The Death of the 'New Product' Solution

By: John Fredricks If you are professionally involved in the business/sales side of a major daily newspaper company, ask yourself if this scenario rings true within your own organization: Faced with a pending and imposing revenue shortfall to budget (a budget that you never really bought into in the first place) in any given month, senior executive leadership retreats to an "impromptu" marathon meeting behind tightly closed doors for which everyone is denied access for what seems like an eternity, only to emerge with -- alas and aghast -- another new product to solve the revenue woes.

This myriad of new products run the gamut: another "special section," a neighborhood target version, a hybrid TMC, a direct mailed specialty magazine a free weekly entertainment publication, a new internet vertical -- the list is endless.

Countless times our industry's answer to any revenue gap is the development and deployment of a shiny new product to meet the shortfall. Much like a radio station who shuffles programming every 90 days, these "solutions" are really not solutions at all, as they seldom prove effective and continue to mask the real challenges.


The Birth

More often than not, it plays out this way: A new product is hatched whose creation was not externally driven through documented customer feedback and desire; rather its sole genesis was internal, birthed to address a short term departmental need to get through yet another underperforming month/quarter.

Never requested or clamored for by either advertisers or readers, this new product now serves as an internal rallying point for the current administration. It's showcased at the next senior executive meeting, and looks great on the "here is what we are doing to get back on track" list that winds its way up the corporate food chain, no doubt accompanying the current month's missed flash report.

Next follows the all too familiar launch: a sales meeting featuring cookies, muffins and balloons; the distribution and laborious point by point dissertation of the "sell sheet," chock full of features, advantages, generic benefits, product specifications and deadlines. On a good day you even get a mock up prior to the first published issue.

At the conclusion of the ballyhoo, each sales rep and their manager is given an arbitrary sales goal to achieve, and directed to "go forth and sell."


The Life

Not coveted by their target audiences nor craved by their intended advertisers, many of these new initiatives go through the initial market introduction phase in desperate and pathetic search of a relevant application.

Soon after, the revenue goal is missed, the deadline extended, and worse yet the entire sales staff is encouraged to "pitch" it to anybody and everybody -- regardless of its audience relevance or advertiser timeliness.

The result: loss of sales focus, degeneration and degradation of sales brand, sales irrelevance and forced "product leading" on sales calls.

Worst of all, whatever the outcome, you have to go up against the revenue next year, insuring the perpetual inclusion in all future budgets, thus causing product proliferation and sales skill dilution in perpetuity.

Tracing this plethora of products to its origin, one quickly finds an antiquated budgeting process as the ultimate culprit. Budgets are built by products and classifications, rather than by customers, from the bottom up, as they should be.


The Death

Budget by the product, live by the product, die by the product

Ask any newspaper sales executive today how many products they have to sell and you will hear a consistent mantra: "too many"


The Reality

Newspaper and online content site sales professionals sell only two things: 1) Customer's time (to speak with them) and 2) An audience. Products are a mere means to an end. They serve up different segments of an audience matrix with different intensity at different times. Truth be told, today's advertisers don't care about products, and they don't buy them. Rather, they invest in relevant solutions they believe will garner them the necessary results to achieve or close their quantifiable business goals or gaps. To find those gaps, and to recommend an effective solution in the form of products, sales executives must attain time with decision makers.

As we all know, executive time today is in short supply. The lynchpin of the executive time/ROI model is relevance. The more timely and relevant we are, the more time we are allocated and vice-versa.

The strategy of leading with the "product solution" is counter to elevating your collective sales brand to the level it needs to be to distinguish your sales reps and breakthrough the myriad of sales clutter. Media sales reps are a commodity nowadays; to maximize results, your reps need to be viewed as a precious resource within the advertising community they serve.


The Change

Take the basic media sales prospecting model used today: "Hi, I'm John Doe with the Times Gazette; we have a new community neighbors section coming out that I think would make sense for you and I'd like to come out and show it to you -- and we have some great introductory pricing, too!"

Even if the customer agrees to meet, which is usually less than 20% in this scenario (the other 80% get a media kit and sales sheet mailed to them -- talk about exciting reading!), sales results fall short because the time taken with the customer is centered on the new product, its attributes (features and advantages) and different rates (i.e.: buy more -- pay less per price point); the meeting concludes with the "sales leave behind" and a continuance for a call back which never transpires. What happens to the reps sales brand in the eyes of the customer? It is diminished, so the next time the rep calls they get rebuffed. Time wasted, opportunity burned, sales brand tarnished.


What to Do

Take that same prospecting call and make it about the customer: Introduction, gain permission, opening statement designed to intrigue and entice the customer (personal, something unique about the company, highlights an opportunity or challenge and conveys a sense of urgency) engage the customer with a high yield question, evolve the dialogue quickly to their situation at hand and close on a meeting -- all in less than 3 minutes.

This approach secures more time, builds sales brand, elevates dialogue and sets a new tone. Right from the start the sales rep is positioned as prepared, knowledgeable, interested in the customer and viewed as a potential resource as opposed to a dime-a-dozen "pitch and ditch" commodity. Products are never mentioned and don't come into play until a recommendation is being made in response to a business gap that has been relayed. Only then is it pertinent, relevant and timely to the sales audience -- the customer.

For those of us who sell newspaper or news and information content web site advertising and understand the pure power and dynamic efficiencies of our mediums, the issue is not about our effectiveness once the appropriate program is sold. It's about getting time with decision makers to gain in-depth knowledge of their business proposition so that we can quantify the gaps in their business and provide solutions through our diverse audience segments in an efficient, effective and sustaining way. Only then is our sales brand uplifted so we are sought and coveted, rather than avoided and ignored.