Kevin Gephart spent 35+ years selling advertising including 12 years at Clear Channel Outdoor in Minneapolis.  Last week he discussed the importance of being relevant to customers.  Today he discusses prospecting.

In order to sell out of home you need to figure out who you want to sell to.  That’s prospecting.  Here are  three tips for out of home prospecting.

Tip One: Study the org chart

Study who’s doing what at local businesses. Stay alert to local personnel or ownership changes.  These changes most often lead to changes in marketing about 4-8 months later. No management personnel were ever hired or promoted with the mantra: “Stay the course!!!”

Tip Two: Begin with the end in mind.  

Who is your perfect customer.  There’s a sweet spot.  I’ll just speak about the Minneapolis/St. Paul market because that’s my point of reference.   Management has always wanted us to go after 3M, Target, Best Buy, etc. Problem: they’re so encumbered by ad agencies and levels of management and marketing it is very tough to make inroads.  Going after the mom and pop businesses may not be worth your time.  In-between there is a sweet spot.  And for me it was local (multiple locations or minimum financial size) businesses or regional brands that had local decision-making.  More often than not they were not working with an ad agency.  Their marketing departments handled the ad buying in-house.   I found these prospects mostly in our local business journal/publications (If you can find issues that go back 4-8 months ago, that is who is ready now.) and on LinkedIn.

Tip Three: Let a thousand flowers bloom.

What is the best avenue for prospecting? The answer is “YES!” When you are gardening,  you don’t just plant one seed and then wait to build a garden. You must use multiple channels for prospecting all at the same time.  Here are my thoughts on some channels for obtaining prospects.

1: Nexus: You want everyone who gets/sees an email from you to know what you do in case they know someone you can help. Put this in your email signature today: I specialize in helping first time advertisers get results using out-of-home media”.

2: People who are advertising in radio and TV in a market.  This is a no brainer. You hear a new advertiser pop on radio or television and you go after them.  It requires checking out all of the radio and TV stations in your market continuously…not just the stations you like.  I have found that secondary/fringe radio and TV stations are ripe for prospecting because they don’t have ratings to sell, so that pretty much assures there isn’t an ad agency involved and they are more likely to be at a minimum size level to go after.  Many OOH companies want you to go in with the “switch-pitch” showing the short comings of their dominant media choices. PLEASE DON’T! Sell your ideas and the power of your media to amplify them. Let them decide where they get the money.  Maybe they love your ideas but they just aren’t going to trim the media you targeted.If you excite them, they WILL find the money.

3.  Your network.  As a new business-getter (or an aspiring one) establish a network of contacts with similar new business-getter reps in competing media, via women in media groups, ad clubs, marketing federations etc.  And networking can include getting to know other media reps and sharing leads. You’d be surprised how many times competing media reps will get asked “who do you know at the billboard company?”.

Next week I’ll discuss more channels for prospecting.  You can contact me with feedback and questions using the form below.

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