Advertisers buy growth, not advertising

They don’t buy advertising because they want advertising. They buy growth.”

Shannon Kinney, founder and client success officer, Dream Local Digital

One of the most interesting aspects of our business is how much time we spend teaching salespeople about our products.

We train them on streaming television, search, social media, branded content, email, events, programmatic advertising, first-party data and any new solutions we’ve added to the portfolio. We create product sheets, conduct training sessions and arm our teams with research that explains why each solution works.

All of that is necessary. Our salespeople need to understand what they sell.

But there’s a danger when we become too good at product training: We can unintentionally teach people to have product conversations with customers who aren’t particularly interested in our products.

Think about it from the advertiser’s perspective. The owner of an auto dealership isn’t sitting in her office wondering whether she needs more OTT. The HVAC company isn’t holding a management meeting to discuss whether it should increase its programmatic impressions. The regional bank isn’t setting its annual goals around improving its click-through rate. They’re thinking about selling more cars, booking more service calls, opening another branch, attracting younger customers, increasing deposits or improving profitability.

They don’t buy advertising because they want advertising. They buy growth.

The language we speak matters

In the first two columns of this series, we’ve talked about moving beyond marketing problems to understand the business problems our clients are trying to solve, and using the strategic planning process to earn a seat at the table before the marketing budget is determined.

Once we’re at that table, we need to learn to speak the language of the people sitting around it.

One of the easiest ways to see the difference is to look at how we describe what we sell. Suppose a salesperson tells a local auto dealer, “Our streaming television product allows you to reach cord-cutters using household-level targeting.”

That’s a perfectly accurate description of the product. It explains a feature and perhaps even a benefit. But imagine instead that the salesperson has learned through discovery that the dealership wants to increase truck sales, that its most profitable buyers come from several specific ZIP codes and that management has set an aggressive growth target for the next year.

Now the conversation changes: “We can use streaming television to reach more of the households that look like your best truck buyers and build a campaign around the growth target you’ve established for that part of the business.”

Same product. Completely different conversation.

The first explanation is about what we sell. The second is about what the client wants to accomplish. Trusted advisers know the difference.

From features to business outcomes

For years, sales training has taught the distinction between features and benefits. Features describe what a product does. Benefits explain why that feature matters to the customer. That’s still useful, but today’s media salesperson needs to connect features and benefits to business outcomes.

A targeted email database is a feature. The ability to reach a specific consumer group is a benefit. Helping a healthcare organization attract new patients to a recently opened practice is a business outcome.

Branded content is a product. The ability to tell a company’s story in an engaging, credible environment is a benefit. Helping a local employer establish a reputation that allows it to recruit the skilled workers it needs to expand is a business outcome.

Search marketing is a product. Capturing consumers who are actively looking for a service is a benefit. Helping a home services company fill its installation calendar during what has traditionally been a slow quarter is a business outcome.

When you start thinking this way, you realize virtually every product in your portfolio can be described at several different levels. The question is which level your salespeople spend the most time discussing.

If the conversation revolves around impressions, targeting capabilities, video completion rates and ad formats, we’re probably still talking primarily about our business. When the conversation shifts to revenue, customers, hiring, market share, expansion and profitability, we're talking about theirs. That’s where we want to be.

Go one level deeper

There is another layer to this that I believe separates good salespeople from exceptional ones.

Business outcomes matter, but ultimately, businesses are run by human beings. Those people have their own objectives, pressures and motivations. Imagine that a second-generation business owner tells you she wants to grow revenue by 15% next year. That's a meaningful business goal, and it’s certainly better than simply discussing how many impressions she wants to purchase.

But why does 15% growth matter?

Perhaps the company needs that growth to justify opening a second location. Maybe she’s trying to create opportunities for employees who have been with the company for years. Perhaps she’s preparing to transition ownership to her children. Maybe she’s trying to build enough value in the company to retire in five years. The more we understand what sits behind the business objective, the better we understand the person making the decision.

I’m not suggesting that sales calls should become therapy sessions. I am suggesting that genuine curiosity about someone’s business almost always leads to a better understanding of what matters to them personally. That understanding is difficult for a competitor to displace. A competitor can lower the CPM. They can offer another digital product. They can probably match many of your targeting capabilities. It’s much harder to replace a relationship with someone who understands where you're trying to take your company and why getting there matters to you. That's trust.

This also changes how we should think about proposals. Too many proposals begin with the media company. They explain our audience, our products, our capabilities and the reasons someone should advertise with us. Somewhere later in the presentation, we get around to the customer. A trusted adviser should reverse that order.

Start with what you heard: “You told us your goal is to grow the commercial side of the business by 20% next year, with most of that growth coming from three surrounding communities where your brand awareness is currently low.” That’s a powerful way to begin a recommendation, because the client knows you listened.

From there, explain the obstacles you’ve identified, the audience that needs to be influenced, the strategy you’re recommending and why each component of that strategy connects to the business outcome. Now streaming television, branded content, search, email or whatever combination you recommend has a reason for being there. The products aren’t the strategy. They’re the tools that execute the strategy.

The trusted-adviser challenge

At your next sales meeting, choose three products your team sells frequently and ask everyone to describe each one without mentioning the product itself. Instead, have them explain three business problems that the product could help solve and the business outcome a client might reasonably be trying to achieve.

Then take it one step further. Ask your team what they would need to learn about the client before they could credibly make that connection. That second question is where the real learning begins.

Dream Local Digital Founder and Client Success Officer Shannon Kinney brings more than 30 years of experience in leadership roles, developing scalable digital marketing strategies and supporting and training media companies with scalable digital revenue growth. She played a vital role in the development of prominent internet giants, including Cars.com, CareerBuilder.com, Knight Ridder Digital, LinkedIn, Google, eBay and Microsoft. She worked with media companies worldwide until pivoting to found Dream Local Digital. Since Dream Local Digital's creation in 2009, Shannon has served on the Local Media Association board, been awarded the LMA Digital Innovation Award, appeared on hundreds of stages as a keynote speaker, and helped media companies transform their business model. She currently also serves as a project lead on the Local Media Association Branded Content Project Cohorts, helping media companies transform through new revenue streams. Shannon can be reached at shannon@dreamlocal.com.