I’ve been in media sales for a long time, and I’ve seen more than my fair share of media sales operations.
And over the years, I’ve come to a realisation:
One of the biggest problems with media sales, is that it’s too often focused on short-term initiatives, that there’s not a solid enough strategy that delivers positive and dependable results.
The result of this short-term effort is that the sales activity is not effective as it could and should be, because all it focuses on is getting the next sale over the line, by hook or by crook.
At Inspire Media, we help media sales teams to implement a different approach, thinking longer term and more strategically.
And it works.
Recently we’ve been working with Pirate FM, Cornwall’s premier radio station.
They’ve been going great guns since Mark Peters took over in 2014, in large part due to their adoption of digital media. But Mark and his team knew that there was still room for improvement.
Initially they wanted some sales training to help their sales team think in a more strategic way, but what we proposed was something much more in-depth than just sales training.
You see, our M³ Marketing Strategy workshops are designed to get media companies in front of advertisers and delivering value, rather than just selling.
By doing this, the media company has a platform to educate their advertisers on an overall sales and marketing strategy, without the friction of a ‘sales meeting’.
We led six workshops per day, over three days around Cornwall, and Pirate FM started seeing results after the first one. Here’s what Mark had to say about it:
“We got more valuable information from one session than we would get from six months of regular client meetings. The information we got from the attendees is like gold dust, as are the deeper, closer relationships we’ve formed with our clients from those sessions.
It opened the opportunity for conversations with warm leads and old customers that had dropped off the radar. As a result, we landed plenty of new annual contracts and
have increased our average monthly order value, by some margin.”
When you think about it, it makes sense.
No one likes being sold to, but if you can deliver something that your prospects regard as truly valuable – like dependable advice on growing their business and getting more customers – then you’re elevated in their thinking, and they’re much more likely to do business with you.
It’s what’s required for success in media sales in 2019.
If you have some interest in our M³ Marketing Strategy Workshops, but you’re thinking it could be too much work, I can assure it’s not. This concept is different.
Drop me an email if you’re interested and we’ll jump on the phone for a chat. david.barker@inspire-media.com
