By Tracey McCormack
TV ad sales veteran Tracey McCormack, the Founder and President of McCormack Media Services, specializes in training media professionals to succeed in a changing landscape. This fall, McCormack and Court Stroud, President of the Cledor Group, are co-teaching “Video Media Sales in a Cross-Platform World” at the NYU School of Professional Studies. (Registration ends October 14; details are here.) McCormack shares some insights on best practices for an ever-evolving business.
Being a video media seller in the new cross-platform world requires an evolved orientation to selling. You must create value (not sell a commodity), become your client’s brand manager and advocate, and always continue to represent your own company.
How is this achieved? Learn to think “cross-platform” and become a consultative seller! It is critical to identify what’s important to marketers and agencies and how to successfully connect the dots for your media company in order to make the sale. The conventional sales process must be reset in order to identify an advertiser’s goals and objectives and provide media and communications solutions.
The great news is that ideas and concept selling have no barriers! Just best practices with the goal of doing good work.
1. The marriage of social media and broadcast is critical to the future success of television.
Social Media can be used as a powerful and effective tool to drive broadcast ratings. There is a “loop” that exists between on and off-line marketing. Today’s sellers need to be empowered and enabled with the skills to develop new, unique, and fresh content ideas that can be distributed across these platforms.
2. Preparing your sales strategy for internal management is a key element to your success as a media seller.
Too often sellers do not take the time to prepare a well thought out strategy for their sales managers. It is equally as important to create an internal strategy as it is an external strategy.
3. Linkedin and Twitter are the modern, critical tools for media sales prospecting.
Too many sales teams are prospecting and trying to develop new business with the same techniques that were used in the 90’s! Today’s technology and social media platforms have created tremendous opportunities for sellers to prospect, warm-call, and solidify more meetings with record success.
It’s about conversation, not presentation
4. “Presentations” are dead. “Storytelling” is the modern sales form of communications.
The presentation style meeting is what has been done for many years but no longer works in the modern marketplace. The concept of Modern Storytelling is about having a conversation with your audience and putting their needs ahead of your own. It’s a technique that, when applied, creates a more engaging and successful dialogue which will yield better results.
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