, for example, an increase in his new customer business. Do not jump straight to the next topic now, because you need more meat to specify this answer. You want more information and you want to know which target group he wants to address, how long he has been pursuing this goal, what measures he has taken in the past to

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achieve this goal, whether he was successful with these measures, which advertising media he used, and, and, and. • Salesperson: – “If you state new customer acquisition as your main goal, can you please explain it to me in more detail?” – “What does your typical new customer look like? Young, old, …? Can you describe him a little more precisely?” – “When you say that our medium is not an option for your advertising activities, what do you mean in detail?” Usage: The in-depth question is mainly used in the needs assessment phase to identify underlying motives and to concretize imprecise statements. As in the example above, it can also be used with objections to gain further clarity about the objection. The follow-up question The goal of the follow-up question is to uncover additional goals and pains of the customer. Experience has shown that companies pursue additional goals in parallel, which may not have the priority of the main goal, but can be meaningfully combined in a communication solution. In addition to the goal of increasing awareness, the clearance sale or the increase in utilization in low-revenue months can be in the focus of the customer. If you have a lot of expertise in this industry due to your customer structure, you can include examples of target groups of other industry representatives in the follow-up question. • Salesperson: – “Some of your industry colleagues also place great importance to a higher occupancy in the summer months. What goals are you actually pursuing besides increasing the awareness?” – “What other information do you need to make a decision in favor of our communication solution?” Usage: Follow-up questions find their use in the needs analysis, objection handling and sales closing.

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The willingness to buy question After you have carried out the needs analysis, you can check the customer’s willingness to buy. Ask the customer directly after setting the appointment to check how serious his intention is to buy in the first place. With this questioning technique, it is a closed question. If the question is answered with “No” or “It depends”, then ask about the conditions for a positive purchase decision. You will find more information about the purchase intention in the street no. 10 under the heading of price negotiation. • Salesperson: – “Assuming we can meet your requirements in terms of building awareness of your new branch and increasing the occupancy of your café with our offer, are we partners?” – “Assuming we find a solution for your price expectation, are we partners?” Usage: In addition to the question after the needs analysis or after the appointment, its use is also suitable in the phase of the needs analysis. The exploration question The needs analysis begins with an exploration question. the answer is the basis for all subsequent questions in the investigation phase. They pick up the customer mentally and tune him into the world of communication. Tuning in does not mean overloading and whipping them up to the highest level of mental performance. Compare this tuning in with the 50 € question in “Who wants to be a millionaire?”. Of course, with the exploration question you are addressing an extremely important strategic issue. However, you don’t have to worry that the customer refuses to answer this question. After all, it is normal for these questions to be discussed in B-to-B sales conversations. • Seller: – “What is your biggest and perhaps most urgent goal that you would like to achieve for your company in the next 12 months?” – “What other goals are you pursuing?”

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– “What conditions must be met in the offer in order for you to buy this offer?” Usage: The exploration question can be used in all phases of the sales conversation. The justified exploration question It is helpful in some situations to give the customer a plausible reason for your question. You signal to him that you are thinking ahead and prepared for all eventualities. • Salesperson: – “In which regions do you mainly want to reach your target group? I ask because we can define a target criterion with your core regions in programmatic advertising and thus target your offer precisely to your target group.” – “Do you want to start your campaign next month or in September? I ask because we offer a special discount of 10% for new customers next month. For September we have different special rates.” Usage: The exploration question is used mainly in the run-up to the offer discussion, i.e. in the needs assessment, and in the phase of closing the sale. The Opinion Question A question technique that should not be missing in any sales talk is the opinion question. With this you provoke purchase signals with which you can use as a short cut to close a sale. • Salesperson: – “How does that sound to you?” – “What do you say to this offer?” – “What do you think of that?”

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Usage: The opinion question is often used after the benefit argumentation when presenting the offer. If the offer targets the achievement of several target aspects, it is advisable to ask the opinion question more often. The rhetorical question Forget my opening sentence for this chapter that questions are used for information gathering when using this question technique. Rhetorical questions convey the opinion of the “questioner” and are used to influence the person being questioned. I also call this question technique the “of course technique” because the answer is already given in the question and no answer is expected to the “question”. While most questions focus on the customer, the rhetorical questions focus on the offer and the salesperson. • Salesperson: – “Didn’t I tell you that this offer has an unbeatable price?” – “Do you really want to think about this price-performance ratio?” – “What could you do now to make your new customer business even more efficient?” – “How can one say “NO” to such an offer?” Usage: The use of a rhetorical question has its limits because it can be understood as an attempt at manipulation, which can damage the customer’s trust sustainably. The use of rhetorical questions should be viewed critically in the sales conversation because they want to influence the customer’s opinion. The suggestive question In contrast to the rhetorical question, you expect an answer to the suggestive question. However, as with the rhetorical question, you specify this answer and the customer often perceives it as manipulative, as this questioning technique is often used to persuade the customer. • Salesperson: – “Don’t you also find that this offer is perfectly tailored to your needs?”

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– “You also want the communication solution to pour money into your cash register, don’t you?” – “Who can still say ‘no’ to this offer?” – “So, if you ask me, I think the first offer is the best, don’t you?” Usage: The use of a suggestive question has its limits, but it is legitimate to use it in a sales conversation if you do suspect a clear answer in the sales conversation. Divergent answers are also quite possible. They defuse the manipulative in the question, as the following example illustrates: “If the price therefore meets your expectations and you, as you said, are very pleased with our solution, then there is nothing against a partnership, is there? This one little ending of the question “is there” motivates the customer to think. Maybe the decision maker has to have a final consultation with his partner or colleague.

References Dunbar, R. I. M., Marriott, A., & Duncan, N. D. C. (1997). Human conversational behavior. Human nature, 8, 231–246. https://doi.org/10.1007/ BF02912493. Hall, E. T. (1976). Die Sprache des Raumes (p. 118 ff.). Schwann. Huang, K., Yeomans, M., Brooks, A. W., Minson, J., & Gino, F. (2017). It doesn’t hurt to ask: Question-asking increases liking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(3), 430–452.

4 Accelerate—Making the Appointment

Abstract  The higher the investment is, the more the customer needs the good feeling when buying a solution. In other words, the good feeling of having bought the RIGHT product from the RIGHT service provider. For this reason, personal contact with the customer is particularly important in B-to-B business and is one of the most important indicators in sales success. The customer appointment is an excellent platform to deepen the relationship and trust building with the customer through personal contact from person to person. In the following, different techniques for successful appointment scheduling will be presented in this chapter. The appointment is the next important stage on the way to the order. Compare the appointment confirmation with a stopover at a “point of interest”, for example a gas station. With the appointment, you have to step on the gas pedal because you want to master this stopover as quickly as possible. With the telephone needs analysis, you have either qualified the potential customer for the next stage goal “appointment” or disqualified him as a company not suitable for further sales measures. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. McKenna, The Sales Sat Nav for Media Consultants, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-40734-6_4

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Now you give the phone call a meaning and can ask for the “binding” appointment. You know the main pain, the duration of the pain and above all you know with which media the customer has had which success in eliminating the pain. You even know the approximate amount of the advertising budget if you research the mm prices for the newspaper ads on the internet, the prices per second on radio/TV and/ or the prices for digital job ads on online portals. When making an appointment, the binding nature of the appointment must be emphasized. You want to know in advance whether the customer will react positively to a perfect offer at the appointment. Each appointment costs you valuable time that of course must be used as rewardingly as possible. As with your route planning in the sat nav, not all possible obstacles are listed at the start. They are only then pointed out when they actually occur. Therefore, let us go through the following techniques in a “perfect world” and assume that the customer immediately agrees to the appointment. In the next chapter we will then do the so-called reality check with objection handling.

4.1 Appointment with Reference Technique This technique is excellent for making appointments if the customer has either had no or only moderate advertising success in the past. However, the prerequisite for using the reference technique is that you can present the customer with examples of successful campaigns with identical communication objectives at the appointment. This technique can only be used if you actually have success stories to show. Salesperson: “And what are your experiences with the job ads in the weekly, in the daily and on online portals?” Customer: “Let’s just say it wasn’t exactly successful. There’s still a lot of room for improvement. We hardly had any response.” Salesperson: “Mrs. Schulze, thank you for your information. By the way, we have achieved very good results for numerous companies with our communication solutions for exactly your goals—recruiting

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and acquisition of new customers. (Also for companies in your industry.)  How does Wednesday afternoon next week suit you so that I can introduce these solutions to you? Friday at 2 pm would also work for me.” Customer: “Friday at 2 pm is good for me.”

Don’t forget to ask if there are any other decision-makers in the customer’s company who can attend the meeting. If there is more than one decision-maker, of course they should all attend the meeting The advantage is that the participating decision-maker does not discuss the offer subsequently and in the back room with other decision-makers. You then don’t have the decisive meeting under control and the offer can only be decided by the price. The missing decision-maker will not experience your performance and your argumentation power and will therefore not be infected by your enthusiasm.

Salesperson: “Great. The meeting will not take longer than 45 minutes.”  “Are there any other employees in the company who are also involved in decisions about communication measures?” Customer: “No, it’s only me in the meeting.” Salesperson: “If I present a communication solution to you at our meeting and you see that you can perfectly achieve all your goals with it, what could prevent you from closing the deal?” With this question you explore the customer’s interest and your chances of success. But you also proactively uncover possible objections that you will encounter at the appointment. If the customer gives you an objection, then deal with it immediately.

Customer: “Well, I don’t really know yet. The price range would have to be kept.” Salesperson: “Based on our conversation about your past advertising activities, I think you had a budget of around 12,000 € available for print and online. Is that the approximate range we should be moving in price-wise?”

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Customer: “Everything over 10,000 € would have to bring us very big advantages.” Salesperson: “Then we’ll keep 10,000 € as the benchmark for the offer. I look forward to meeting you in person next Friday at 2 pm. You’ll receive a short email confirmation of our exciting appointment from me. Goodbye.” Often the customer gives a vague answer (“Let’s wait and see what you have to offer us first. Then we’ll talk again.”). Comment on this answer with the time aspect.

Salesperson: “It’s very important to me that we make the most of our valuable time. I look forward to meeting you next Friday…” Overview With the reference technique, you use one of the most credible techniques to agree on the date. After all, other companies have achieved exactly these goals with the advertising solution that your customer has named during the needs analysis. In the example above, we dealt with making an appointment in the event of a negative response to our question of how satisfied the customer is with the advertising measures taken so far. Now let’s turn to the customer’s positive statement about the advertising measures taken so far.

4.2 Appointment with the Assumption Technique It is not uncommon for media companies to conclude framework agreements under which a customer cannot change his communication strategy at short notice due to the commitment to the supplier. Even if the customer is dissatisfied with the campaign result, changes are difficult to

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execute. In most cases, small regional companies do not have framework agreements. If the customer is satisfied with his current media mix, then a meeting with him only makes sense if you can make him even more satisfied with your solution. If you offer exactly the same performance at the same price, the customer sees no sense in making an appointment with you. Therefore, the use of your advertising medium must be associated with an added value for the customer. Possibly the customer can further maximize his target group and anchor the advertising message even faster in their minds. Or receive the same performance at a lower price. Salesperson: “And what are your experiences with the job ads in the weekly paper, in the daily paper and on online portals?” Customer: “I was positively surprised how well the job advertisements work online and in print for me.” Salesperson: “Mrs. Schulze, thank you for your information. Many of our customers use the power of the newspaper in addition to radio advertising to reach additional target group potentials. If I can show you that and how we can take your company to the next level of success with the use of our communication solutions and you can find new employees at a lower cost, then a meeting with me would be worthwhile for you, wouldn’t it?” Customer: “Actually yes.” Salesperson: “How about Wednesday afternoon? I could also do Friday at 2 pm.”

The effect of the assumption technique is based on the assumption that the individual customer goals can be served and achieved with pinpointed accuracy with our advertising solutions. “If I can show you that and how we can lift you to the next success level with the use of our communication solutions and your employee search is more cost-effective as a result, then it is worth your while to meet with me, am I right?” With this confirmation question, the conversation partner can actually only say yes. If he still disagrees with you, then ask him openly for the reason of his objection.

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4.3 Appointment Scheduling with the PerfectWorld Technique As an alternative to the assumption technique, the Perfect-World technique is suitable if the customer has already had good experiences with advertising in competitive media. This good experience is equivalent to the customer objection: “We already have a supplier and are very satisfied with him. Therefore, we do not wish to have an appointment with you.” If the customer is satisfied with his previous communication strategy, you can preemt him with handling an objection even before the objection is made. Salesperson: “And how are your experiences with the job ads in the weekly paper, in the daily paper and on online portals?” Customer: “I was positively surprised how well the job advertisements online and in print work for me.” Salesperson: “Mrs. Schulze, thank you very much for your information. I am very pleased that you have achieved your advertising objectives with the daily paper and the ad portals. If further improvements of the advertising effect (cost-neutral) would be possible, you are basically open for a conversation with me? ” Customer: “I always like to hear improvements.” Salesperson: “Great. How does Wednesday afternoon suit you …?”

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Summary of first meeting with the decision maker Opening with anticipation technique

Building trust

Salesperson: "Good day Mrs. Schulze, my name is salesperson from Media XYZ" Customer: "Good afternoon." Salesperson: "Mrs. Schulze, if it's okay with you, I'll be brief and come to the point straight away. Is that ok with you?" Level 1 - Compliment: "Mrs. Schulze, I just wanted to take a moment to let you know that I really admired your new branch when I drove by it last week." Level 2 – Justification: "The building is ultra-modern and almost resembles a UFO with its antennas and window front. I find that very extraordinary."

Addressing indisputable personal facts The reason for your call

Asking for permission to determine need

Needs analysis and summary

Level 3 – Open question: "What was the reason for choosing this building design?" (or: "What do your customers actually saqe about your new branch"?) "Mrs. Schulze, you're the marketing manager at Company X, and you just launched your new ABC product line last month." "We cooperate with many companies in your industry who are finding it increasingly difficult to execute well-functioning advertising solutions with reduced advertising budgets. Here, we have been able to inspire and support many marketing managers with our solution approaches to support their advertising goals." "Mrs. Schulze, and that is the reason for me to contact you today. To present you with an advertising solution to increase your awareness and thus bring new customers into your business. And to be quite honest, presenting you with our advertising solution only makes sense if it also supports your current goals. Can I briefly ask two or three questions?" "What are the most important goals in sales over the next 12 months?" "What exactly do you mean by that?" "Why is this goal so important to you?" "(What is the immediate impact of achieving the goal?"). "Are there any other goals you would like to achieve?" "If I understood you correctly, the points ... and ... are particularly important to you, did I understand you correctly?

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Appointment

Asking for further decision makers

1. Target achievement with other advertising media was negative "Mrs. Schulze, thank you very much for that information. Exactly with your goals - personnel recruiting and new customer acquisition - we have been able to achieve very good results for numerous companies with our communication solutions. (Also for companies in your industry.) How does Wednesday afternoon next week sound to you for presenting these solutions to you? Friday at 2 p.m. would also work for me." 2. Target achievement with other advertising media was positive "Ms. Schulze, thank you very much for your information. In addition to radio advertising, many of our customers also rely on the power of the daily newspaper to address additional target group potential. If I can show you that and how we can take your company to the next level of success by using our communications solutions and help you find new employees, then a meeting with me was worthwhile for you, wasn't it?" "Great. The meeting won't last longer than 45 minutes. Are there any other persons involved in decisions concerning communication matters?" "Then I am looking forward to meeting you in person next Friday at 2 p.m. I'll send you a confirmation of our meeting via e-Mail. Goodbye."

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Your personal guide YOUR PERSONAL GUIDE Initial meeting with the decision maker

Opening with ancipaon technique

Building trust

Addressing indisputable personal fachts The reason for your Call

Asking for permission to determine demand

Needs analysis

Appointment

Queson about further decision makers

You can find this and other guides on the website under http://salesfarm.de/Buch-Sales-Navi/Leitfaeden/.

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4.4 “I Can See You Through the Phone!”— Interview with Telemarketing Specialist Udo Peilicke As a sales trainer, I am very curious how other salespeople perform on the phone and use this as an opportunity to answer calls from salespersons working in the electricity and telecommunications industry. I regularly notice that many salespeople sound as if they are out of breath. They convey a sense of being “rushed” in the conversation. In my inner eye, I imagine them just having enough time for a quick phone call before they have to drive to a more urgent meeting. They literally squeeze me into this short remaining time and talk at a speed without full stops. Of course, they have a long list of leads to call, but they fail to see the effects and consequences of this hectic conversation. Even if the phone call is only picked up by the ear and all visual communication elements are missing, we can still “see” the conversation partner and draw a picture of him in our mind. In this case, this image does not radiate competence and trust. So I asked myself the following questions: • Which vocal elements are used in communication in a telephone conversation and how can they take over the tasks of the missing body language? • What learning and practice techniques can we use to make these elements a successful persuasive tool in a sales conversation? I discussed these questions in an expert discussion with the telemarketing specialist Udo Peilicke. Udo Peilicke is a professional in the field of telemarketing, who has been successfully conducting sales trainings for telesales and complaint management since 1992 and is intensively involved in communication with the “inner eye”.

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Mr. Peilicke, which vocal elements replace the missing body language on the phone that makes the telemarketer “visible” to the customer? Udo Peilicke: In order for us to use vocal elements [vocal communication refers to the content-independent aspects of spoken language (Wikipedia 2022)] effectively, the inner attitude is an essential prerequisite. The customer hears how we are. So if I enjoy my work, I always do it like Martin Luther: “Profession comes from vocation”, it will come across to the customer accordingly. And if I now incorporate the vocal elements such as speaking tempo, speaking melody, speaking rhythm, speaking volume, speaking accents, speaking pauses, confirmation and favorite words into my customer conversation, then I become “visible” to my counterpart. Are there any other key differences between face-to-face and call-to-call? Udo Peilicke: Yes, as you have already mentioned the the question about the vocal elements, a very important part in call-to-call is missing, namely facial expressions and gestures. Our attention is fully focused on the voice of our counterpart. I find it interesting that there is a large group of salespeople who say: “Those salespeople who can sit in front of the customer and look them in the eye have an absolute advantage. With telephone sales we lose important signals.” And then there is the other faction, to which I also belong, who say: “Great, really great that we only have to concentrate on the voice. That’s enough for us.” Then we are at the language patterns and hear how the person talks and for example sets pauses and intones. So with only the voice I gather all the information from my interlocutor, in order to build a relationship to the customer. Of course this also requires the appropriate technical equipment. Keyword here: two-ear headset. On the one hand, the salesperson has both hands free and on the other hand both brain hemispheres are equally stimulated as in a face-to-face conversation.

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What typical mistakes do salespeople make when they call? Udo Peilicke: There is only one mistake that cannot be corrected with external help and that is the lack of the right attitude. Everything else can be taught to the salespeople, because these are techniques that are internalized through repetition and improve the quotas. Calling can be compared to building a house: First, we have to build the foundation. The foundation in the call is the inner attitude and positive thinking. Only when these two factors are right can we build on them. It’s simply a mental thing, knowing that the worst thing that can happen is a “no” and the best is a “yes” that in effect increases the commission. Next we divide the house into rooms. The rooms are the psychological backgrounds when making a phone call. These are also part of the basics. Only if we know how people think and act, and above all why, we are able to optimize our communication. This is also about determining the personality of the person we are talking to. And then there is the roof, the protection of the house. When it comes to telephoning, they are the different techniques. And here I mean the application of various communication models and communication techniques in accordance with our values. Among the techniques, the large area of question and closing techniques is particularly noteworthy. Thus, the techniques form the closing. In connection with the foundation and the rooms they form a unit, which ultimately leads to the optimized communication on the phone. How can the seller motivate himself if he has a negative run and hears a “no” ten times in a row and nothing goes forward? Udo Peilicke: On the one hand, again it is the question of inner attitude, and on the other hand the question of legality. Keyword here: the law of large numbers. An example: your ratio is 11 to 1, then hearing ten “no”s in a row mathematically means that now the “yes” has to come. Many salespeople are unaware of the importance of ratios. However, it is very important that I know the ratios of the individual salespeople in the team when defining goals, such as the sales plan. Only if I know

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the rates can I also control and improve them through techniques. If one salesperson has a ratio of 3:1 and other salespeople have a ratio of 2:1, then the question must be automatically asked what the outperformers do differently and how the ratio can be improved for the 3:1 salesperson. Of course, there are also simple, tried-and-tested techniques when things really go wrong. At this point, I always recommend the anchoring technique from the NLP area to my seminar participants. I recommendthe participants to put a photo of a fantastic vacation experience on their desk and experience it again. The recreation of the situation takes place with eyes closed and with all senses: the salty smell on the beach, seagulls, the warmth of the sun, etc. In the moment when the reliving is particularly strong, you open your eyes and look at the picture. If I repeat this regularly, I condition myself like Pavlov’s dog. When having a negative run with many rejections, I take the picture out of the drawer, look at it and sink into the this great situation. The positive feelings that I have anchored with this picture arise, again and can continue with the next phone call. In direct sales, the phone has disadvantages for the customer because he cannot calculate exactly and there are no comparison offers. How can you counteract these disadvantages? Udo Peilicke: You can send him the appropriate documents in advance, which he then has available during the conversation. That’s good for the visual and body-oriented people. Or you can refer him to the relevant websites of his company during the phone call, where he can view additional information in parallel to the conversation. The mirroring technique is used in NLP for relationship building. How can this be used during a phone call? Udo Peilicke: The aim is to establish a personal relationship with the person who you are communicating with. One way to simplify this is by mirroring. This means adapting your observable behavior to that of the person you are communicating with.

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The options available on the telephone are: 1. Mirroring language This is a quick and reliable method, particularly on the telephone. You pay attention to your counterpart’s voice and adapt to it, with all its nuances and differences. These include: • the tone—is the voice high or low? • the tempo—is the voice slow (long pauses between sentences) or fast (short sentences, short pauses)? • the volume—quiet or loud? • the rhythm—is it even, monotonous, questioning? • does your conversation partner use favorite expressions, hobby language, technical terms? 2. Mirroring mood Everyone has a different mood every day, or in every time period, ranging from exuberant joy to paralyzing depression. So what do we need to do? If our conversation partner is in a positive mood: we reinforce it. If they are in a negative mood: we briefly adapt to it, then improve the mood and lead our counterpart out of the negative mood. Of course, only if they want us to. 3. Mirroring breathing Why breathing? Our breathing is directly connected to our mood. How do we breathe when we are excited? How do we breathe when we feel completely relaxed? By paying attention to our breathing, we can control our inner emotional state. Translated into our telephone conversation, we should pay attention to inhaling and exhaling. For example, we exhale while speaking and inhale during pauses (thinking pauses). We can then use these breathing pauses, for example, in complaint management, to pull the conversation back if it is going in the wrong direction.

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4. Mirroring statements One of my specialties in telephone training is telephone dept collections, where employees of companies are trained to follow up on outstanding invoices. After the employees have explained the reason for their call, the people they have called often state why they have not yet paid. Let’s assume that the delinquent customer states that he is still waiting for a refund from the tax office. Now the employee mirrors the conversation partner, picks up his statement and confirms this, by saying, for example: “Mr. Customer, I am fully with you. You could write books about tax offices, couldn’t you? If tax offices demand money from us, we can’t look that quickly until we get the first penalty interest imposed. On the other hand, if we get money from the tax office, it takes weeks and months until it is in the account.” With this exemplary confirmation of the statement, I have set up a positive loop. The customer subconscious thinks that the caller is on his side and understands him. This builds the relationship level. That’s nothing more than listening and picking up. Udo Peilicke, thank you very much for the very interesting conversation about communication techniques on the phone.

5 Diversions—Objections, Pretexts and Their Treatment

Abstract  I do not agree that objections—and I mean objections, not pretexts—are due to a customer’s need for further information. Even though this is a commonly held opinion among colleagues. Objections are also part of the customer’s verbal repertoire to test the salesperson’s knowledge and credibility, or to make his own position clear. Objections are not simply brushed aside by the salesperson. They are serious statements that correspond to the truth in many cases. So some cannot be refuted in their truthfulness, but by there significance to the further sales conversation. There are hardly more than a handful of real objections that need to be handled. However, many salespeople virtually “shit their pants” when it comes to objection handling, as if a new objection is mentioned in every customer conversation. Objection handling is the simplest process in the entire sales cycle because objections do not change. They don’t become more. There are many exciting objection-handling techniques from which you can learn your individual favourite techniques. Compare the difficulty of objection handling with that of simple arithmetic. This chapter deals with different treatment techniques for numerous objections and answers the question of how to immediately expose a pretext and “put it in the corner”. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. McKenna, The Sales Sat Nav for Media Consultants, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-40734-6_5

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At the beginning of my sales career, I suffered from three phobias: spiders, wasps, and objections. At first I couldn’t think of a coherent answer to a most common objection, e.g. “I don’t have time”. My automatic answer was correspondingly weak: “Oh, I understand, when would you like to to talk with me?” And often I would hear the answer: “Try again next week.” The reason for my weakness in objection handling was that I took the objections as complete truth: If the customer says he doesn’t have time, then it will be true. I can’t claim the opposite. That would make me untrustworthy. So its better to show understanding and plan a orderly withdrawal. Then I am sure the next time I will be able to make the wanted appointment. Today there are only two phobias left because now I only see the objections as diversions. They are construction sites that need to be bypassed. If the objection is “No time”, please turn right at the next opportunity. But if the objection is “No interest”, please turn left in 500 m and then immediately turn right at the first street.

5.1 The Law of Six At the beginning of my career I felt that I was confronted with 20 or 30 different objections. Then I read in the sales book “Advanced Selling Strategies: The Proven System of Sales Ideas, Methods, and Techniques used by Top Salespeople” by the American author and top speaker Brian Tracy about “The Law of Six” (Tracy, 1996). According to Tracy there are six regularly recurring objections in every industry. Sometimes one more, sometimes one less. So much for my 20 or 30 objections. Of course there are far more than six objections. However, these can be roughly divided into six clusters or objection categories. For example, the following objections belong to a group in which you can use the same argumentation to continue the conversation: • • • •

“Advertising in your medium doesn’t work.” “I had bad experiences with your medium.” “I don’t think you’re the right one for us.” “Advertising in medium xyz works better.”

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Objections are often a signal that something was misunderstood. Today I see objections as a sales opportunity because I can use them to my advantage in the argumentation. The most common objections mentioned in a phone call to arrange an appointment of course differ from the objections that are made during the presentation of your offer. The top objections when making an appointment (ok, there are 7) • • • • • • •

No time No interest We have no budget Advertising in your medium does not work for us We already have a cooperation with another partner Send me documents first Advertising in your medium is too expensive

The top objections during the sales closing conversation (ok, there are 5) • I don’t decide right away/I need to think about it • In comparison to the competition, you are too expensive • I don’t decide alone and need to talk to my boss • That sounds great and I will consider it if we have a need for advertising • I don’t believe that this advertising solution supports our goals

5.2 The Objection Handling as the Simplest Process in Sales As with all tips, techniques and guidelines introduced in this book, the following techniques for objection handling are not a guarantee for success. Rather, they guarantee the reduction of failures when used on a regular basis. So if there are only six common objections, you can easily learn and implement a conversation strategy for objection handling for each objection in the conversation.

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At the same time, there are numerous objection handling techniques. But only a handful of them are suitable for you in the sales conversation because they match your personality and you can use them very credibly. For me personally, the biggest power of objection handling is that you score points with expertise and originality and that you can use subsequent questions to steer the conversation with the customer in the direction you want. If a customer has more objections, you should definitely respond to a second objection with a different objection handling technique. This makes the conversation more dynamic and you score points again because you can also take the wind out of the sails of the customer with using a second technique.

5.3 Handle Objections. Not Pretexts Before we learn some extraordinary techniques for objection handling in the following, you must be aware that you only want to treat serious objections and no pretexts. While the objection is an honest statement from the customer, the pretext is nothing but a little white lie. Let’s say you call the decision maker of a company to arrange an appointment and he doesn’t want an appointment because he doesn’t have any more budget. Is that an honest statement now or is it a pretext to get you off the line immediately? Or does the customer really want to have documents sent to him so that he can check them and decide whether the appointment is really worthwhile for him? Maybe it’s a fraud because he doesn’t believe in the great effect of your medium and just doesn’t want to tell you that directly. What do you think? Or how about the customer’s statement that he has no budget. And you know that in the past he has spent 20 times the value of your offer.

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If you treat pretexts like objections, you will bite into granite because you have not come any closer to the truth. That’s a waste of time, because if you deal with the pretext, the customer escapes into another pretext or he ends the conversation quite abruptly. That’s why you have to sort out the pretexts and only deal with the objections.

5.3.1 The Pretext Terminator The simplest mechanism to determine whether the customer is making an objection or a pretext is the pretext terminator. The mechanism consists in asking for further reasons why, for example, an appointment is not wanted. It’s an excuse Customer: “I really don’t have time for an appointment with you right now.” Salesperson: “Are there any other reasons besides the time factor why you don’t want to make an appointment with me?” Customer: “Well, I don’t think advertising in your medium would work for us.”

Overview By asking for other reasons, the customer opens up and in most cases gives the main reason why, for example, he does not want an appointment. In the above case, the time factor was used as an excuse and is NOT to be treated, BECAUSE the customer says on inquiry that he does not believe in the advertising effect with your medium. But now you have heard the true objection—I don’t believe in your medium. So forget his alleged objection that he doesn’t have time and only treat the latter.

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It is an objection Customer: “I really don’t have time for an appointment with you right now.” Salesperson: “Are there any other reasons, besides the time factor, why you don’t want to schedule an appointment with me?” Customer: “No. It’s just the time.” In this case, there is a very high probability that the time factor is the true reason for the cancellation of the appointment. This objection needs to be handled.

5.3.2 Objection Handling Techniques Not all treatment techniques are suitable for all objections to be handled. I will introduce you to a variety of techniques from which you can select your “Best of ” techniques. Your fear of objections when using the following techniques will disappear immediately. I promise.

5.3.3 The Structure of Objection Handling All objection handling techniques have the same three-part structure: 1. The confirmation 2. The treatment 3. The follow-up question To 1: With the confirmation we show the customer that the objection has been received and that we understand the objection. I also call this confirmation the head-stroking phase. We signal to the customer that we have no doubt about the objection. To 2: The treatment of the objection has a “bounce effect” for you, because you channel the energy of the objection into the void in order to continue the conversation with the customer immediately after the objection has been refuted.

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To 3: The follow-up question is directed exclusively at your pursued goal, such as asking for the appointment. Examples to 1. The confirmation Salesperson: “Dear customer, I can understand that you only have little time for a meeting with me. As a managing director you will surely have a very tight time frame.” … Salesperson: “Dear customer, thank you for being so open and telling me that you have no budget left.” … Salesperson: “Dear customer, I find it very positive that you would like to have documents on our current advertising solutions in advance. This way you can check before our appointment whether all the conditions for a partnership are given.” … Salesperson: “Dear customer, especially for the enforcement of a successful advertising plan, the selection of the suitable media partners is a very important issue for our customers.”

Think of the reptilian brain of the customer. It is constantly looking for something new, extraordinary. Only then does it “wake up” the subconscious mind, so that the customer can deal with it consciously. That’s exactly what the following technique of astonishment does.

5.3.4 The Astonishment Technique As already mentioned, the astonishment technique is one of my favorite techniques, because the objection is turned into the most important argument for the decision.

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It can be used for a variety of objections and works very well because my conversation partner is totally baffled at first. Astonishment generates the highest level of attention. Example 1: I don’t have time 1. Confirmation with pretext terminator Salesperson: “Mr. Customer, I can well understand that as a managing director you have many appointments. Is there another reason why you don’t want to make an appointment with me besides the time factor?” Customer: “No, I just don’t have time.” The confirmation of the objection mentioned before increases the probability of its truthfulness.

2. Treatment Salesperson: “And that’s why I’m calling you and asking for an appointment. BECAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE TIME.” (For dramatic reasons, it is recommended to take a 2–3 s break here)

Overview What do you think happens in the customer’s head next? The customer will now think: “Huh, I say I don’t have time and the seller tells me that’s exactly the reason for his call?! Now I’m curious how he’s going to get out of this mess.” The technique is only an introductory sentence that starts an objection handling technique.

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And it continues with the objection treatment: a) Salesperson: “If you only receive one valid information in a 30-min appointment to increase your new customer acquisition, would that not be a good investment of these 30 min for you?” Customer: “Of course that would be good, no question.” Or b) Salesperson: “What new impulses must a 30-min conversation with me provide provide you with, so that you say: ‘That was a great investment of my 30 min time.’? What would those impulses be?” Customer: “You would have to provide me with new insights on how to implement the new customer acquisition more successfully.” Overview Of course, the customer responses above reflect a perfect world in which the customer provides the desired answer. Of course, the customer could now continue to block and repeat that an appointment is not desired. If you continue to ask for an appointment or sales conversation despite repeated no’s, you may be treading on very thin ice. In this case, pay attention to the tone in the customer response. You do not want the customer to remember you as an annoying or pushy salesperson and evoke this negative image in the customer’s head the next time you call in three months. You want to continue to contact this potential in the future and try to get an appointment or sales conversation.

3. The follow-up question Use the customer’s answer to the question about the appointment. To answer a) salesperson: “To increase new customer acquisition, I have some successful campaign examples that I would like to show you. Does Thursday morning at 10 o’clock next week suit you? Alternatively, I can also offer Friday afternoon from 2 pm.”

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To answer b) salesperson: “Good that I asked. To increase new customer acquisition, I have some successful campaign examples that I would like to show you. Is Thursday morning 10 o’clock next week fine with you? Alternatively, I can also offer Friday afternoon from 2 pm.” Overview So you return to your main goal with the follow-up question: namely the desired appointment. Make sure you mention the time objection again in the follow-up question.

Example 2: We already have a cooperation with a radio station 1. Confirmation Salesperson: “Mr. Customer, the selection of the right media partners is a very important topic for our customers, especially with regard to the implementation of a successful advertising plan.” 2. Treatment Salesperson: “And that’s why I’m calling you and asking for an appointment. BECAUSE YOU ALREADY HAVE AN ADVERTISING PARTNER. (Pause of 2–3 s). Many advertising customers from your industry also use our medium because with our communication solution they address additional people in the target group and turn them into buyers who are simply not reached by radio. May I ask you a short question ?” Customer: “Yes.” Salesperson: “Which goals must our medium achieve for you that you feel fully confirmed in the additional use of our medium as an advertising medium?” Customer: “It should be affordable and bring me new customers.”

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Salesperson: “Mr. Customer, exactly for your goal of gaining more new customers, we have implemented some very successful campaigns with comparable companies like yours. I would like to introduce them to you.” (now don’t make a pause, but immediately ask the follow-up question!).

3. Follow-up question Salesperson: “Is Thursday at 11 o’clock fine for you or do you have time for our meeting on Friday afternoon at 2 pm?” If you have read this conditional technique carefully, you will have certainly recognized that I use two techniques as in the first example (I have no time!): First the astonishment technique and in addition the question under which condition the use of advertising with your medium is viewed as a complete success for the customer. Thus it continues seamlessly to the next objection treatment technique, the conditional technique.

5.3.5 The Conditional Technique As the name of the technique says, it is about the question under which condition is the use of advertising or the appointment worthwhile for the customer. Example: We have already planned our advertising budget 1. Confirmation Salesperson: “That you have already planned your communication for this year shows how strategically you see this investment for your company.” 2. Treatment Salesperson: “What goals must our medium meet so that you feel fully confirmed in the additional use of our medium as an advertising medium? Is it more about cost recovery or winning new customers?”

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Customer: “We should be able to win significantly more new customers. And that, of course, with the same budget.” Salesperson: “Mr. Customer, we have implemented some very successful campaigns with comparable companies like yours, that exactly meet the goals, to win more new customers with the same advertising budget.”

3. Follow-up question Salesperson: “When can I present our affordable solutions to you in the coming days? Is Thursday at 11 am fine for you or do you have time for our conversation on Friday afternoon at 2 pm?” Overview The conditional technique is excellent for use with the additional objections. I don’t have time (“What content do I need to provide you in in a half-hour conversation so that you say, ‘This meeting with the salesperson was really worth it!’?”). I have no interest (“What information would I need to provide you with so that you would have the greatest interest in a joint appointment?”). Advertising with your medium doesn’t work for our product? (“What information would I need to provide you with so that you would recognize that our medium is excellent for the promotion of your product? Would, for example, reference examples of other companies in your industry be useful?”). And depending on the answer, you link them together in a meaningful sentence to introduce the further question about the appointment:

Customer: “We should be able to win significantly more new customers while maintaining the same budget.” Salesperson: “Mr. Customer, exactly to your goals, to gain more new customers with an unchanged advertising budget, we have

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launched some very successful campaigns with comparable companies like yours. When can I present our affordable solutions to you in the coming days? Is Thursday at 11 o’clock fine with you or do you have time for our conversation on Friday afternoon at 2 pm?”

5.3.6 The Provocation Technique We all know situations in which the objection smells very much like an excuse. As already mentioned several times, the customer very often falls into an automatism in his defensive position when salespeople are rather dull and the reptilian brain is not positively provoked by bright colors. Sometimes an excuse can be blurted out that screams to be uncovered. You can do this using the provocation technique. You build a bridge for the customer so that he either withdraws this statement or justifies it. Example: I don’t have time right now/I’m not interested Salesperson: “Mr. Customer, you are only saying that because you don’t want to talk to a salesperson right now and you want to get me out of the line as soon as possible. Am I right?” Now the customer can either answer your question in the affirmation or deny it. Regardless of what he says—YOU ARE CONTINUING THE CONVERSATION!

Customer: “Well, you know, you’re the third media consultant to contact me today and everyone wants my best. Namely my money. I just have to be selective.” Salesperson: “Mr. Customer, I’m very glad you told me that. Thank you very much. Please allow me a short question: What topics would have to be discussed at a meeting with me so

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that this meeting is an excellent investment of your time for you? What goals must be achievable for you through a meeting with me?” So the conversation continues with the condition technique.

Customer: “Listen, we currently have a cooperation with the newspaper and it works very well for us. By the way, our budget is not unlimited.” The customer does not answer the question, but raises the wall with a new objection. Now a new technique comes into play, which I will later explain in detail: the wish technique.

Salesperson: “Then it is very important for you that you not only find out how you can win many additional new customers in a mix with newspaper and radio advertising in our meeting, but also how you can carry out a mix as cost-neutral as possible.” Is that right? Customer: “You are right.” Salesperson: “You know, Mr. Customer, some of my best customers had exactly the same challenge. To achieve better results, but without blowing up the advertising budget.” “Here I could show them some very successful advertising solutions that other companies have been using with our medium for a long time. When do you have half an hour next week so that I can show you how much the companies have benefited from the campaigns. Is Wednesday morning at 10 o’clock okay for you?” Overview In this example, the customer has “accepted” my bridge and told me that I am the 3rd salesperson in his leadership today. This statement is remarkable in that he opens up to me and I have gained his full attention with this technique. So now you have the opportunity to steer back to your core goal (e.g. making an appointment) with another question. In this case, it is the

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question about the desired content of the conversation that is important for a worthwhile appointment. If the customer answers this question, you have virtually made the appointment. Instead of answering my question about the desired content of the appointment, the customer raised two more objections. Listen, we currently have a cooperation with the newspaper and it is working very well for us. Our budget is really not unlimited. In the example above, I used the wish technique to deal with the further objections.

5.3.7 The Wish Technique Imagine each objection on a scale of 1 to 10 and think about what desire could transform this objection into the opposite of the objection. So always look for the opposite of the objection and formulate this wish in a confirmation question. Let’s say you hear the objection “I don’t have any time” from the decision maker when asking for an appointment. “I have no time” On a scale of 1, we have the objection I have no time. • The objection: I have no time (Scale 1). • The wish: Save me time. Keep it short. Show me that the time invested is worth it (Scale 10). The objection

The desire behind the objection

I have no time

Save me time Keep it short Show me that time invested is worthwhile for me ... Scale 10

Scale 1

On the 10 in the scale, we then set the opposite wish “Create or save me time”.

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And now it is up to the customer to confirm that this is exactly the wish he is aiming for on the 10 in the scale. And you get this confirmation by the—exactly—confirmation question. The conversation could go like this: Customer: “I don’t have time for an appointment.” Salesperson: “Then it is important to you that you receive the most important information in a nutshell and without wasting time at an appointment on how you can significantly increase your restaurant occupancy on Monday and Tuesday, am I right?” Or “I understand you correctly that an appointment only makes sense for you if you recognize your advantages through the use of our advertising solution within a short time, right?” Or “When you say you don’t have time, that also means that you take the time for the important things, or am I wrong?” “I don’t have a budget” Let’s start the search for the opposite of the objection. The objection I have no budget

Scale 1

The desire behind the objection Make it affordable for me Show me a cost-neutral solution Show me that the additional investment is worth it ... Scale 10

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Now it’s up to the customer to confirm the desired wish to you. In the case of the budget objection, the conversation could go like this: Customer: “I have no advertising budget left for this year.” Salesperson: “If I understand you correctly, an advertising solution is particularly important to you if it is either cost-neutral or it achieves your advertising goals to such an extent that an additional investment pays off for you, am I right?” Or “Then it is important to you that a more effective campaign with our medium does not strain your budget too much, am I right?” “You all say that your product is the best advertising solution.” First, you define the possible wish again on the scale of 10. The objection They all say the same thing: "My product is the best" Scale 1

The desire behind the objection Show me that it really is the best solution for me. ... Scale 10

In the case of the statement “All say that their product is the panacea”, the conversation could go as follows: Customer: “All the media say that their communication solution is the only right one.” Salesperson: “Then I assume that it is of great importance to you that I present you with hard data and facts in a personal conversation as evidence of the successful impact of our communication solution, do I understand that correctly?” Or “Then it is important to you that I name companies in a face-to-face meeting that had the same goals and achieved exactly those goals with our communication solution. Did I understand you correctly?”

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“Your medium is not suitable for promoting our offers.” Let’s start looking for the opposite pole to objection. The objection Your medium does not work. Scale 1

The desire behind the objection Show me that it really is the best solution. ... Scale 10

Customer: “Radio advertising does not work with our offer.” Salesperson: “Then it is important for you that I can show you with specific campaign examples how successful our advertising solution was on the radio for companies with similar goals, do I understand that correctly?”  ll of the salesperson’s questions consider the customer’s objections from A the opposite 180° angle, which in the case of the using the wish technique can only allow a clear yes. And we pick up this yes from the customer and get the first success in the form of an appointment on the navigation route to the final order.

Salesperson: “Mr. Customer, quite seriously, when can I present these success

solutions to you, that have brought many companies exactly this success/this shift in awareness/the stock sale?” “How does next week Wednesday at 3 pm sound like for you? I am also available on Thursday at 10 am. Our meeting will take about half an hour.”

5.3.8 The Disaster Technique As with the wish technique, we want to convert the customer objection from scale 1 to 10. The difference between the disaster technique and the wish technique is that we ask the customer directly about the a) worst and about the b) best outcome of an appointment. As with almost all objection handling techniques, an open question is asked after the treatment, which cannot be answered with yes or no.

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You can use the disaster technique for most of the objections we usually hear: • • • • •

No time No interest No budget Advertising with you does not work We already have a cooperation with another advertising medium

Always start with the question on scale 1, what could happen in the worst case and then follow with the question on scale 10, what could happen in the best case. I like to use the disaster technique when my contact does not treat me equally and I want to set a striking and effective fragrance mark: “Radio advertising does not work with our offer.” Salesperson “Thank you for coming to the point. May I ask you a question? What is the worst that could happen if we met for an appointment?” Customer: “That I wasted an hour of time.”/“That you could not convince me.” And then ask the second question at the other end of the scale: Salesperson “And what could happen at best if we met for an appointment?” Customer (quite arrogant) “Yes, understood. You want to hear how great and successful this appointment was.” Salesperson: “And that is exactly my claim. I have some examples here of companies, that also pursued the goal of raising awareness and were very successful in achieving their goals with our communication solution. When can I introduce them to you next week? How about Wednesday at 3 pm for a well spent half hour?”

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Overview The example of the disaster technique illustrates the conversation management by the salesperson. It makes the customer think about the pros and cons of a meeting. As with all objections, you can add additional techniques to the objection handling in freestyle manner. For example, the additional reference technique in the above example, in which you bring comparable companies into the conversation that have successfully mastered their goals through their cooperation with you.

5.3.9 The Perfect-World Technique Analogous to the disaster technique, you can also use a “best-case scenario” without going into the “worst-case scenario”. Ask if an appointment would be possible if your offer were an absolutely safe bank for the customer. If you mentally catapult your customer into paradise, you detach him from negative feelings and encourage his positive basic attitude. Salesperson: “Dear customer, may I ask you a question. If you knew that our solution is really a top-notch communication solution for you, would you then be interested in meeting with me?” Customer: “Yes, of course. But my concern is to be sure that the advertising campaign really works well for us.” Salesperson: “And what would give you this security? Many companies ask for references as security. I other words, they want examples of similar companies that have successfully implemented our communication solution. Are such references also important for you?” Customer: “Yes.” Salesperson: “Great, I have some very interesting reference examples that I would very much like to introduce to you. What about a meeting next week on Monday afternoon?”

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Did you notice? With the above question about the date, it is not about whether, but when the appointment will take place. The “whether” is omitted as with the other objection handling techniques. In this case, because the customer confirms that he would like to see reference examples. Thus, he has agreed to a meeting with you.

In all objection handling techniques we pursue three different objectives. 1. Your personal goal achievement Be it the deadline, the order, the follow-up order, the reference. These objectives are achieved by dealing with the objection and then ask for the appointment or the order. 2. Highlight customer benefits After you have learned the customer’s core goals and main pain points in the course of the needs analysis, you must link the benefits of the appointment or the offer with the specific need in the argumentation chain. 3. Provide missing information The customer objection often signals that the customer either misunderstood something or needs further information. So if the customer does not believe in the power of the medium, he may be missing reference evidence from other companies whose advertising objectives were fully achieved due to the communication solution.

5.3.10 The Scenario Technique With this technique, you describe an action that you paint in the customer’s head. The power of this technique lies mainly in the fact that it shows the customer an image with the benefit. Images have a much stronger effect than words, remain much deeper in memory and can be recalled for a longer period of time. The added customer value turns the image into a Van Gogh. Expressive and unforgettable.

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The following guideline is considered as a universal example that you can use for different objections with the scenario technique without changing the guideline. Salesperson: “Mr. Customer, imagine that I show you in a 30-min meeting how you can use our communication solution to shift your awareness to the next level and thus win new customers and generate fresh sales. Wouldn’t that be a good investment of your time?” Overview If the customer is honest, he can only answer this final question with a yes. This sentence can be applied one to one to the following objections: • • • •

“I don’t have time,” “I’m not interested,” “Your medium is not suitable for advertising our offers,” “We are already cooperating with another medium”

5.3.11 Eleven Objection Handling Techniques at a Glance For a better overview of the objections and their treatment, I present the ten objection handling techniques in tabular form.

c) Good that I asked. This is a very important point that we can solve for you as follows:

a) Mr. Customer, on a scale from 1 to 10, how much do you like my offer. 1 would mean you are completely opposed and 10 would mean you are totally enthusiastic. ... b) What do you think I would have to change or add that would make you move to the 10? ...

Scaling technique

If we can extend the payment term due to the additional services for you, do we come together with this offer?

Let's assume we solve the budget question for you. Are we then partners?

(If the customer gives another reason, then "No budget" is most likely a pretext. Always treat the latter)

b) I was able to explain to him in more detail the benefits and powerful effects of the product in a meeting and now he is an enthusiastic customer of ours. c) Let's arrange an appointment, where I can explain the benefit in detail to you. When would be a suitable date for you?

If I can show you that you will get significantly more new customers with our solution at an unbeatable price, will we do business?

Apart from budget, are there any other a) Mr. Customer, one of my best customers reasons that would prevent you from told me exactly the same thing / doubted buying our solution? the successful implementation just like you.

Condition technique

c) That would be a good investment of your limited time to talk to me, don't you think?

c) Wouldn't it therefore be worth taking the time for half an hour?

Reference technique

b) Imagine that I am very brief when presenting our advertising solution and that within 20 minutes you realize how you can benefit from this solution.

b) Just imagine that the opposite would be the case and I'd deliver a top solution for achieving your goal.

Pretext Terminator

a) This is exactly the reason why I am calling you, Mr. Customer. BECAUSE you don't have time / BECAUSE you have already planned your budget.

a) What is the worst that could happe if we met at your place for half an hour? ...

So you would like me to be very brief when I show you the benefits of our solution and how you can profit from it with additional new customer business, is that right? I assume that if I can show you how you can significantly increase your number of customers/turnover with a small investment of resources, then it would be worth talking to me, isn't it?

Astonishment technique

Disaster technique

Wish technique (e.g. no time, budget planned)

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Shortage technique Consternation technique a) That you say our medium does not successfully promote products is quite a hit in the stomach and comes surprisingly.

d) Good that I asked. This is a very important issue where we have been able to develop many companies from your industry into enthusiastic customers. Just BECAUSE our medium is so successful in that area.

b) I have a short question for you. What b) You seem to have had bad if you decide to buy this offer in a week's experiences in the past. time and it is unfortunately not available any more. I hope you won't be upset with me. c) I am asking you because I know that c) Can you explain what happened? with this solution we can support your new customer strategy quite wonderfully and you can profit from the advantage.... can profit with a significant increase in sales.

a) I understand that the investment level is always an issue. This special offer is a best-price-offer and only in the market for a short period of time.

Provocation technique

Thank you for your openness, I appreciate it very much. One quick question: What kind of information would you need to get from me that you would want to have a conversation with me?

c) (when answering: "No, the point is that ...)

Thank you for your openness, I appreciate it very much. None of us has time for unimportant things. But briefly asked – what goals would you have to achieve that you wanted to have a conversation with me?

c) (when answering: "Yes, that's right!")

a) I can well understand that the budget is an important issue for you. (...that you are not interested right now because you can't know what exactly s your advantage) (...) b) You're just saying that because you want a salesperson like me off the line as soon as possible, right?

Prerequisits technique

What target outcome does a campaign need to achieve for you to say, "This job was worth every penny."

Which information would I need to provide you with at our first meeting, to make it worthwhile for you to meet with me?

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Reference Tracy, B. (1996). Advanced selling techniques: The proven system of sales ideas, methods, and techniques used by top salespeople (p. 358 ff.). Simon & Schuster.

6 No Speed Limit—Opening the Appointment with Trust Building

Abstract  Whereas in Austria, for example, it is good manners to make small talk at the beginning of the meeting, in many parts of Germany you come to the point or the matter immediately. Personally, I find it very important to exchange a few words with the conversation partner so that we can get to know each other. Good small talk serves to build trust and to explore common ground between the conversation partners. This chapter deals with building trust without the use of small talk by introducing the meeting’s framework. It follows the idea of unconsciously enhancing the value of the person who sets the framework. Be the doctor in the eyes of the customer! Congratulations. You have mastered the next important step on the way to completion. Now it is time to put the positive momentum on the road with proper force by meeting the customer at eye level. You are the driver and therefore you decide on the route. Share your route with the “passenger” and ask him if he agrees.

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Overview After flawless needs assessment, followed by the appointment setting, I come to a classic dilemma in the further sales process: I am often asked by media consultants whether they should take an offer with them and sell actively at the agreed first appointment, or use the first appointment to determine the further need and then make an appointment for a follow-up appointment with offer presentation? For many years I was the advocate of two appointments, so that I could determine the need at the first appointment and then ask for a second appointment for the presentation of our communication solution. The advantage of two appointments lies mainly in the relationship and trust building. So at the first appointment I don’t turn up with an offer, but score with building trust because the offer can only be tailored after determining the customer’s individual goals and pains. The disadvantage lies in the high costs associated with time expenditure. In addition, customers often don’t want a second appointment. No offer without disclosure The more you have learned from the customer about goals and pains during the telephone call, the more tailored you can explain the offer in the first appointment and give a clear recommendation. For this reason, the use of the sat nav questions in the needs analysis is crucial for creating the perfect offer and for your line of argumentation, which I will discuss in the following three streets in the chapters 7–9. The answer to the following four questions from the needs analysis is decisive for the offer: • • • •

Does the customer have pains that your offer can solve? Does the customer also know that he has these pains? Does the customer want to get rid of these pains quickly? Is the customer willing to buy an offer from you?

Let’s say the customer doesn’t have time for a needs assessment over the phone and agrees to schedule a meeting with you. Now this meeting has to take over the task of the phone call to determine his pain points. Even if the customer assumes that you will present him with a specific offer at the meeting, he must understand that only when the four questions have been answered you are able to make him a tailor-made offer. If the customer asks for your offer right at the beginning of the meeting, then you reply that an offer is only useful after analysing his goals and pains. Of course, it is advisable to always appear with a standardized offer at the meeting.

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Customer:  “I assumed that you would make me an offer today. That was the goal of today’s meeting.” Seller:  “In order for me to make you an offer that really meets your requirements, I first need to know the status and goals of your company. If I now suggest a communication solution to you, then the danger of me missing the objective is high.” (takes an offer from his papers) “Have a look at this offer. It was developed to increase customer frequency for our client. We knew when the advertising should be placed and also determined the advertising duration, frequency, advertising budget and use of the online campaign on the basis of the conversation about the actual client’s need. A campaign that is to increase brand awareness or to acquire new customers is set up completely differently. That is why it is useful if we first talk about your goals and possible pains. Only then I am able to make you a precisely targeted offer.” Don’t send offers by email, but fight for an appointment. Otherwise you can’t comment on it step by step and come to the closing. In a face-to-face or in a digital meeting you have the unique opportunity to underline the offer with your personality and to strengthen both your credibility and the relationship with the customer. Offers that you send by email at the express request of the customer must at least be discussed with him on telephone. Otherwise, in many cases, only the price will influence the purchase decision.

Setting the Framework Immediately set the framework for the appointment. The one who sets the framework takes the initiative of an alpha and you will definitely not hear this customer’s opening sentence anymore: Customer:  Mr. salesperson, I have another follow-up appointment right after. So please be brief. At the beginning of the appointment, set the following appointment elements: a) the time period. b) the content of the appointment. c) the result of the appointment.

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These elements are nothing more than the appointment agenda, which you can communicate to the customer as follows: Salesperson:  “Mrs. Schulze, thank you for today’s meeting.”  (a) the time period) We had agreed that the appointment would take about 30 minutes. That’s still okay with you, isn’t it?” Customer:  “Yes, that’s ok.” Salesperson:  (b) the content of the appointment) “In this appointment I will ask some more in-depth questions about your communication goals that you shared with me last week in our phone call. You will certainly also have some questions about our advertising solution.”  ((c) the result of the appointment) “In the end there are only two outcomes. Either you see that we have your goals completely in focus and we will become partners. Or our solution does not convince you. If, in the course of our meeting, you believe that we are not the right partner, just tell me. I can take it. That’s part of my job. (smile) I will do the same if I think we can’t help you with our solution. Is that okay with you?” The effectiveness of this three-part agenda discussion is based on the fact that you have given the framework in a very coherent way. In addition, you signal to the customer that you are one of the serious members of your sales guild and only want to sell him the solution if it is really suitable. I guarantee you that the customer sees you from a different perspective and above all, at eye level.

In this chapter you have now “boarded” the customer and shown by indicating the rules that you are at home in the formula 1 league. In the following chapter it is now time to discuss the remaining path in detail with the customer. Let the customer confirm his objectives so that you are sure to have taken the right route.

7 Route Agreement—Have the Customer Confirm the Need

Abstract  In the chapter on needs analysis, I repeatedly pointed out how important this information is for the further course of the sales conversation. How can you use the customer’s needs to present the offer with even more power? By having the customer confirm them. This chapter shows you the power of confirmation. Who does the customer usually believe the most? Himself! So let’s use the customer as the most credible reference when repeating his needs. To give your offer the aura of an effective goal achiever, you must first repeat the needs that were identified on the previous phone call. This has the following advantages for the further course of the conversation: • You show the decision maker that you listened very carefully • You update the needs in the decision maker’s mind (yes, I remember saying that…) • You only receive approval in this phase.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. McKenna, The Sales Sat Nav for Media Consultants, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-40734-6_7

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In the 80s and 90s, the so-called “yes-street” was a frequently used sales technique, the aim of which was to receive as much approval as possible with the closed questioning technique. The decisive closing question was then also to be answered with a “yes”. When selling insurance, the yes-street could have been applied as follows: • Do you really care for a good education for your children? Yes • And you would like to explore ways to invest a small amount of money each month for their future education? Yes • When it comes to your own children, you certainly don’t want to take any high risks? Yes • If I present you with an offer that combines all these aspects and gives you a start-up capital of €300 per child, is that the right offer for you? Yes • Then please sign here. Yes Of course this technique worked very well because approval generally leads to a positive basic attitude. However, the high number of contract cancellations and the customer’s mistrust of the seller were problematic. Customers felt literally taken by surprise and manipulated by this hard selling and the image of the seller was “in the basement”. When you repeat the customer needs determined in the pre-talk, then ask the customer for confirmation at the end of listing all the needs. Imagine you are a customer, and a salesperson ticks off eight or ten items from the previous needs analysis and asks for your approval after each point. How would you feel? A little irritated? I would think so. The positive attitude remains when the customer simply thinks the respective yes and at the end confirms all demand points with a “yes”. Personally, I do not use the yes-street as a sales closing technique, but use it directly before presenting the offer. This increases the customer’s expectations of a meaningful offer, as I listened carefully during needs analysis and tailored the offer to the client’s needs.

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Example Salesperson: “Mrs. Schulze, before I present our advertising concept to you in detail and show you how we can support your advertising goals with it, I would like to briefly return to the results of our last phone call. If I have forgotten something or misunderstood something, please tell me. • You told me that you need to increase the awareness of your company and your product XY. • A very important issue for you is to increase the customer frequency in the main season, that is July and November, which you herald with attractive special offers and an adventure market for the whole family. • The occupancy rate is very low on Mondays and urgently needs to be strengthened. • You told me that the previous advertising had no effect on new customer business and that you were not approached about the ads. • In addition, you informed me that your advertising budget is already quite exhausted and you therefore only have a budget of XYZ €. • And last but not least, you attach great importance to a campaign with classic print advertising and online advertising on our portal. So, Mrs. Schulze, those were all the points we talked about last week, weren’t they?” And now comes the pronounced yes from Mrs. Schulze, after continuously thinking this yes at each point in the repetition of her need. This gives the customer the certainty that he is on the right track and that you have perfectly understood his goals. Now is the perfect time to present the offer to the customer. He wants to know how the joint journey will take shape for him. Here your function as ”tour guide“ comes into play, who presents the special features and advantages of the structure to the tourist.

8 Only a Few More Meters—The Presentation of the Offer

Abstract  “With this new customer special offer, you reach 350,000 people. We are the market leader in the 14–49 age segment. Nobody can show better figures. You get a total of 10 placements over a period of three weeks. The investment is only 4599 €.” Question: What is missing in the offer presented? Answer: Almost everything that is important to the customer! The content mentioned are only the features of the offer. But what do these features mean for the customer? The abbreviation WIIFM brings it to the point—What’s in it for me? How can I benefit from those features? When presenting an offer, the advantages of the above features and the resulting benefits for the customer must be clearly communicated. This chapter describes, using selected examples, the interplay of offer features, their general advantages and the benefits of these advantages for the customer. Which customer wants an off-the-shelf-offer, if he can have a tailor-made solution instead? In addition to the bread-and-butter business of traditional advertising solutions, many media companies also

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. McKenna, The Sales Sat Nav for Media Consultants, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-40734-6_8

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offer special advertising forms that are specifically developed for advertising customers. Special advertising forms are clearly time-consuming in planning, development and implementation and consume valuable time. Classic advertising sales is almost a bulk business with mostly standardized offers. You transform these into a customized solution when you show the customer during the presentation of the offer how his company can benefit from this advertising solution. The thought of the customer, that all get the same offer will increasingly disappear when you link the offer’s benefits to the individual customer goals. Now start the presentation of the offer e.g. with the following words: “Let me show you how we can support you in achieving your goals.” With the FAB method (F features, A advantages, B benefits), the characteristics of the offer are linked to its advantages and the individual benefit for the customer, and supports the customer in his purchase decision. This method is one of the outstanding sales techniques that facilitates the sales closure by making the individual benefit easy to understand for the customer.

8.1 Distinction of Feature, Advantage, Benefit Features are product-related and describe data, facts and the individual components of the product or service. Advantages show how these features can be a support. The benefit explains how the features can satisfy their own current needs. With benefits, it is always about the customer question “What’s in it for ME?” Many of you know the rather overused saying: Don’t sell the drill, sell the hole in the wall. As long as the buyer doesn’t want to buy the drill as a status symbol, this image clearly illustrates the sale of benefits. If we stay with this example of the drill, I often observe that the best specialists are sometimes the worst salespeople. They talk about the

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torque of the drill, know all the technical features, and forget to put problem solving in the foreground. Overview Last year our washing machine broke down and my wife and I went to a large electrical store to buy a new one. We found a sales assistant who asked us if we had a preference for a particular brand. We had no preferences. Next came the question of our price expectation. We named it. The sales assistant told us that he had two washing machines on offer, which he showed us and informed us about their technical features. One of the two washing machines came into the close selection and we agreed to buy it. Suddenly my wife knelt down in front of the washing machine, looked inside and said that she found the washing drum somehow smaller than that of broken washing machine. Yes, said the sales assistant, this one only has a capacity of 6 kg. The sales person sold us the washing machine solely on the basis of the price feature, after his needs analysis was exhausted by the question of price. If the sales assistant had asked questions about frequency of use, household size and the like, he would have told us immediately: “As a 4-person household with two adult children, the 6 kilo version is not enough.” Good that my wife went down on her knees, bad that the sales assistant was not trained in the high art of needs analysis.

The two following examples illustrate the interplay of features with the general advantage, which, depending on the goal, transforms into the individual benefit of the customer. Example 1: Car Purchase Car features: • Black • 270 horsepower • tinted glass • panoramic roof

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Advantages of individual features: • With 270 horsepower, the driver can accelerate the car excellently. • The tinted windows prevent the sun from blinding the eyes. • With the panoramic roof, the interior space is optically enlarged Individual benefits of advantages: • That way I can overtake safely and quickly even in heavy traffic. That’s exactly what I want. • With the tinted windows, the sun does not blind me on the way to work. That’s exactly what I want. Example 2: Buying a Baseball Cap Features of the cap: • gray • cotton • air holes • sweatband inside • visor • adjustable size Advantages of individual features: • The cap can be washed in the washing machine when dirty • The air holes allow air circulation and cool the head • The sweatband absorbs sweat in hot weather and during strenuous activity. • The clamp closure allows the cap to be worn by people of different head sizes Individual benefits of the advantages: • I can wear the cap when I go jogging, the sweat does not run into my eyes anymore and the air holes automatically cool my head.

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• The cap is made of cotton and I can wash it after sports. Exactly what I want. When using benefits, you have to take the customer’s perspective and think about what’s in it for him, that is, whether the advantages of the features actually support his own goals. And this customer benefit becomes apparent in the needs analysis.

8.2 The FAB Technique in the Sales Conversation When presenting the offer, use the FAB technique to discuss the benefits of the features for customer objectives. The media consultant for a radio station could discuss the advertising offer with his customer as follows: 1. Goal: Increase awareness Salesperson (features):  Look, Mrs. Schulze. The campaign is scheduled for four weeks. We have scheduled four spots per day from Monday to Friday at different times for you. (Advantage):  With four spots a day at different times you will reach many additional listeners because not everyone listens to the radio at the same time. At the same time, many listeners will hear your spot more than once per day because they listen to the radio over a long period of time. So because of the frequency of four spots per day you will reach your target group numerous times with your message. (Benefit):  As a result, more and more people in your target group will think of YOUR offer exactly when they need it and buy from you. Increasing awareness sustainably and winning new customers are exactly your core goals, as you told me at the beginning.

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2. Goal: Increasing occupancy on Mondays and strengthening seasonal focus Seller (features): Look, Mrs. Schulze, with this communication solution, we have deliberately planned two campaign periods of two weeks each in order to increase occupancy on Mondays and to strengthen customer frequency during the season. Namely, once in early July and once in early November. The four daily spots only apply from Monday to Friday, on Saturdays and Sundays we increase the number of spots by two each and broadcast six spots per day on the weekends. (Advantage):  I just explained the benefits of broadcasting muliple commercials per day. People are reached more often and remember better. Of course, it is also about reaching additional listeners with the message.  In addition, your target group is made aware of your Monday offers at weekends with a different radio spot. At the same time, the respective campaign has the advantage for you that you can concentrate your communication on the two most important periods. Once your seasonal focus in July and then the focus at the beginning of November. (Benefit):  This means that your message is burned into the minds of a large part of our 300,000 listeners through the daily repetition and that you have a significantly higher customer frequency in your store on Mondays through the additional message at the weekends. In this way, we achieve the two goals that significantly more guests already order the weekly lunch from you as early as Monday AND having the two seasons in focus.

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End each FAB chain of argument with the respective statement that the individual goal of the respective partial goal is completely fulfilled with your offer. The customer will agree in his mind.

Table 8.1  Example FAB chain of argument Company Objective

Features in the Offer

Advantages of the Offer

Benefit for the Customer

Acquisition of new customers Increase in sales Introduction of new products Increase, change image Seasonal business support Optimization of occupancy (hotels, gastronomy, …)

Amount of media users Advertising frequency Placement of advertising media Period Ad size, spot length Placement of advertising media Special format Special advertising format …

Many people see/hear the advertising message several times and remember your offer for a long time This increases your awareness Your awareness increases precisely at the time that is also important for the opening of the business Your message is perceived by many people and many times. As a result, this message remains clearly in memory for a longer period of time and you increase your awareness

Many new people decide to use your service because of your increased awareness and you will increase your sales Since many in your target group have learned about the special features of your offer, significantly more people will decide in favor of your offer and you will have a successful start to the season Since many of your target group … … and you have more guests in the low-occupancy months Due to this high attention, significantly more people will apply for a job and you will be able to staff your business faster.

Personnel recruiting

By placing the article “The Job of the Week” directly in front of the news, your message receives the highest attention and absolute uniqueness

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If the customer names several communication goals, please use the FAB chain of argument for the customer’s core goals. You should by no means rattle off all the characteristics and benefits per objective if you can combine several objectives into one chain of argument as in Example 2. Creating FAB chains of argument The Table 8.1 gives you exemplary advantages and benefits for different customer objectives, which you can use for your FAB chain of argument.

8.3 One, Two or Three Offers? In my sales activities for a major radio broadcaster at the beginning of the 2000s, I switched from a one-offer strategy to a two-offer strategy. The private radio industry was in its infancy in Austria and public radio dominated media planning to an almost overwhelming extent. Many agencies justified their rejection of our offers with the lack of additional advertising budgets necessary to include private radio in the plan. We came up with the idea of presenting a budget-neutral plan that would increase the performance values of the radio plan by using private radio in contrast to a pure public radio mono campaign and shifted part of the budget in favor of our offer. So we presented two offer alternatives, one of which was a “minimum share” (optimal solution) and the other alternative was a justifiable higher share of the budget that went to private radio. Of course, the optimal solution was our bestseller. When I switched from the radio marketing agency to a radio station, I held on to this two-offer strategy for a long time. The Internet developed rapidly and the first online offers followed a 3-offer strategy, offering a starter, business, and premium offer for purchase. When considering the respective offers, it often turns out that the starter offer meets the minimum requirements, which does not include specific features and thus does not satisfy the buyer in the long term.

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"Essentials" .

"Advanced" .

"Premium" .

Fig. 8.1  Price design example animation software

The high-end premium offer, on the other hand, offers a complete solution that leaves the customers as happy as can be. And finally, the middle offer, often also called bestseller, which fulfills the goals of most customers. Let’s take an animation software as an example: The price comparison shows that the middle offer is not the “golden middle”. Rather, the price of the middle offer is much closer to the lowest (Fig. 8.1): • The starter software costs $25.50 per month • The advanced offer costs $64.50 per month and is $39 above the starter offer. • The premium offer costs $117.50 per month and is $53 above the middle offer. The reason for the higher price range between the advanced offer and the premium offer is purely psychological. If we have the choice of three products at the time of purchase, we tend towards the price in the middle. Since the middle offer is closer to the smallest offer, this supports the purchase decision additionally. We are virtually taken by the hand in the purchase decision, because the middle offer tends towards the cheap offer in terms of pricing. Let’s take another example to illustrate how we can even increase the price of the “Golden Middle” in theory. You are standing in front of the shelf and see bathing shoes for 7.99 €, 17.99 € and 27.99 € (see Fig. 8.2). You rule out the bathing shoes for 7.99 € because they appear “cheap” and significantly inferior in quality

132     R. McKenna "Golden mean" and bestseller

"Medium"

"Cheap" .

.

"High" .

Fig. 8.2  Price design example bathing shoes

Price not "Golden mean" but still bestseller

"Cheap" .

"Medium"

"High"

.

.

Fig. 8.3  Price design example bathing slippers

compared to the other two. You decide on the golden mean because at this price you can “expect something decent” in comparison to the cheap version. (Fig. 8.2). If the store had a bathing shoe for 39.99 € instead of 27.99 € to choose from (see Fig. 8.3), then the “bestseller” with the middle price could theoretically be sold for 22.99 € instead of 17.99 €. Why? Because it is still the second cheapest price and priced closer to the cheapest offer of 7.99 €.

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This type of offer can be excellently realized in B2B business, since the individual offers often consist of several service elements that cannot be purchased separately and thus do not allow for price transparency. Of course, you can’t just raise the price of flip-flops because the demand for this model is controlled by the competition prices. In the media business, you can go into the sales conversation with three offers and set your favored offer in the middle. While the highpriced offer includes a bundle of additional service elements that the customer does not need, the low-priced offer is only designed as a starter offer that does not meet customer expectations in longterm. If the customer specifies the budget at 10,000 €, you can also increase your desired offer to 11,000 € or 12,000 € with the 3-offer strategy. The sales conversation could be as follows: Salesperson  “Mrs. Schulze, let me briefly introduce our range of services that we generally offer for the purpose of raising awareness and increasing promotional sales.” (High-priced offer)  With this offer, we deliberately rely on a media mix with newspaper ads and online advertising on our portals and Facebook, as well as the production of a company portrait … This offer is of course on the high-end side in terms of price and represents our optimal solution. It does not meet your price expectations due to your budget constraints. (Low-priced offer)  Now for our entry-level offer for small customers with very little advertising budget. We deliberately refrained from extensions such as the production of a company portrait and focused on the integration of standard solutions in order to offer a well-functioning solution even for a small advertising budget. … (Favored offer and closer to low-price offer in terms of price) Let me come to our actual offer to you. By producing the company portrait, you

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have the opportunity to use it on your Facebook page as well as at your trade fair appearance to make new customers aware of your company. That was one of your main goals that you told me … (Use the FAB principle for the benefit argumentation) … … and the total investment amounts to 12,500 €. What do you say?”

9 Caution—Danger ahead—Techniques for Price Negotiation

Abstract  Every service has its price. The price expectations between customer and salesperson may differ considerably. Some customers want to get the maximum concessions out of the offer for themselves. The decision is always made by the salesperson. The more the customer understands the benefit, the less often the price will be the key issue in the sales conversation. But the more often you grant additional discounts, the greater is the negative impact on your set targets. Granting additional services (discounts in kind) is often a much better alternative to a cash discount. Would the customer buy the offer if you did NOT grant the desired discount? Find out in this chapter. Price negotiation is usually the last hurdle on the route to the sales closure. It belongs to the classical objections, but is treated separately in this chapter because of its high importance and complexity. If the customer has understood how much he benefits from your communication solution, then the anticipation or the desire to achieve the goal prevails. The price is indeed discussed, but the refusal of the requested discount is often accepted in the early phase of the price negotiation. You probably know this from a car ride where the sat nav reports the risk of a © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. McKenna, The Sales Sat Nav for Media Consultants, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-40734-6_9

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traffic jam and afterbraking slightly, the journey continues without any problems. Who likes to hear the following customer statements in the sales conversation? • We are aware that we have to advertise, but with this high price I would like to ask you for a new offer with a significantly reduced advertising performance. • So you still have to go down a lot in terms of price if you want to become a cooperation partner of ours. • I have a comparable offer from your competitor with a significantly lower price. You have invested hours in relationship building, explaining the benefits of the offer to the customer. It can be quite frustrating when you are thwarted just before the finish line. Some salespeople begin to doubt whether their pricing is justified after all and argue with their superiors that they could close significantly more orders if the price were adjusted downwards. However, this argumentation is subject to a massive error in thinking, which I would like to explain with a short question: Do you actually think that the price negotiations will stop with a price reduction in your rate cards? You will still be confronted with numerous customer demands that want to push the price even lower. Numerous regional entrepreneurs are also buyers for their company at the same time. It is understandable that it is the task of the decision-makers to achieve the best price. Note: the best price for them. It is in the nature of buying and selling that the buyer wants to push himself to the limits of what is possible. Decision-makers also get trained in price negotiations and are often very familiar with the salespeople’s chain of arguments. Serious customers sit down at the negotiating table and have a clear expectation of the offer; they know the rates of the competition.

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When it comes to price negotiations, salespeople need to acquire skills and techniques in order to enforce their offer prices. That is non- negotiable. After all, the point is that you are able to reach an agreement with the customer that is positive for both sides. And that is precisely the nature of a price negotiation. At the same time, learning negotiation techniques and using them leads to a conversation at eye level with your customers. Important Core Skills in Price Negotiations 1. Prepare yourself. You need the answers to the following questions in advance of the price negotiation: • What are the customer’s goals and what pains does he want to eliminate? • Can you eliminate the pain with your offer? • How urgently does the customer need a communication solution to achieve his goals? • What is the customer’s advertising budget? 2. Be confident in dealing with objections. Since objections are often price-related, you always need to highlight the advantage of the offer and the resulting benefits for the customer—even when using different objection handling techniques. Emphasize that you are aiming for a common agreement that is positive for both sides. 3. Keep cool. Stay friendly and calm when you are confronted with excessive discount requests. Argue objectively and don’t argue with the customer. If you start a fight, you will lose the order and the customer. 4. Prepare for plan B. You need to know in advance which services you can eliminate from the offer and what the value reduction will be. If you have to postpone the price negotiation in order to recalculate new offer alternatives in the office, you will unnecessarily delay the negotiation

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process. After all, you want to get an immediate order confirmation. Plan B also means that you not only prepare an offer, but also have a second or maybe even a third solution in your luggage, either to present it, if necessary (“That’s too expensive. Listen, I don’t want to buy your whole company.”), or to present all solutions. I will go into more detail about the advantages of presenting several offers in the next section of this chapter. 5. Never signal at the beginning of the price negotiation that you are willing to give concessions. If you ask the customer what discount he has in mind, you have signalled to him that you still have space for negotiation. You send him the same signal by telling him that you need to discuss his discount request with your superior. 6. Say no and leave. You must be prepared to leave the negotiating table if the demands are unrealistic. If the customer shows no willingness to compromise, this has nothing to do with a negotiating situation. Breaking off negotiation underpins your reasoned position and can make the customer give in. Price Negotiations can Arise From Experience When 1. the customer does not perceive the benefit of your advertising solution for his goal achievement. The distillation of the true goals and possible pains is still underestimated by many salespeople in the needs analysis phase. As extensively discussed in previous chapters, the needs analysis is the springboard for the benefit communication and for closing the sale. The more you emphasize the customer benefit in your sales conversation, the less often you will hear exaggerated demands from the customer. 2. it is a high investment. It is understandable that the purchase of bad chewing gum really has no far-reaching consequences for the buyer. The higher the investment, the more important the purchase price—and the benefit for the customer—becomes when making the purchase.

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3. it is a risky investment. The less the customer benefit is discussed in the sales talk, the harder it is for the customer to sign. Advertising customers, especially those with little knowledge of the advertising effect of the media, must fully understand the advantages and benefits of the offer. 4. several people have to decide on the purchase. Imagine that one decision maker is responsible for finance. If this person does not attend the sales meeting, the communication solution becomes a pure price consideration. Always make sure that you have all decision makers at the table (see Chap. 4—Appointment scheduling). 5. the customer does not intend to buy your offer. This widespread situation is nothing more than a pretext—an excuse. The customer does not want to give the impression that he had no interest in your offer in advance and hides behind the demand for excessive price discounts. Another reason lies in the lack of urgency of achieving the goal, although the customer confirmed the urgency to the seller in advance. Some companies and agencies ask for a best price offer as part of their market observation in order to update their market knowledge. They do not need any advertising solution at the moment, but want to check which medium offers the best advertising performance for a given advertising budget. If an advertising need arises at a later point in time, they have several comparable offers on the table and can justify their demand for further price discounts with the existence of the competing offers. Experience has shown that these best price spies do not result in any orders. They take up a lot of your time and energy. Take action if you notice that customers or agencies regularly ask for highly discounted offers and not for appointments, let alone sign an order. Ask why communication starts and ends with the quotation phase. Openly express your suspicion. What do you have to lose? They’re not a customer anyway. You can only win. Namely, use your valuable time for more purposeful tasks.

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6. the supposed decision-maker is not the decision-maker. When I contacted a company a few years ago in the course of acquiring new customers and asked for an appointment with the decision-maker for marketing and advertising. He said he was on the phone and we talked about the reason for my call and the customer’s objectives and pain points. A few days later, I presented him with our offer in the appointment, which was commented on by the interlocutor as overpriced. I was surprised at his reticence in conveying my benefits and his final statement that he did not see the offer as the perfect solution for his goals. No close was made. Later I found out that this supposed decision-maker had no decision-making authority at all. Annoying and embarrassing for me at the same time. When I told other salespeople about this mishap at a media event, I was very surprised that my faux pas was not an isolated case and that other salespeople had similar experiences. 7. the offer is actually set too high compared to the market-typical pricing. 8. the customer is bluffing.

9.1 Is the Customer Bluffing? Consider the truthfulness of the customer’s statement that the price is too high. Perhaps he is bluffing, as is often the case. The following scenario shows that price negotiations are often just a game: In your search for a property, you find the perfect house. The price is right and even lower than your available budget. The bank’s credit approval is secured, it has the desired number of rooms and the modern and open kitchen conveys almost a maritime feeling of life. All factors speak in favor of buying the dream house. After the viewing appointment, you tell the owner that you like the house, but the price is higher than you imagined. So you have to think about the purchase. After all, there are still numerous improvements to be made and in the course of the new energy laws you still have to invest in the heating technology. You ask the seller if there is still some

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room to reduce the price. Although all the conditions are perfect from your point of view. You are bluffing because you enjoy negotiating. You want to be the winner when you buy. The media business is the same. Many advertising customers negotiate over the price even though it matches their planned budget.

9.2 Increasing Objectives Through Granting Discounts Even if price negotiations are often just a game, the consequences of a price discount go far beyond a game, as the following number game shows (cf. Table 9.1): • Let’s assume your personal turnover target for the current year is 1 million euros. • Your average sales per customer is 10,000 euros. • Therefore, you need 100 customers with an average turnover of 10,000 euros invested in your advertising solutions. • If you grant your customers an extraordinary discount of 10%, then the average sales falls to 9000 euros. • Now you need 111 customers—11 customers more—to achieve your planned turnover of 1 million euros. Table 9.1  Sales target and example calculations Sales target: average order: Number of orders Discount 5 % 10 % 15 % 20 % 30 %

1,000,000 € 10,000 € 100 Additional sales required 50,000 € 100,000 € 150,000 € 200,000 € 300,000 €

average order:

Number of orders

9500 € 9000 € 8500 € 8000 € 7000 €

105 111 118 125 142

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• With a not unusual discount of 20%, you need to convince 125 customers—25 additional customers—of your offer to reach your turnover target of 1 million euros. My advice to you: Fight for your price and do not give an immediate discount. Many salespeople give in very quickly and give the customer the requested discount or they signal agreement by saying, • that they do not have much room for the discount. Not much room means at least a little room and the bazaar is open. • that they have to talk to their sales manager about this requested discount. In this case, too, the salesperson has not rejected the discount request. • that they have to recalculate the offer. Again no rejection is issued. Be sure that the customer activates his attack mode with even the most vague agreement to a discount. Never send signals that you are willing to give a discount. In search of an appropriate formula for negotiating skills, I came across the equation N = f (W, T, F). It is not a mathematical equation, because the variables simply and simply result in the sentence: The negotiating skills are equal to the function of the variables Who Twitches First. Of course, many price negotiations go beyond bluffing. But you don’t know that at the beginning of the negotiation. You have to find out. Below I present a price negotiation using different techniques that map the entire negotiation process from the discount request to the agreement. Please read through the entire negotiation conversation, as all phases build on each other. The flowcharts attached in the appendix will make the negotiation phases very clear to you.

9.3 The Blocking Technique My first job was in sales in the alcoholic beverage industry. In the phase of the annual negotiations with the trade, I was allowed to participate as a silent observer in an annual meeting. On the way to the customer, the

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sales manager shared the first sales lesson with me, which I have since internalized in the negotiation phase: • The demands of the buyers are usually exaggerated and both sides know it. It’s almost like a ritual. • So listen and politely block. • Under no circumstances answer with a counteroffer. This gives the demand too much importance. You already know the game. If the customer brings up a supposed objection, you have to question it in order not to fall into the trap and treat an excuse. Here, the use of the pretext terminator is recommended. Customer: “Your offer is too high for me. I need a discount of 20%, if you want the order.” Salesperson: “Mrs. Schulze, if I understand you correctly, there are no other points that would prevent us from partnering with you. Am I right?” Customer: “Yes.”

Overview Something remarkable happened in this conversation: The customer defined his price demand. The psychological effect is that we usually base ourselves on this price as an anchor point, whether we want to or not. Salespeople are quick to suggest the golden mean and grant half of this discount. This is a big mistake. The customer goes into the price negotiation with exaggerated demands and knows that he will not get the offer at this discount or price anyway. If he only secures half of the discount, he may have achieved his desired goal. Ignore the discount demand as long as possible and give this demanded 20% no space in your conversation. Don’t stick to his anchor. Swim further and don’t make a counteroffer at this point. After all, we’re not at a bazaar.

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Salesperson: “If you say that the price is the only sticking point for you, then you like it and you want to buy our offer. That’s good news, Mrs. Schulze, that makes me very happy.”  “We have already equipped this offer with the best price because you are an important customer for us/because we want to win you as a customer. I really can’t lower the price.” Overview First, confirm to the customer in your own words that the price is the only obstacle to the purchase. Your signal to the customer is simply put: no further objections are allowed. You have clearly explained to the customer with the blocking technique why your offer is not further discountable. And you have not made a counteroffer. Either the customer gives in and buys undiscounted or sticks to the demand. Let’s assume in this example that the customer sticks to his demand.

Customer: “Listen, we have a comparable offer from your competitor. And for the same campaign duration we pay significantly less than with your offer. If we do not receive the 20% discount, we have to decide against your offer.”

Overview It happens much more often than you might think that the customer backs up his claim with a cheaper offer—even if he does not have one. Only believe the customer when he shows you this offer. In many cases, he just wants to intimidate the salesperson and, with the pretext of a counter-offer, push the price to his advantage. Unfortunately, many salespersons allow this, as they already give in at this stage of the negotiation. If the customer justifies the inflated price with a more favorable competitive offer, then a statement of the apples-and-oranges comparison is completely inappropriate. (“You can not compare these offers one to one because with our medium we have completely different prerequisites for your success.”). How do you know that the competitor’s offer is not comparable to your offer? You have not seen it yet. You are treading on very thin ice when you even suggest that the two offers are not comparable, because

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you are openly doubting the customer’s power of judgment. You must find out in the first step whether this counter-offer exists at all. Be happy when the customer brings a competitive offer into the game. Now you have two phenomenal possibilities to check this statement for its truthfulness and to unmask a bluff of the customer. If the customer does not have a counter-offer, this topic will no longer be the subject of discussion. If the customer shows you the offer, you have a unique and rare insight into his pricing and can possibly increase the attractiveness of your solution with benefit arguments. Let’s continue the negotiation conversation.

9.4 Unmasking the Offer from the Competition Salesperson: “Mrs. Schulze, what do you think about us taking a look at the competitor’s offer together and checking why it is cheaper and why our offer meets your advertising goals so precisely. Is that okay with you?” Customer: “I can’t do that because I agreed to keep the offer confidential.” Salesperson: “Well, we’re among ourselves and you’ve already told me the price. It’s 20% below our offer.” Customer: “Yes, but I don’t want to give the offer out of hand.” Seller: “OK, but I unfortunately don’t have the opportunity to discuss the advantages of our offer compared to the counteroffer with you. I’m sorry, my hands are tied. I can only assume one reason for the competitor’s pricing. Maybe he has no choice but to lower the price drastically to win you as a customer. As I said, that’s just a guess. Please understand that for reasons of economy we can’t grant you a 20% discount.” Overview Did you notice? With your chain of arguments, you took over the conversation and put the customer in the reaction mode Let’s go through the conversation again briefly: 1. You offer the customer to compare both offers, which he rejects.

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2. You convey an unshakeable belief in the strengh of your offer by telling the customer that you will explain the advantages of your offer to him after having compared the offers. 3. You make a justified assumption that the competitor will only get an order by dumping prices. You can’t imagine any other reason for this price aggressiveness, because you are not allowed to look at the counteroffer. 4. You repeat that this is only an unsecured assumption. So you don’t talk bad about the competitor, which you should never do. Good salespeople argue the competition into the ground by the high value of their own offer. You don’t say anything bad about them. What would you think about a salesperson who beats the competition with the verbal club? You would lose confidence in his integrity. Even if a customer should express himself negatively about the competition, then you keep calm and don’t join into this song. 5. You explain plausibly that you can’t follow for reasons of economy. Every customer understands that. With them, too, profitability is the top priority. 6. You still don’t give any counter-suggestion to his discount request. So far, you have defended your price in the best and most credible way. Of course, you still don’t know if there really is a counteroffer, but you have now put the customer in a dilemma: Dear customer, either you show me the counteroffer, or it cannot be used as a reason for your price demand. So you provide the customer with two possible response options: Either he shows you the (actually existing) offer, or he looks for new reasons for his discount demand. Let’s look at the further course of the conversation with both possible reactions. Let’s start with the (rare) case that the customer actually has a counteroffer. Immediately switch to the next detection technique to check which supplier he would prefer.

9.5 The Customer has a Counteroffer— Detecting the Desired Supplier Salesperson: “At the beginning of our conversation, you told me that you were only concerned about the price. All other components of the offer are in order. So, assuming we had the same price as the competitor, you would opt for our offer. Is that right?” Customer: “Yes.” Salesperson: “Thank you for your commitment. Can you please tell me why you prefer our offer at the same price?”

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Now it is time to find out why the customer makes the choice in favor of your offer. He must have good reasons for that. Set a “trap” for the customer. That’s how you play poker. And negotiations are also a game. So ask the following open and really smart question.

Overview The customer has to reveal himself now. The answer to the salesperson’s question often gives you arguments to justify your price, which you can then use immediately in the conversation.

Customer: “Your reach is somewhat higher.” Salesperson: “I assume that with our higher reach you also reach a significantly higher share of your target group, right?” Customer: “Yes, of course.” Salesperson: “You know, the higher reach and the better coverage of your target group explain our higher price quite wonderfully. You see, we are not more expensive and bring you significantly more spark to get more people to buy your offer. So let’s make it a deal.”

And thus you have the justification for your higher price. With your offer, the customer reaches more people in his desired target group.

The Fig. 9.1 illustrates to you the previous course of the price negotiation by means of a flow chart. Overview By asking why the customer would choose your offer at the same price, you expose the customer because he now has to give the reason. And the reasons can only be positive for you and your advertising medium. Of course, the customer can also give other reasons:

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The price negotiation Your offer is too expensive! Demand: 20% discount

Customer Salesperson Conclusion

Pretext Terminator Are there any other reasons...

No

Customer buys

Sorry, no discount!

without discount

with benefit argumentation

Demand remains Reason:Counteroffer available

Unmasking counteroffer "Let's compare the two offers." No

Discount check not possible. Therefore discount claim not plausible.

Detecting the desired supplier "Would you prefer our offer if the price was the same?"

Yes

Why?

Justification

"The reason justifies the price!" Sorry, no discount

Fig. 9.1  The price negotiation (part 1)

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• “We can really rely on you.” • “Your media house has a very good reputation.” • “I see that you know my industry very well.” Based on these reasons, you can form individual chains of argument: Customer: “We can really rely on you.” Seller: “Thank you for your praise. If I had to choose between high reliability and an uncertainty when making this investment, I would always choose security. What do you think?” Customer: “Your media house has a very good reputation.” Salesperson: “Thank you for your praise. We have earned our reputation through reliability and successful campaign development. For this reason, we have a very high number of regular customers. Mrs. Schulze, it is precisely our great expertise that guarantees you the best chances of success in your target achievement. That alone makes our price-performance ratio unbeatable. Let us go with this offer for you. What do you say?” Customer: “I see that you know a lot about my industry.” Seller: “Thank you for your praise. If I didn’t know your industry’s customs, I wouldn’t be able to provide you with pinpoint communication solutions. That alone makes our price-performance ratio unbeatable. Let’s go with this offer and be partners. What do you think?” Always argue (always!) with the benefit for the customer. If the customer still insists on a discount, it is now time to explore an approach. However, don’t ask for the minimum discount he demands, but first check his willingness to accept pain. And remember: You still do not know if the customer is bluffing. Let’s assume in this example that the customer remains with his demand. Let’s follow the further course of the conversation.

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9.6 Exploring the Willingness to Suffer through Renunciation of Performance Customer: “Of course you are right with your justification. But something must be possible. After all, we’re talking about 15,000 €. We get this discount from other media.” Salesperson: “Mrs. Schulze, if I grant you 20% discount, then I virtually lose money. If you only win two or three additional customers with our advertising solution, then this investment has already been compensated. And that because of our best price. Furthermore, our high reach will increase the awareness of your offer and thus more interested parties will contact you than with the competition’s offer.” Salesperson: “I have a solution to your discount request. We reduce the number of daily spots by one spot in the first week of the campaign (we reduce the ad format of three ads, we reduce the size of the banner ad, we omit one target criterion for programmatic advertising). This way you can secure the desired duration of the campaign and you have secured a price discount of 10%. It’s still the best-priced value. What do you think of this idea?”

Overview Without you saying it, you have given the customer a first signal of readiness to negotiate: “20% does not work.” In addition, you have explained your price with additional benefits: the higher return on investment and even more customers through your high reach. Only now do you come up with an alternative after you have already told the customer several times that the price is not negotiable.

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Explanation • In the first step, you explain to Mrs. Schulze once again that you calculated with the sharpest pencil that was available anywhere. This repetition makes your argumentation credible and comprehensible. • In the second step, you speak of the performance elements of the offer and reduce its scope. In other words, you reduce the benefit or the customer has to accept the price. Observe the customer very closely when you make this proposal to him. We still don’t know if he’s bluffing or not. You have presented the great benefit of this offer to the customer in advance and are now changing this performance and reducing it. How will he react? Think about the nonverbal buying signals—but also pay attention to negative nonverbal signals from your counterpart. • In the third step, inform the customer about the price discount of 10%. These 10% are half of the 20% discount he demanded. However, you no longer talk about a discount here, but about a price reduction due to less performance. So you keep your price per spot or per mm of advertising space. For digital offers, for example, you could reduce the number of guaranteed ad impressions or the number of target criteria.

But beware: Reduce the performance by a much smaller scope than the value of the requested discount and always keep the advertising effect of the remaining campaign performance in mind when reducing the performance. After all, you could shipwreck the campaign if you reduce the performance too much.

The Magic of the Proposal • By repeating the statement that no discount can be granted at this best price, you strengthen the credibility of this statement and thus your persona at the same time. • You offer the customer an alternative to the price reduction. • This price reduction does reduce your turnover, but only to a maximum of half of the requested discount. • In contrast to the discount demand, the price discount is only justified by the reduction in performance and does not negatively affect your rate card structure. Either the customer gives in and buys an offer without discount or he sticks to his demand.

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Let’s run through two settlement scenarios and then take the negotiation to the next level with the third scenario.

Scenario 1: Decision for the Reduced Service Offering with Discount Claim Customer: “Reducing the price because of reducing the performance sounds good. If I get a discount there, then we’ll do it.” Seller: “Mrs. Schulze, this offer is also the best price. There is only a marginal goodwill discount. What amount did you have in mind?” Customer: “10%.” Seller: “I can give you a 10% discount in kind immediately. This way you have a super package to increase your sales significantly and I can meet your demand with the 10% additional service. Let’s do it this way.” Customer: “Ok.”

Overview A discount in kind is frequently used in the media business, also known as “frees”. If the customer concludes the agreement with you, he receives an additional unit of advertising free of charge. Discounts in kind do not reduce the turnover. Therefore, it is advisable to offer the customer the 10% discount required above as a discount in kind. Tip for granting frees: Many media consultants switch to an additional advertising medium when granting discounts in kind. For example, they offer banner advertising or a PR insert as a discount in kind, even though these are not part of the offer. This is dangerous in that the perceived value of these advertising forms can decrease. After all, it’s “just” an on-top gift, the customer thinks. In addition, the customer will not invest in additional advertising forms that would increase his booking volume if he receives it free of charge in the form of frees. If the customer demands the same discount in kind at the next booking, you will know at the latest during this negotiation that he is very satisfied with the previous campaign. So only offer a discount in kind in the advertising media that is already being booked by the customer.

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Of course, the customer could have demanded a higher discount, but you have repeatedly and credibly pointed out during the negotiation that 20% is simply not possible. You will recognize in everyday business that the justified blocking of a discount leads to a reduction in the originally requested discounts.

Scenario 2: Decision for the Original Offer with Discount Claim Customer: “No, I would rather stay with the large offer. It is important to me that we gain maximum awareness with our campaign. But you have to give me a discount.” Sales person: “Mrs. Schulze, what do you think of the proposal that I give you a 5% discount if you decide now? Increasing the discount even further is simply not possible.” Customer: “10%.” Salesperson: “I can give you the 10% as follows. You get a 5% discount on the price and you get 5% additional service as discount in kind. Then you are at the desired 10% discount. This way you have a super package to increase your sales significantly and I can also meet your price demand.” Customer: “Ok.”

As in the first scenario, the discount in kind plays an important role. In order to make the customer feel like a “winner” again, you “granted” him a 10% discount. In the form of a cash discount (you have to give me a discount on the price) and 5 % frees on top. You are miles away from the required 20% at the beginning of the price negotiation with a 5% price discount.

Scenario 3: Take the Price Negotiation to the Limit Customer: “No, I would rather stay with the large range of services. If we can’t make it work with the discount, then you’re out.”

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Salesperson: “Mrs. Schulze, I’m glad you appreciate us and our communication solution. You know we can’t lower the price any further and I’m wondering if a discount in kind of 10% would be a viable alternative for you. Am I on the right track here?” Customer: “No. 10% discount in kind is much too little and I get 30% easily from your competitor.” Salesperson: (slowly sorts his papers into a pile and reaches for his bag). “I’m very sorry, but I can’t meet such excessive discount demands at all. Not with this top offer. I have to pass at this point.” (observes the customer very closely). Now the customer could give in and reveal himself as a bluffer by saying: Customer: “Ok. If there really is nothing more, then we’ll do it with the 10% discount in kind.”

However, the customer could also confirm the contract termination. Depending on how important this order is for the salesperson, he may now give in and ask the following question: Customer: “Yes, I’m sorry about that. It’s a great offer, but it’s just too expensive for me.” Salesperson: (shows that he is just thinking,—short pause -) “Mrs. Schulze, please give me your lowest discount request. I know that our advertising solution is exactly aligned with your goals and pains. You already have my commitment of 10% discount in kind. What is the absolute minimum that I would have to grant you?” Customer:  “The 10% discount in kind and an additional 10% cash discount.” Salesperson: “Let’s keep an eye on the 20% in total. With a 10% price discount we don’t earn anything. What do you think of a 15% discount in kind and a 5% cash discount. Then you are also at 20% and we have both moved a little closer to each other. And with the 15% additional performance you have even more power to win new customers. Can we agree on that?” Customer: “Ok.”

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The price negotiation Customer Salesperson Conclusion

"The reason justifies the price!" Sorry, no discount

Discount demand remains There must be something that you can do...

Customer buys without discount

Determining the pain when reducing the performance

Customer buys 5% discount in kind 5% cash discount

Discount claim Isn't there anything you can do?

Offer discount in kind Good Will Discount 10%

Customer buys 10% discount in kind

Customer remains firm

30% discount in kind

Customer gives in 10% discount in kind

No

Suggest termination of the negotiation

Customer remains firm 30% discount in kind

Agreement 15% discount in kind and 5% cash discount

Fig. 9.2  The price negotiation (part 2)

Overview Bingo. 15% discount in kind hardly hurts and 5 % cash discount sounds far more attractive than the previously demanded 20%. Again you argued with customer benefits. You may be wondering if you won’t lose face when re-opening negotiations after putting your documents back into your bag. Not at all. Negotiations, as tough as they can be, are a game. If you have provided the customer with a coherent benefit argumentation chain, then he will be pleased that he has prevailed. And you should be happy because the cash discount dropped from a demanded 20 % down

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to just 5 %. Do you know the Columbo-Effect? You probably know the seemingly simple-minded inspector who is constantly looking for his writing pad in on of his rain coat’s pocket and forgets to ask important questions. He says good bye, opens the door and then a killer question supposedly comes back to him. Just compare your bluff with breaking of negotiations with the Columbo-Effect.

Figure 9.2 illustrates the further course of the price negotiation.

9.6.1 When the Customer wants to know the Price in Advance In summer my wife came into my office and said: “I just bought a parasol for the terrace.” My reply: “And? How much was it?” She smiled at me and said: “Have a look at it first and then guess, how much it was.” I was stunned. Who is the sales-pro? My wife or me? She has never had any sales training and delivers concentrated quality just from the gut. I definitely have to include this story in my next training, I thought. I was definitely disarmed and very excited to look at the parasol. I guessed the price and was about 50 euros too expensive with my estimation. As in this example, it often happens that customers would like to know the price before the offer presentation. There is a special reason why you should always mention the price of your offer at the end of the offer presentation: In the offer presentation, the benefit for the customer must be in the foreground, not the price. If the customer asks for the price before the presentation of the offer, there is an excellent multi-stage argumentation chain to answer his demand: • Stage 1: – Customer:“Before you show me the offer, please tell me first how high the hearing price is. Then I know what to expect.” – Seller:“Mrs. Schulze, I can understand that you are looking forward to hearing the price. Please let me first show you the contents of the offer and its effect on your targets. If the offer does not meet your expectations, it will not cost you anything.”

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Overview As a rule, the customer accepts this argumentation and understands that the mentioned price is in no relation to anything, because he does not know the services of the offer and thus can not measure the resulting benefit. If the customer still insists on the naming of the price, please follow the next two steps.

• Stage 2: – Customer:“I would like to know now. Just tell me the price.” – Seller:“Ok. The offer that I will present to you in a moment costs 11,480 €.” • Stage 3: – Customer:“Wow. That’s more than I thought.” – Seller:“Yes, Mrs. Schulze, this offer is not cheap. But there are very good reasons for this price and I would like to introduce them to you now. There are hundreds of customers who have checked our pricing and have chosen our offer for very good reasons. Would you like to know the reasons? Would you like that?” – Customer:“Ok, tell me.” Overview In the third stage, exactly what is to be feared happens. The customer thinks the price is too high. Of course, we don’t know if the customer really means it, or if he’s bluffing. Maybe it’s just an automatism: How much?—That much!—Too much! You relativize the apparently expensive by countering that the offer is not cheap. “Cheap” is negatively connotated in sales talk and is associated with poor quality. So avoid telling customers that your offer is cheap. But use the word when the customer sees your offer price as too high. “Yes, dear customer, our offer is indeed not cheap.” By using “references” that have checked our prices and found them good for many reasons, you convey to the customer not only your steadfastness, but also the credible justification of the price.

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The repetition of the question—Would you like to know the reasons? Would you like that?—is a stylistic device that boosts the credibility of a statement like a catalyst. In this example, the customer will think that the price is really very well justified. In addition, the repetition of the question practically forces an answer in your favor—a “yes”. Repeat the question without raising your voice and changing the tone. Otherwise the question can sound aggressive.

After that, please follow the further course of the sales conversation as presented in Chaps. 7 to 9.

9.6.2 A Well-Filled Sales Funnel Lets You Sleep Better Discount requests will be much more relaxed for you if you have enough offers and customer contacts in the market. Because then you hold the decision-making power for the discount request in YOUR hand. Then you can reject excessive demands in all objectivity without being exposed to the inner pressure that you absolutely have to conclude the order. Always keep the motto in mind—Negotiating does not mean: giving in. Please imagine the following situation: • • • • •

You currently have 10 offers in the market. The average price of the offers is 15,000 €. The total value of the offers is therefore 150,000 €. Your appointment rate—call to appointment—is, for example, 20%. Your success rate—offer to order—is 33%.

With the total value of the offers of 150,000 €, the turnover of 50,000 € is already certain for you. If you only have a few offers and customer contacts in the market, the sales pressure increases and you grant the requested discount much faster.

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For this reason, always keep your offer funnel well filled. And know your rates. You have mastered one important sub-goal after the other and the topic of price negotiation can also be planned efficiently in advance. Is a price reduction in form of a discount in kind or a cash discount better for you or are you willing to break off the journey at the last minute? You have different routes to choose from. Deal with the alternatives and consequences of your decision before the price negotiation. And don’t forget that you have the sole decision-making power over the price.

10 You have Reached Your Destination— Closing the Sale

Abstract  With the question of closing the sale the preceding sales efforts begin to make sense. The sales contract must leave a binding and sustainable character for both the salesperson and the customer. The top priority in concluding a contract is to satisfy and excite the customer, because he understands how he will benefit from the offer. The risk of the order being canceled is minimized, because the customer has recognized the sense and the chances of the offer. This chapter describes verbal and nonverbal customer buying signals and how to react to them correctly. In addition, it presents different closing techniques, all of which have the same focus: highlighting the customer’s benefit. Many salespersons do not like to refer to themselves as sellers. A study on the trust of Germans in occupational groups commissioned by the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions e. V. in 2018 shows that salespersons have had a consistently poor image for years (GfK, 2018). Only 51% of the population fully or predominantly trust salespersons. The bottom line of this survey were politicians with 14%, insurance salespeople with 23% and advertising professionals with 25%. The © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. McKenna, The Sales Sat Nav for Media Consultants, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-40734-6_10

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top scorers were, in addition to firefighters and paramedics with 96% approval, nurses with 95%. However, the study does not shed any light on why sellers have such a bad image. If one considers that salespersons are responsible for sales and therefore also fill the fridge of their colleagues from administration and other departments, then this image does not do justice to them. In my seminars I always ask the participants the same question: “Do you see yourself as a salesperson or as a consultant?” After all, most sellers in the media business carry the title “media consultant”. As if they wanted to protect themselves from the title “sales”. Being a salesperson is not a contagious disease. Some see themselves in the role of the consultant and some see themselves as consulting sellers. In the subsequent discussion, the “either … or” is analyzed and the majority of participants then decide for the “both … and”. Now my next question is whether they are more sales-oriented consultants or consulting salespersons. What is in the foreground for you? It gets interesting when I ask them about the associations they make with the term “seller”: Among the top 3 mentioned terms is the word “slimy”. Wow. It is about recognizing your inner attitude and approach to the word “salesperson”, because many sellers experience hot flashes in the final phase of the sales conversation when asking for the order and their fear of the decisive question does not remain unnoticed by the customer. If I know the customer’s pains and goals and know that my solution positively supports the customer in these goals and reduces the pains, then the orientation in the sales conversation must be purely results-oriented. And that with joy and pride. If we make a role reversal here and you are the customer—what would you think if you had a weak and undecided salesperson in front of you? At best, you would feel sorry for that person. Worst case, you as a customer are also unsure and maybe the question is swirling around in your head whether the offer is really that good. Or is the seller perhaps hiding something? The higher the investment, the more the customer needs the good feeling that he has bought the right solution. And that is your task.

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The reason for this anxiety on closing a deal is often that the salesperson himself doubts and perhaps asks himself these questions: • • • •

Does it really solve the customer’s problems? Does the customer have any concerns that I don’t know about? Is the price perhaps too high? What do I do if he doesn’t like the offer?

If you have built a solid foundation by knowing the customer’s needs and informing the customer of the benefits of the solution, then the customer is practically waiting for the final question.

10.1 Looking for Buying Signals Surely it has happened to you before that after discussing an offer you had no idea how the offer was received and then the customer signed the contract without flinching. Recognizing and searching for purchase signals are crucial in a sales conversation because they are a shortcut to the order. When recognizing buying signals, you can immediately initiate the closing of the sale, as described in the following chapter. Therefore, it is essential not to take your eyes off the customer and to observe him closely and listen to what he says or asks about the offer. Buying signals in a sales conversation give a shortcut of the sales conversation that initiates the closing phase. Unlike the sat nav, which suggests a shortcut to you, you definitely have to choose the shortcut with the sales navigation system. It could represent a one-time closing opportunity that may not reappear if it is ignored. If the customer signals his willingness to buy, and you discuss additional (seemingly) advantages of the offer, then questions may arise that perhaps devalue the offer in the customer’s eyes. So the customer sends the clear buying signal, you are happy and continue with the next argument that the reach of the newspaper has grown in the city belt. Hang on a minute, the customer may think, the surrounding area is not important to me. My customers are in the city. And now I have to pay for

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the surrounding area too? Thus, what was a safe buying candidate became a shaky candidate whose objection is now in the room and must be addressed. Overview Whenever you recognize a buying signal, stop any further explanations and ask a buying test question or ask for the order. Make it as easy as possible for the customer to establish a business relationship with you. After all, in most cases the customer has not decided to meet with you out of courtesy. Therefore, always assume that he already has a general interest in buying a fantastic advertising solution at the beginning of your appointment.

We distinguish between verbal and nonverbal buy signals as well as actions.

10.1.1 Verbal Buying Signals 10.1.1.1 Yes, I Want to Buy The directly expressed buying wish is the strongest buying signal and does not require any further explanation. You certainly did not buy this book for this knowledge. Most customers don’t jump up after the offer presentation and ask for a pen to sign the contract. Rather, they expect the salesperson to ask for the order. If it were the opposite, there would not be so many sales techniques to get to the “Yes, I want to buy!”.

10.1.1.2 The Customer Asks Questions In many cases the customer talks about things that only happen after the contract has been signed. For example, he would like to know details about the payment, the creation of advertising materials or perhaps the service. With this, the customer is already thinking beyond the signature, which suggests that he has no further questions about

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the “before”. These questions about the “after” clearly signal that he has already bought the advertising solution in his mind or is considering the purchase.

10.1.1.3 The Customer Asks for References References give customers security, especially if there are references from the same industry and of comparable company size. I recommend that you are able to name a few references on request. Ask your satisfied customers if they are available as a reference if necessary and can give other customers information about the course of their campaign.

10.1.1.4 The Customer Shares his Opinion with You Unsolicited A few years ago I was working as a consultant for a newspaper publisher and presented the advertising manager and the sales managers our new customer acquisition program. This program was specifically designed for the individual requirements of the publisher and included, in addition to my program accompaniment, five training days that would also help the media consultants in their work in their regular daily sales activities. After I presented my program, the advertising manager told me that the training offers of my competitors were only focused on the program and not on the daily business. I told him that this was an important distinguishing feature and asked him if we were going into business. We were. If the customer expresses himself negatively about the competition or his positive opinion about your offers, then consider this statement as a shot at the empty goal. Bought.

10.1.2 Body Language and Nonverbal Buying Signals Even when we don’t talk, our body communicates. Whether we like it or not. From facial expressions, body language and body movements, we learn valuable insights about how people really feel. If we deal with

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body language, observe other people and try to analyze their body language, we also learn to understand our own body language. Nonverbal buying signals are unconscious changes in gestures, facial expressions and body language that the customer usually does not notice himself. If you observe the customer carefully, you can decipher a variety of signals and interpret them as confirmation of the purchase. But beware: Not every gesture or posture means something. Sometimes we just have become accustomed to them over time and they could be misinterpreted out of context. However, it is their sudden changes that you have to pay attention to. • The customer expresses (frequently) his agreement with nodding and maintains eye contact with the salesperson. • These signals show you that the customer is actively listening to you with the highest attention. • If the customer’s eyes enlarge during the appointment, this underlines his interest in your offer. • The customer reads the offer in a concentrated manner, after the offer was presented. • Even reading the offer shows interest in principle. Stay still and give him the opportunity to concentrate. Even if the silence lasts longer, believe me, further arguments can destroy the positive tension and perhaps even lead the customer to cancel if the argument is irrelevant to him and he believes that he has to pay for it. • The customer is open and facing the salesperson. The buying signal is further reinforced if he leans forward in the conversation. If the customer leans forward, he signals interest and attention. But here, too, caution is also advised, because if the customer leans very far forward, you can also interpret this signal as superiority. If the customer leans far forward during the price negotiation, this body posture may also mean the beginning of saber rattling. • Let’s stay with the price negotiation. This really tenses up the body. If the negotiation is positive, the customer’s body relaxes noticeably, which you can interpret with an agreement to the conditions.

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• Another buying signal is to be interpreted in the rubbing of the hands, because the customer is satisfied with the current situation and the offer. It is difficult to see the feet. In his book “What every BODY is saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People” the author Joe Navarro (Navarro, 2008) reports on the probably most betraying body part of the human being: the feet. Unfortunately, often difficult to see when sitting, they seem to be the second soul of the human being. Joe Navarro trained customs officers at airports and made them aware of the foot position of passengers who were likely to smuggle forbidden objects into the country: While the upper body of the passengers was facing the customs officers, the toes pointed in a completely different direction. Namely towards the exit. The feet revealed that the passenger wanted to go to the exit as quickly as possible. If the customer’s toes are facing you, he is interested in your offer and feels relaxed. If they show to the door, he wants to flee from you.

A buying signal doesn’t come alone. They come in groups, so we often have to deal with a combination of signals. So a smile can go along with a nod and with questions about the “afterwards”. So if you recognize a buying signal, pay attention to other signals that you will recognize very quickly. The most important thing now is: no more arguments, no more enumeration of customer benefits. The customer has given you a great opportunity to take a shortcut. Use it.

10.1.3 The Buying Readiness Question I have never experienced in my sales activities that a customer reacted negatively to my asking for the order. Not even if he then said no. Every customer expects this question, and as a customer I would personally be disappointed if I were not asked the question of the order. If you perceive buying signals from the customer, check with a question whether it is actually a real buying signal:

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Salesperson: “I notice that this point is particularly important to you? Did we hit the nail on the head with this offer?” Salesperson: “We thought a lot about this element. Does it meet your expectation?” If the customer agrees, then take the shortcut to placing the order and initiate the sales close with the following exemplary questions. Salesperson: “Are we partners?” Salesperson: “What do you say, are we in business?” If the customer asks questions that deal with processes after the contract has been signed, then use the following next-step method for the purchase test.

10.2 Closing the Sale with the Next-Step Method This closing technique follows the philosophy that we start with closing the deal and don’t even ask for agreement. Follow the four-step guide of the “Next-Step Method” and you will see that the customer does not feel overwhelmed. Let’s start with the first three steps: 1. The customer asks a question about a process after the sales closure. 2. You answer the question and highlight the importance of the process in question. 3. You ask which of the mentioned dates is suitable for the customer. Example 1 1. Customer: “Tell me, will you also create the spot/ad?” 2. Salesperson: “Yes, Mrs. Schulze, the advertising material is the most important success element in this case and of course we support you in creating an effective advertising message. For this we have the follow-up conversation to develop a flawless core message together with you.” 3. Salesperson: “What do you think? Is a follow-up meeting next week more likely on Tuesday or on Thursday with you? Both days are fine with me at 3 p.m..”

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If the customer now gives you an appointment, you have already sold. And now comes the fourth stage: You ring in the contract finalization (4). 4. Salesperson: “Great, Mrs. Schulze. Let’s quickly get the necessary paperwork out of the way and then talk about the ad/spot design next Tuesday at 3 p.m. I already have some ideas about how we can put you in the right light in our medium.” Example 2 1. Customer: “Is it possible that we can take a break during the campaign and use the uncharged spots/ads as a booster for our Christmas action?” 2. Salesperson: “Flexibility is an important issue for you. That is definitely possible with this communication solution. So these are the next steps: We agree on a further meeting next week, in which we discuss your advertising plan in detail. That will also guarantee a high level of attention for your Christmas actions.” 3. Salesperson: “Are you available on Tuesday or Thursday in order to discuss the next steps? 3 p.m. on both days would be fine with me.” If the customer now gives you an appointment, you have also sold in this case. And now you concentrate on the contract finalization (4). 4. Salesperson: “Great, Mrs. Schulze. Let’s quickly get the necessary paperwork out of the way and then talk about the ad/spot design next Tuesday at 3 p.m. I already have some ideas about how we can put you in the right light in our medium.” Then you hand over the order confirmation for the signature with a smile. Example 3 1. Customer: “Can we exchange the motives during the campaign?” 2. Seller: “Flexibility is an important issue for you. That is definitely possible with this communication solution.” So these are the next steps: We

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agree on a further meeting next week, in which we discuss your advertising plan in detail and possible subject changes.” 3. Seller: “Are you available on Tuesday or on Thursday to then discuss the next steps? 3 p.m. on both days would be fine with me.” You already know step 4. 4. Salesperson: “Great, Mrs. Schulze. Let’s quickly get the necessary paperwork out of the way and then talk about the ad / spot design next Tuesday at 3 p.m. I already have some ideas how we can stage your advertising message in our medium.”

10.3 Closing the Sale with the AREA Method The AREA method is an old closing technique that I have known for over 20 years and have been refining over the past few years. Originally, I came into contact with this closing method during a new customer acquisition program of a New Zealand company. They called it “Announcement—Reference—Recommendation—Action”. I use it to this day in numerous closing conversations because of its incorruptible logic. Four letters—four logically consecutive steps to the final ignition. • • • •

Announcement Reference Recommendation Action

The magic of the methodology lies in the stringency of the argumentation chain that leads the customer to the decision step by step. The Announcement The announcement combines the positioning of the salesperson as a specialist with a clear opinion on the current offer. We are the experts

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when dealing with communication matters. In other words, we are the doctor who, after the examination, makes the diagnosis and issues a prescription. Salesperson: “Mrs. Schulze, in my opinion this communication solution fits perfectly.”  Or: “Mrs. Schulze, this offer fits like a glove to achieve your communication goals.“  Or: “Mrs. Schulze, I am convinced that this offer is exactly what you need.” The Reference Of course, our statement in the first step requires an explanation of why the offer is perfectly tailored to the customer. Who does the customer believe most? Himself. That is why we base the statement on core information that the customer provided to us during the needs assessment. So we take the customer as a reference, which conveys the strongest credibility to me personally, because the customer certainly does not doubt his own words. Salesperson: “In our phone call you explained to me that you need to increase your awareness and rightly need new customers to stabilize your sales.” Or: “When we talked about your goals, you emphasized the new customer business, which you can increase through sustainable awareness.” The Recommendation At this point I refer to the FAB method, that justifies the benefits with the characteristics of the offer. In your recommendation, you must establish a direct link between your offer and the customer’s core goal.

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1. The characteristics: Salesperson: “Mrs. Schulze, with this communication solution you have a total of 90 radio spots/20 ads (feature) within a period of two months (feature).”  We repeat the radio spots daily three times (feature) and broadcast them at different times (feature)/the ads are in the format of a quarter page (feature) and are placed in the regional part of the newspaper (feature).” 2. The advantages: The naming of the advantages is exclusively focused on the customer’s goals at this point. Seller: “By repeating your core message at different times of the day (feature), you not only reach the maximum number of listeners (advantage), because not everyone listens to the radio at the same time (feature) and part of your target group even has multiple contacts with your message on the same day (feature). Your offer will be remembered much faster (advantage).”  “By constantly repeating your ad in the regional section of our newspaper (features), your awareness will increase significantly faster (advantage). The placement of the ads in the regional section is particularly advantageous for you because these pages are considered by most readers to be the most important part of the newspaper—information from the region.” 3. The benefit: Think exclusively with the customer’s brain when arguing with benefits. Always give reasons on how the customer can profit with the communication solution and achieve his goals/relieve his pain. Seller:  “Mrs. Schulze, if your target customers therefore need your service / your product, then they will most likely remember YOUR company

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due to the constant repetition of the advertising and buy from you (benefit: more sales, higher visitor frequency, new customers).”  “Or: Mrs. Schulze, your advertising will not only remind your regular customers of your offer. You will attract many new customers to your store / premises who you didn’t know before. So higher sales through high awareness.” The Action If you have positioned yourself as a doctor or master of your trade, then stay true to this role. Show confidence and assume that you have the customer’s signature on the contract. As described in the “Next-Step Technique” above, you steer the final sales conversation towards processes that are AFTER the contract has been signed. You know the possible consequences of a closed question. If you ask the closed question “What do you say, shall we do it this way?”, then a “no” from the customer is still not ruled out, which you will have to question again in the course of the conversation. Just say: “So let’s talk about the next steps.” You are thus already steering the customer’s thoughts behind the finish line and giving him a positive preview of the next meeting. Sales person:  “Mrs. Schulze, let me explain the next steps briefly. We agree on an appointment next week to discuss the creative part of the spot and fix the start of the advertising campaign. This will be an exciting and important appointment, where we will define the core message of your communication strategy. After all, we want to interest your target group with clear statements for your offer and turn them into customers.” The very next thing to do: Ask the master question. Namely the question about the appointment: “Does Thursday afternoon suit you for a meeting or rather next Tuesday from 3 pm?” If the customer confirms an appointment, then he also confirms the deal and you get the signature with the following addition:

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Seller:  “Then I suggest that we get the paperwork out of the way and meet next week to discuss a clear core message for your advertising campaign.”

10.4 The Technique of Irrelevance Another highly effective method for closing the deal successfully is using the technique of irrelevance. Things that are not in the direct focus can suddenly become the true reason for closing the sale. Use the AREA method as described above and ask proactively for the “after”. You lead the customer into the future, in which your cooperation is already a done deal and conclude the order with an apparently unimportant question. Here are three examples: 1. Example Salesperson: “Mrs. Schulze, short question: Who is my contact person at your company for implementing the advertising campaign?” Customer: “I am.” Salesperson: “Then we should meet next week to formulate your goal of increased visibility into a crisp and successful advertising message. What do you think of Wednesday at 3:00 pm, or does Friday at 11:00 am work better for you?” Customer: “Friday at 11:00 am works very well for me.” Salesperson: “Then we’ll finish off the paperwork now and meet next Friday and find a really good key message for your advertising so that you can really achieve your goal of increased visibility.”

2. Example Salesperson: “Mrs. Schulze, short question: Is your business address also your billing address?” Customer: “The address is the same.”

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Salesperson: “Let’s finish off the paperwork and meet next week to discuss your goal of raising awareness into a crisp and successful advertising message. How about Wednesday at 3 pm, or does Friday at 11 am suit you better?”

3. Example Salesperson: “Mrs. Schulze, short question: When should the campaign start at the latest with us?” Customer: “At the end of next month.” Seller: “Then we finish off the paperwork and meet next week to discuss your goal of raising awareness into a crisp and successful advertising message. How about Wednesday at 3 pm, or does Friday at 11 am suit you better?”

References GfK-Verein Trust Professions 2018 – eine Studie des Gfk-Vereins, März 2018. https://www.nim.org/sites/default/files/medien/135/dokumente/2018h_-_ trust_in_professions_-_deutsch.pdf. Navarro, J. (2008). What every body is saying (S. 77–78). Harper Collins Publishers Inc. ISBN 978-0-06-164486-3.

11 The Service Stage for Successful Implementation of objectives

Abstract  “You have reached your destination.” Not quite. Because after the sales process you still have to cover the most important leg of the journey. The whole journey should meet or exceed customer expectations. And the whole journey also includes reaching the destination in the form of a functioning communication solution. Unless already discussed with the customer, you must agree on the period of the campaign and the communication idea for the creation of advertising materials with the customer. This chapter deals with important aspects of different advertising materials to achieve a successful advertising campaign. An outstanding support for successful communication is the USP of a company. This feature is of high purchase relevance for their customers and must be given a fixed place as a statement in the campaign. Do you know these customer statements? • “I advertised on the radio and the radio doesn’t work.” • “I had no response in the store with the previous ads. Newspaper advertising doesn’t work for our offers.” © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. McKenna, The Sales Sat Nav for Media Consultants, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-40734-6_11

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• “The clicks don’t lead to the desired conversion. That just costs money.” Media consultants must not think of your ad space as the product to be sold. Our offer is not a space or time that we sell to the customer. Rather, our offer is the problem solver or the goal achiever. It is the benefit bringer for the customer. The ad space is merely the platform on which the solution to the end consumer is transported. We have achieved our goal, the closing of the sale, with our sales sat nav. Now it is time to also achieve the goal of our customer. Our efforts must continue after the order has been placed, so that we as an advertising medium do not hear the negative statements from the customer mentioned above. Because one thing is clear: Every advertising medium contributes to the achievement of the customer’s goal.

11.1 Managing Too High Customer Expectations My sales expertise is mainly for small and medium-sized companies. Many decision-makers in this company category do not know how to create effective advertising. Why should they? They are often specialists in the core business, buyers, sellers, personnel managers, accountants in one person. With these multiple jobs, you simply don’t have the time to establish yourself as an advertising professional. Customers need to be introduced to the way communication functions effectively and understand that an advertisement in the newspaper or ten radio spots will not lead to campaign success.

11.2 Core Tasks of Advertising Consumers are bombarded with thousands of messages every day. Especially with advertising messages for offers that they don’t need right now. Regional companies usually pursue the following advertising objectives.

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Increasing Awareness If the consumer regularly sees or hears the advertising for an offer, then the memory will of course increase. If he needs such a product he will much more likely remember the provider who advertised continuously. For this reason, I distinguish between the today’s and tomorrow’s customer. The today’s customer currently needs the advertised offer, notices the advertising and decides to buy the advertised product. However, this customer market only makes up the far smaller part of the target market. The “tomorrow’s customer” does not currently need the advertised offer. However, it is one of the core tasks of advertising that this tomorrow’s customer is repeatedly brought into contact with the advertising message. Because at the time of the specific purchase desire, he should remember exactly this supplier who regularly advertised for this offer. This tomorrow’s customer market is far larger than the today’s customer market and must continuously be reminded of the offer. In this way, awareness increases and the advertising customer will more easily achieve the advertising objectives. Increasing Need The advertised offers should increase the interest of the target customer and the desire to buy. The large number of comparable and exchangeable offers makes it necessary that they are equipped with a “scent mark” that gives them a purchase-relevant unique selling proposition. This unique selling proposition must be a “red thread” and therefore permanent part of the advertising appearance, because it distinguishes the offer from the competitors offers. In this way, the advantages of the offer are highlighted that the buyer will enjoy when purchasing the product. Image Building The communication measures pursue the goal of putting the advertised company or the offers in a positive light. The positive impression through the image advertising for a company should be transferred to

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all of its products or services and, under certain circumstances, also position the company as an attractive employer. Triggering Impulse or Action The action application pursues the goal of informing the buyers when they should buy the product or service. It can be seasonal highlights, such as a clearance sale, often the product launch or an extension of the product is in focus. Advertising is one of the most widely used measures to promote sales.

11.3 The Design of Advertising Media—High Noon for Successful Advertising Impact The success of a communication solution is an important measure for advertising customer loyalty and thus the further development of its advertising activities with the media company. Therefore, the following question must be at the center of the conversations after the order is placed: How can the sold space or advertising time best achieve the customer’s goal? And here you have to take the customer by the hand and support him in the optimal design. While some media companies evaluate the achieved sales as the actual company success, the focus must be primarily on the successful problem solving through the design of advertising media with a view to customer retention. In other words, the advertisement must work for the advertising customer. Therefore, it must address the buyer, stay in the head, arouse curiosity and stimulate the desire to buy. For every advertising medium, there are different factors in the design of advertising materials that boost the attention and curiosity of the viewer / reader / listener. These success factors must be communicated to your advertising customers so that you are not confronted with the following customer statement:

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Customer:  “Yes, I still want to insert this additional action with this special price in the ad. And the opening times have also changed—we also have to insert that into the ad.” Now the second part of your sales work begins. You first have to make it clear to many companies which factors have to be considered for a successful design of advertising media. If you have sold an advertising solution, then you have sold a SOLUTION and not just space or pure seconds. The more different advertising messages you allow in one ad, the more the actual core message is diluted and make your solution crumble to bits. Often, the ads resemble the customer’s line of thinking: “Well, if I’ve already bought 200 mm, then I can communicate 200 pieces of information because each millimeter costs me money.” From the customer’s perspective, this calculation is of course understandable. For a functioning communication solution, however, it is pure poison. For the creation of an effective advertising campaign, a beautiful sentence attributed to the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal (Pascal, 1656) fits perfectly: “I wrote this long letter only because I did not have time to shorten it.”

In other words: Get to the point! Condense your statement into a meaningful essence with a minimum of words and only one crystal-clear meaning, so that the core message comes across like a shining hero. Otherwise, the advertisement will be overloaded with countless pieces of information and the core message will stand next to the other unimportant statements without any outstanding significance. The Israeli actress and chanson singer Daliah Lavi also brought the art of advertising creativity to the point with her song “Meine Art Liebe zu zeigen” (my way of showing love), which was released in 1972. The first two sentences of the song are still the holy grail of many top creatives 50 years later:

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“Meine Art Liebe zu zeigen ist ganz einfach zu schweigen” (My way of showing love is simply to remain silent) “Worte zerstören, wo sie nicht hingehören.” (Words destroy where they don’t belong).

If an advertising campaign does not achieve the desired effect, the advertising medium is often called into question, even if only the wrong ad creation is to blame. Many media companies cooperate with advertising agencies and ad designers who creatively realize the advertising media for the clients on the basis of the need analysis and the core message determined. Of course, it is not part of the media consultant’s job description to pull award-winning and highly creative advertising materials out of the hat. The customer must be informed about the success factors for the successful implementation of the advertising materials. In any case, during the discussion of the advertising material design, the salesperson must always discuss the customer’s core goal and the ONE desired core message for the communication. This core message must be understood in all advertising forms like a red thread as THE STAR of the message and must not be lost in further—subordinate— statements. If I throw you five tennis balls at the same time, you probably won’t catch any of them. If I throw you one, you’ll catch it with your left hand even if you’re right-handed. I do not claim completeness regarding the following design elements for the respective media genres. They explain the functions for me that are important for the individual media, which have a major impact on the creative work when creating effective advertising. Radio If you want to advertise outstanding on the radio, you have to do one thing above all: stand out of the commercial block. In a commercial block, 10 radio spots sometimes compete for the favor of the listener. Of course, the question arises immediately how one can set a brand in a classic advertising block? It is certainly not the loudest spot. Nor is it the one with the most product information or with the biggest discount.

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Basic rules for effective radio spots: 1. Radio exclusively works with acoustics and is the only medium that uses sound to stimulate the imagination of the listener and create individual images in the listener’s mind. Imagine a mountain with a snow-covered peak with a waterfall fed by melting snow. Every listener imagines a different image. Namely the image that he likes. No image is like the other. When we see an ad, we are “supplied” with the finished image. Even if we do not feel addressed by it, for example because we prefer blonde hair instead of the brown hair pictured. 2. However, pure acoustics also have their limits. Due to the lack of visuality of the logo, the brand name is mentioned more often in order to increase brand awareness. In addition to the pure mentioning of the brand, the slogan and the sound logo also support the increase in brand awareness through their use in the “Off”. 3. Good radio spots do not list product information, but tell a short story. Of course, the story must establish a direct connection to the advertised brand at the end of the spot. Effective spots live from storytelling, with a surprising end to the story. If you already suspect the solution to the story at the beginning of the spot, there is a danger that the listener will drift off mentally and will no longer listen consciously. 4. Humor increases brand sympathy. If the spot has a good punchline, this also guarantees high attention from listeners. Humor opens the mind and thus the advertising message of the spot is received more intensively and positively. However, the prerequisite for increasing brand awareness is the immediate connection of the humor to the brand. Many listeners remember the funny spot, but cannot associate it to the advertised brand because the joke does not relate to the brand. 5. Dialects increase sympathy and attention. Especially with the dialect of their own region, radio spots score with positive ratings. Admittedly, there are regional dialects that are not suitable for a national broadcast of a radio spot because only a few people

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understand them. Since most radio stations broadcast their programs regionally, this restriction can be neglected for the advertising of regional companies. The radio spot appears more authentic to the target group when spoken in the language of the target group. 6. Contradictions create high attention and make listeners follow the spot even more attentively. If at the beginning of the spot the interview with Prince Andrew is announced and the voice of Forrest Gump is heard, the listener perceives a contradiction that must be resolved. Therefore, radio spots with contradictions are followed with above-average attention. 7. Film stars as cost-effective voice-overs: Synchronous speakers of Hollywood stars only cost a fraction of the real stars in ads and TV spots. However, the well-known synchronous voices transport the image of the film star into the inner eye of the listener and thus increase the attention of the commercial enormously. Newspaper 1. Contrary to the belief of many advertisers, white space is a highly attention-grabbing design element in an ad. As the name suggests, white space is an empty white area in the ad. According to the motto “A beautiful face needs space!”, the core message of the advertising must be given the necessary space to develop. If the ad is overloaded with content, they are simply scanned by the eye. Therefore, the white space offers the eye a resting place to linger and gives the core message—be it the image, the headline, the text or the logo—a much stronger statement by its delimitation from the other elements. 2. Keep it short: When looking at an ad, the reader should answer the following three questions in a matter of seconds: a . What’s it all about? (The ad must be immediately understandable.) b. What’s in it for me? (The benefit to the consumer must be apparent) c. What am I supposed to do? (The call to action must motivate the consumer to interact with the company. Popular calls to action are: Call us! Make an appointment! Visit our website!)

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Additional information, such as opening times and telephone number, divert from the core message and dilute it. This information should only be listed on the customer website. 3. Limit yourself to five elements in your advert a. Short headline b. An image that connects with the core message c. A short text with the core message d. The company logo e. The call to action 4. The image is processed first. According to the well-known German communication expert Michael Geffken, the image (visual) is usually the first thing the reader notices. Then comes the headline, followed by the body text. Advertisements are not read like a normal text. For this reason, it makes sense to arrange the advertisement design in accordance with the order of reception from top to bottom. – Top—Image (Visual) – Underneath—Headline (Headline) – Underneath—Body text (Copy) (Geffken & Kalka, 2001) 5. The visual must have a direct reference to the advertised product, or its reference must be resolved by the headline. A great example of this is the advertisement from FCL Laboratories in which a zebra chases a lioness. Enervit, vitamins as a dietary supplement for animals, is advertised (Pricken, 2007). 6. As “verbal” follows “visual” the second most important element is the headline. Its task is to support the visual in its expressiveness. If you set a headline under the visual, it will attract considerably more attention (see also point 4). 7. Continuous texts are rarely read. Of course, in case of products that require further information the continuous texts can be longer. However, the saying of Blaise Pascal also applies here: Sorry for the long letter, but I didn’t have time to shorten it without losing

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important information. Especially with small ads, the brevity of the text is of decisive importance in which you only communicate one core message. 8. Distractors are integrated into the ad to indicate events, deadlines or to call for action. As the name suggests: Distractors disturb. Namely, the overall harmony of the appearance of the ad. That’s why they also find their attention with readers. Especially for regional companies with the goal of winning new customers or increasing sales, the distractors with call-to-action are an important design element: “Make an appointment”, “Only for a short time”, “Visit us”, … Posters, Advertising pillars and Citylights 1. The average contact chance with posters is only a few seconds. The perfect duration of the contact chance should be between 5 and 9 s. However, in reality it is often shorter. No wonder then that the core message must be short and to the point. The VISATT analysis (VIsual ATTention) analyzes design features of more efficient poster motifs and develops design guidelines based on their analysis to measure attention. The VISATT analysis can be found on the Internet at https://docplayer.org/10843431-Merkmale-effizienterplakat­motive-erkenntnisse-aus-der-visatt-analyse.html 2. The amount of text should be a maximum of seven words to optimally convey the core message and to be understood even with short contact. Another decisive factor for the advertising effect is, for the same reason, the font size, which should be at least 5% of the poster height. 3. Because of the short perception of posters, the size of the product should not be stingy. At least 15–20% of the poster surface must be dedicated to the “hero”. There are poster motifs that use 100% of the surface for product representation. 4. The use of strong contrasts is an absolute must in poster design. On the one hand, they increase readability, highlight elements such as product, text and logo, and attract the attention of the viewer. Strong contrasts also support attention in “gray” weather. It is recommended to create the contrast with only a few colors to optimally navigate the viewer’s gaze.

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5. To further increase attention, the product image is to be positioned near the center of the image. Online Advertising Being “found” is the core goal of online advertising. Online advertising is characterized above all by its precise measurability of advertising measures. Its targeted orientation leads to the target group-specific delivery of the advertising materials with very little wastage. Various advertising forms are available for online advertising, which are used depending on the advertising goal: • Display advertising: This category refers to the classic banner advertising, which is displayed in different sizes, for example as a skyscraper or wallpaper, on third-party websites and linked to the page of the advertiser. Banner advertising can be presented as text, image or animation. • Search engine marketing: Paid ads from companies are displayed when searching online, whose specified keywords match the search term. For example, if someone searches the Internet for sheet music, they will not automatically receive advertising for Danish holiday homes. Search engine marketing achieves outstanding results in its performance due to its high target group accuracy. Since costs are only incurred when clicking on the text ad and the maximum budget can be defined, advertisers have optimal cost control. The success of using search engine marketing depends on the identification of the thematically relevant keywords. The demand for suitable keywords determines the CPC, the cost-per-click. An excellent tool for keyword search is the keyword planner from Google Ads. This provides users with an overview of the number of requests per month and shows the possible cost per click. The design principles of banner advertising are similar to those of poster advertising. Users read online differently than offline. They scan the page for desired information and do not pay attention to banner advertising. So the banner has to be attention-grabbing and, depending on the banner

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size, transport its message with just a few words in large print. Strong contrasts increase the visibility of the design elements logo, text and image and thus increase the attention of the banner. It is important that the banner is linked to the page that provides further information about the offer. If the user is taken to the advertiser’s home page and there is no relevant information about the advertising message, there is a risk that the user will click away immediately. The recognition of the optical and content elements of the banner advertising must be given on the landing page. If these differ from each other, it can confuse the visitor. He must immediately have the feeling of having landed on the right page. Video trumps image trumps text: Animated, dynamic banners increase attention and allow advertisers to convey more information than static banners. If individual images, frames, change in the animation, the eye must be given enough time to take in the information. Therefore, the frames must not change too quickly. The animation time is often no more than 30 s and ends with the last frame. The key message of the advertisement must be repeated. Banners are used both as a tool for raising awareness, for image building and for announcing a current offer. Since they usually contain a call to action for users, the main goal of banner advertising is to interact with the company’s target group. TV Advertising While radio advertising is comparable to telesales, TV advertising is for face-to-face sales. By combining moving images, sound and text, it addresses several senses and thus conveys the message in an emotional way. There are certain technical challenges with TV spots, so it is recommended to create them through a professional production company. Less is more, because every second counts. A TV spot has an average length of 25–30 s. Therefore, the reduction to essentials and the focus on one advertising message are the top priority. The ONE core message must not be diluted by further, subordinate and distracting messages. Shorter spots with 15–20 s emphasize the need to focus on the core

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message in advertising. All additional information should be read on the homepage. The choice of words should reflect the language of the target group so that they feel directly addressed. When using testimonials, it is important to make sure that the target group identifies with the testimonial— and thus scores with its credibility. Brands become tangible through the demonstration of their use. Especially with products that require explanation, examples of how and when they are best used are very easy to implement. As with the radio spot, storytelling is also the best way to transport the brand message on TV. Stories that move us evoke emotions and penetrate deeper into our memory. Let’s say we want to advertise a mountain bike. It has 27 gears, double suspension, disc brakes and weighs 13.9 kg. The target group are young adults with a love for outdoor activities. The TV spot tells the following story: A young man with a backpack jumps on his mountain bike and rides through the forest in the rain. In his backpack is a bunch of flowers. Everything is full of mud and the mountain biker is visibly happy that he is also slowly getting covered in mud. He rides into a street, stops at a house and rings the bell. The door is opened by a young woman. The man takes the flowers from behind his back, which are soaked in mud. Both laugh and embrace each other. In the end, the text “Adventure ahead. Offroad XYZ. Now on sale.” This little story can be told easily in 20 s and conveys pure emotions.

11.4 The USP As a New Customer Magnet The USP (Unique Selling Point) is defined as the unique selling point of a company that customers consider to be a relevant factor in buying a product or service. This feature distinguishes the company from other companies in the industry because it is only available from this one provider. This is also the reason for customer loyalty. The USP gives customers a reason why they should buy from this company and not switch to the competition. It is about answering the question of what

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benefit the customer has when buying products or services from this company. The USP must be part of every communication measure. Therefore, you should find out during your customer conversation what USP your brand or your company has in order to integrate it into the advertising medium. As part of my new customer acquisition programs for media companies, the question of the USP is the main issue to give brands a “reason why” (they should be bought). In the course of analyzing thousands of customer contacts, I was able to assign the mentioned USPs to different categories that describe the respective need of the buyer: • Variety of offers: – The beverage shop with the largest selection of craft beer. – The shoe store with the largest selection of large sizes • Convenience: Baby subscription service—monthly baby clothing is delivered to the house • Individuality: tailor-made shoes, tailor-made suits, tailor-made bicycles • Surprise: restaurant without menu with the only choice between meat, fish, vegetarian • Punctuality guarantee: The delivery service with a maximum waiting time of 30 minutes. Otherwise, the pizza is 30% cheaper with the next order. • Speed: – Bathroom installation in just one day – Language school—reaching the next language level in just two weeks. • • • • •

Availability: Craftsman guarantees call-back in one hour. Consistency: The hotel guest always gets the same room. Tradition: Restaurant with menu from grandma’s time. Service: Fashion shop offers waiting partners coffee and newspaper. Time-saving: maximum one days waiting time for suit cleaning at the laundry. • Security: Service guarantee for washing machines. If it breaks within two years, a service visit is guaranteed within three days.

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The price itself is a distinctive feature, but it is no USP. The reason is that USPs can not be copied immediately. A price, however, can theoretically be adjusted in no time. Many companies answer the question about their USP with “good service”. This statement needs to be narrowed down, because service has many facets and can be divided into certain categories: 1. product-related service with the service elements of assembly, repair, provision of instructions for use, sale of accessories and spare parts, … 2. customer-related service e.g. with the service elements free fruit and water, parking spaces, seating areas, playground, … 3. payment-related service e.g. with the service elements installment payment, payment on invoice, payment with customer card, … 4. transport-related service with the service elements delivery, assembly, transport insurance, … 5. information-related service with the service elements customer advice, homepage/landing page, catalogue, … Just these 18 service elements in the mentioned categories illustrate the need of concretizing the USP “good service”. It is very easy to recognize a USP when you experience it directly when buying or using it. Especially an outstanding service can turn the often voluntary and free service into a magical moment and customer-relevant distinguishing feature in comparison to the competition: Overview After a hike on the North Sea coast on a bitterly cold winter day, my hiking buddy Marco and I were looking for a café to warm up with a cup of tea. Mama’s Allee Café in Burhave was still open and we asked if they accepted card payments because we were short of cash. The answer was no, but we could also pay by invoice, which would be sent to us by e-mail. I was flabbergasted. I had never experienced such a payment method in any café. Since I had started writing this book a few weeks earlier and had planned a chapter on USPs for developing a meaningful advertising message, I was on fire and bombarded the owner with some questions.

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When paying by card, transaction and other variable and fixed costs are incurred, which the owner wanted to avoid. Since many day guests in the holiday resort rely on card payment and do not carry cash with them, the café decided on a new till system, which offered payment by invoice as an alternative to cash payment. Now most till systems provide for this payment method, but it is used by few restaurateurs, as they want to avoid the additional effort in accounting. However, payment by invoice often leads to the guests consuming more and thus the turnover can be increased. The advantages of this buy-now-pay-later approach for the café: • high customer satisfaction through an alternative payment method • extraordinary customer experience through an unusual payment process in the catering industry • acquisition of new customers • higher per capita turnover • a customer-relevant USP

If a company has developed a USP for itself, it must be included in all communication channels with which its target group comes into contact. Be it on the website, in the e-mail signature, in the letterhead, at the point of sale and of course in the advertising campaign.

11.5 Asking the Customer for Service—Recommendation Marketing Please imagine the following two fictional stories in which you were a participant, and answer the following question after reading these stories. 1. A few days ago, you were at a restaurant with friends. The food was served less than 15 minutes after ordering and it tasted as good as it did on any of your previous visits to the restaurant. The waitress was, as always, very friendly and accommodating, and she regularly came close to your table to give you the opportunity to order more food. Since you had been a guest at the restaurant several times before, they served you a shot on the house at the end. Satisfied with the meeting with friends and the restaurant choice, you went home.

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2. Almost two weeks ago, you went to a restaurant by a forest pond with your family. The menu featured, according to the season, deer and wild boar. While your family chose the veal medallions, you were set on wild game and ordered venison with red cabbage, dumplings, and red wine sauce. As expected, the preparation took 25 minutes. The wait was worth it and the whole family enjoyed their meal. After you paid the bill, the waitress gave you two paper rolls tied with a ribbon and asked you to open them. We unrolled the paper, amazed, and were not little surprised when we held the “secret recipes” of our dishes in our hands. My question to you: Which story would you spontaneously and without being asked tell your friends and acquaintances? It is obvious that we talk about things and events that surprise us. This is also the case in B-to-B business. If the customer receives the service that he also expects, then he is satisfied, but he will not talk to decision-makers of other companies about his satisfaction. Especially in industries with comparable and interchangeable offers, the search for a brand that delights is essential in order to convey to the customer your unique selling proposition. Companies must ensure that they go the extra mile for their customers and inspire them with exceptional service. While ten years ago one spoke of customer loyalty measures, today companies have to take measures to thrill their customers. What an advertising customer only receives from you and from no other advertising medium, that is you as a direct contact person. In this book I have spoken in detail about the need to build trust. The customer must think: I believe in your communication solution, because I believe you. Referral marketing is one of the most effective and cost-effective measures for winning new customers, because customers exchange positive experiences with other people. Why is Referral Marketing so Effective? The reason lies in the high credibility of this positive exchange. The report of an effected person exceeds by far the credibility of

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self-promotion. After all, the person has used the product or service himself. In addition, the transfer of positive experiences strengthens the emotional image of the company. As already described, the prerequisite for telling others lies in the customer’s enthusiasm. Check your personal customer base which decision-makers you have really enthused with your services and the resulting advertising effect. And ask them for recommendations. My personal experience in sales has shown me that very few enthusiastic decision-makers come up with the idea of talking to other companies about their successes without my request for recommendations. My request for recommendations proves to be successful if the customer receives a quid pro quo in return. In the wake of many companies’ compliance guidelines, it is not about a personal gift, but rather about additional services for follow-up orders or a discount for the next order, should the recommendation lead to an order. Do You Know the Law of Reciprocity? It is the law of compensation. In other words, it is about “tit for tat” in a positive sense. In his book “The Psychology of Persuasion”, American author and psychologist Robert B. Cialdini describes the six principles of persuasion. One of these principles is reciprocity (Cialdini, 2009). People want to reciprocate when they have received something good from others. Humans need harmony to feel comfortable. If you do something good for a person, for example give them a present or some important information, then the harmony of the recipient is disturbed. Just compare harmony with an old chemist’s scale. You know these two balance bowls with the powder in one bowl and the small weights in the other to bring them into balance. You can imagine the balance the same way when you give someone a present: The bowl with the present is tilted heavily downwards and in the other bowl there is nothing. So there is a discrepancy, a disharmony. Now the person who has received the present feels an inner obligation, would like to equalize this balance and might invite you for a beer in the local pub. The result: The balance pans are in balance with each other again.

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However, the desire to reciprocate decreases over time. So if you have enthused the customer with your communication solution, you should ask for recommendations very soon. Ok, at the moment service (advertising solution) and compensation (payment) are in a balanced relationship, you might think. If you have run this extra mile for the customer in terms of advice and service, he will consider this as added value. So the balance is a bit left-heavy. This added value is also enriched with the joy of success. Is there a better time to restore the balance of his inner harmony? Hardly. So take a look at your customer base and think about which customer is sympathetic to you. Those are the customers to ask for a recommendation. If the customer cannot or does not want to name any companies, do not drill any further, as he may feel under pressure. Use the following exemplary guideline: 1. Ask for a Referral Seller:   ’Mrs. Schulze, I assume that you are certainly well connected with many other companies and that you exchange information with them on a regular basis. We benefit from customer recommendations just as much as you do. I would be very grateful if you could help me with that. Who comes to mind who would like to boost their new customer business/increase their visibility/needs new employees/… and to whom you could report about our communication success?” Overview You increase the legitimacy and importance of referral marketing for the customer by telling him that he also thrives on referrals. Thank the customer in advance for his help. Expressions of gratitude increase mutual appreciation and trust. Use the open question technique to ask for the recommendation. If you ask a closed question: “Do you know any other companies that …?”, then you often get a no.

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2a. Negative Customer Response Customer: “Well, I can’t think of any ad hoc. I can’t help you with that right now.” Salesperson: “I understand that you can’t give me any recommendations right now. With our referral program, we grant the referrers a 15% bonus on the number of booked ads as a thank-you for a successful referral. So if you can think of any company names, I would be very happy about that, and you can look forward to the bonus with the next campaign.”

Overview “What’s in it for me?” We constantly ask ourselves this question in all areas of life. Address your referral program, in which the referrer receives a “goody”. A bonus in kind helps the referrer with his next booking and usually don’t clash with compliance rules. In any case ask if this is legally accepted. In the case, that the customer can’t help us with referrals don’t ask the customer if he does not know any company or does not want to give a recommendation. You are putting pressure on the customer and the feeling of happiness about the successful campaign is in danger of being diminished. In any case, give the referrer feedback on your contact with the recommended company, on the appointment and on the outcome of the appointment in any case.

2b. Positive Customer Response Customer: “You should definitely contact Mr. Peters from XYZ company. He is always interested in new ideas.” Salesperson: “Thank you very much, Mrs. Schulze. That’s a great recommendation and we appreciate it.  As a thank-you to our recommenders for a successful recommendation, we grant a 15% bonus on the number of booked ads when they book their next ad. Can you please tell me how you came across company XYZ?”

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Customer: “Mr. Peters definitely doesn’t say no to new customer acquisition and knows that brand awareness is very important for that.” Salesperson: “That’s very interesting. Do you know what company XYZ is doing for new customer acquisition at the moment?” Customer: “No. You’ll have to ask him yourself.” Salesperson: “I will. How can I best reach Mr. Peters? Can you give me his contact information?” Customer: “…” Salesperson: “Mrs. Schulze, if I contact Mr. Peters, then I will greet him on your behalf.”

Overview Your response to the recommendation has an extraordinary “bang” in its effect: The customer gives you a name in self-motivation and without expectation of reciprocity. Only then do you inform him about the additional service in the event of a successful conclusion with the recommended company. Thus, the customer has reason for double joy. On the one hand, that he could help you, on the other hand, that he learns AFTER the naming of a company from your referral program and the resulting benefit for him. If you install your own referral program, you install a sliding scale of the discount in kind. Otherwise, should the referrer name three companies and the discount in mind would be 15% per referral, this would sum up to 45%. However, this “eats up” available time and space. Example of a discount scale: • Discount in time for a successful recommendation: 15% • For two successful recommendations: 25% • For three or more recommendations: 30% If a customer gives you a recommendation, he may have first important background information that he can tell you. Ask for information. The more information you receive in advance, the easier it will be for you to make an appointment with this company. Do not forget to tell Mrs. Schulze that you will greet Mr. Peters on her behalf. This greeting is part of the first conversation with Mr. Peters and serves to increase the interest and reduce the resistance of the new customer potential.

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Now you have received some recommendations that you will contact in the further course. 3a. The First Contact with the Recommended One—An Appointment is Desired Seller: “Mr. Peters, first of all, many greetings from Mrs. Schulze from the company … I am calling you today because Mrs. Schulze recommended that I contact you.  We successfully cooperate in the field of new customer acquisition and brand awareness and Mrs. Schulze told me that you are always interested in new opportunities for new customer acquisition and brand awareness. Is that the case? ” Customer: “Yes, that's right.” Seller: “Mr. Peters, in this case I suggest a joint meeting in which I can present our advertising solution to you, which we successfully implemented with Mrs. Schulze. What does your calendar look like in the next week? Is Tuesday morning at 11 o’clock or maybe Thursday at 15 o’clock okay for you? ” Customer: “For me, Thursday at 4 pm would be fine.” Seller: “Great. Our meeting will last about 45 minutes. If that’s okay with you, I’m looking forward to our meeting next Thursday at 4 pm” Customer: “Yes, 45 minutes is ok.” Salesperson: “Are there any other employees in your company who are also involved in marketing decisions and should also attend?” Customer: “No, it’s just me.”

Overview By sending Mrs. Schulze’s best regards to Mr. Peters, Mr. Peters immediately knows that you have a mutual acquaintance and you are sure of his full attention. He iscurious about what it is all about. Mrs. Schulze virtually piggybacks you through the conversation with Mr. Peters by telling him that she recommended the call to you. This recommendation automatically increases your credibility, because Mrs. Schulze is a good acquaintance after all. The thought process of Mr. Peters: If she recommends a, there must be a good reason for it.

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Ask if Mrs. Schulze is right in her assessment. The goals of acquiring new customers and raising awareness are among the most frequently mentioned goals of the regional SME’s. Thus, the probability is very high that Mr. Peters will agree with Mrs. Schulze’s assessment. When making an appointment, use the guideline from Chap. 4—Making an Appointment.

3b. The First Contact with the Recommended Person—No Appointment Desired A frequently mentioned objection when contacting recommended companies are the current advertising activities with other media. Below I will present three options for dealing with this objection. Seller: “Mr. Peters, in this case I suggest a joint meeting where I can present our advertising solution that we successfully implemented with Mrs. Schulze. What does your calendar look like in the next week? Would Tuesday morning at 11 o’clock or maybe Thursday at 15 o’clock work for you?” Customer: “Listen, Mr. Seller, we already advertise with another medium and I don’t think that an appointment with you would be currently worth it” Seller: “That’s exactly what Mrs. Schulze told me, that you might already be cooperating with other media. She said that you should definitely take a look at our communication solution so that you get new ideas for new customer business right away. I assume that you regularly survey the market for improvements to your advertising objectives. What information would I have to provide you with so that you would agree to an appointment with me?”

Or Seller: “That’s exactly what Mrs. Schulze told me, that you might already be cooperating with other media. I also assumed that. Please allow me to ask which benefits a meeting with me must have so that the appointment is a real bargain?” Customer: “Actually two things. Firstly, I would like to get to know new advertising opportunities for new customer acquisition and in addition a

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new provider would have to provide me with a better price-performance ratio.” Seller: “Then the presentation of best-case solutions and a growing new customer acquisition with the same budget is particularly important to you, did I understand you correctly?” Customer: “Yes, you can say that.” Seller: “Mr. Peters, then we should really sit down together because with our solution we meet both requirements for you. What does your calendar look like next week? …”

Or Seller: “This is exactly what Mrs. Schulze told me, that you might already be cooperating with other media. I also assumed that. Please allow me to ask a question: Are you generally open to a conversation if I can show you that and how you can achieve your advertising goals much better?” Customer: “Yes, of course. There is always room for improvement.” Seller: “Then let me ask a few questions to see if we can achieve your communication goals better and more accurately. Because otherwise a meeting is really not worth the time.”

(Attention: You are now on the third street of the needs analysis. Use the top-navi questions listed in that chapter.) Seller: “What is the most important business goal you want to reach in the next 12 months? What are you doing currently to achieve this goal? … ?” Seller: “Mr. Peters, then we should really sit down together, because with our solution we meet both requirements for you. What does your calendar look like in the next week?” After making an appointment, please follow the route in Chaps. 6 to 10 in this book.

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Conclusion After more than a year away from stage due to the pandemic, our country band played in front of a large audience again. Reason enough to set up numerous band rehearsals in advance. Each of us noticed one or more deficits that had crept in. If the key change in “Blue Ridge Mountain Girl” from F-sharp to G-sharp is only done by half the band, the melody is fortunately so grotty and wrong that you certainly don’t repeat this mistake a second time. We all struggle from time to time with a lack of routine in a certain area, be it in music, sales, cooking. And this realization strengthens our future output—if we practice and and it doesn’t work, then just keep practicing. Give all changes a chance, even if these changes are completely new to you and the “ingredients” don’t seem to match at all at first glance. Dear reader, you have followed my proposed route of the sales sat nav to the end of this book. Now please stay on these given roads and practice the techniques and guidelines presented—even if not every shot is a hit. Learning the contents of this book requires practice and routine so that they become second nature to you. Like a top footballer who regularly practices the perfect cross 100 times after training, you have to be prepared for the fact that changes in sales processes also take time to be used routinely and successfully. Through intelligent CRM systems, automatic lead generation systems and email marketing activities, more and more tasks are carried out by technology. But especially in B2B sales, the human factor is an irreplaceable core element. The customer journey cannot be replaced by the digital world alone through the multitude of touchpoints. The communication between people will remain the most important focus in business life in the future. Because the higher the investment for a solution, the more you need a stable relationship and the trust in the supplier. Especially in the person who is your contact person. See it like me: No trust without a pulse. Through the rapid digital changes in the media landscape, the job in sales of communication solutions is more exciting than ever before. Even more: Successful sales live from chances through changes. I wish you a lot of success in the media business—with great fun navigating. Yours sincerely,

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References Cialdini, R. B. (2009). Die Psychologie des Überzeugens (pp. 44–46, 6th Ed.). Huber. Geffken, M., & Kalka, J. (2001). Anzeigen perfekt gestalten (pp. 94 ff.). Moderne industrie. Pascal, B. (2014). „Provinzialbriefe über die Sittenlehre und Politik der Jesuiten unter dem Namen Louis de Montalte an einen Provinzial, und an die Ehrwürdigen Väter aus der Gesellschaft Jesu geschrieben: Zweiter Theil“, Bd. 2, Nationalbibliothek der Tschechischen Republik, S. 364, Digitalisiert am 23. September 2014 (Brief vom 4. Dezember 1656, veröffentlicht 1792 im Werk). Pricken, M. (2007). Kribbeln im Kopf (p. 62, 4th Ed.). Hermann Schmidt Mainz.

Appendix

In this appendix you will find a brief graphic summary of each of the sales processes described in this book.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. McKenna, The Sales Sat Nav for Media Consultants, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-40734-6

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Appendix 1

THE SALES PROCESSES The search for potential Ex-customers - New game - new luck? or - Rien ne vas plus? Find out and fight!

Existing customers - Upselling, cross-selling - Has the customer reduced order volumes? -> WHY? Find out!

New customers - New opening - Construction sites - Fairs - Networking - ...

Appendix     205

Appendix 2

THE SALES PROCESSES The contact

Conversation with assistance - In which matter do you want to speak to him/her? - Activate the reptile in the interlocutor! - Techniques for connecting with the

Conversation with decision maker - The decisive first 20 seconds - Activate the reptile in the interlocutor! - 3-step model for building trust - The reason for your call

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Appendix 3

THE SALES PROCESSES Needs analysis: Forget about your offer and concentrate on asking questions

What are your goals? What are your pains? What did you do in the past to...? Did you succeed? When should the target be reached?

Question the answers!

You say that ..., do you mean...? What exactly do you mean by...? If I understand you correctly, you would like to ...? Do you have any other goals?

Appendix     207

Appendix 4

THE SALES PROCESSES The appointment Don't ask, suggest! We have With our solutions we have achieved great successes with comparable companies, which I would like to show you. What does your calender look like on Tuesday at 3 p.m.?

Think about the other decision makers!

Are there any other colleagues involved in marketing decisions who should attend the meeting?

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Appendix 5

THE SALES PROCESSES The appointment a) Set the framework for the meeting! We had estimated an hour. Is that ok for you? In this hour, I'm going to ask some more questions, I'm sure you have some questions as well. At the end of the meeting, we will know where we go from there.

b) Repeat need and pain! You told me on the phone that building awareness is particularly important for you. Did I understand that correctly? In addition, you told me that the utilization ..., isn't it?

Appendix     209

Appendix 6

THE SALES PROCESSES The appointment c) Present the offer with the FAB technique!

Features -Number of ads/spots/digital publication - Special forms of advertising - Period - ...

Advantages -This leads to the maximization of the target group reach - The target group is reached more often per day - The advertising message is learned faster - ...

Benefits For you that means - new customer acquisition - better visitor occupancy - increase in sales

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Appendix 7

THE SALES PROCESSES The appointment d) Look for or provoke buy signals!

That's exactly your goal, isn't it?

What do you think of this solution?

Who is my contact person for the design of advertising material? (Question about the "After")

Appendix     211

Appendix 8

THE SALES PROCESSES The appointment e) Conclude with the next step method!

So, those are the next steps: ...

Is Tuesday afternoon suitable for a meeting?

Then let's get the paperwork done.

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Appendix 9

THE SALES PROCESSES The appointment f) Conclude with the AREA method!

Announcement: This offer is perfect for you.

Reference: You told me that you urgently need ...

Recommendation: That's why I recommend this solution ...

Action: Let's get the paperwork done and then discuss the next steps.

Appendix     213

Appendix 10

THE SALES PROCESSES The service Find the unique selling proposition (USP) of the customer!

"This feature is only available from me and provides a relevant benefit to the buyer and is therefore critical to purchase. THAT'S EXACTLY what my target audience needs to know."

Determine the core message of the advertising message!

"What ONE message does the customer want to convey? Is it also relevant to the target audience?"