One of the great conundrums of life is the amount of time the average OOH salesperson spends with prospects who never become clients.  A person could argue that the vast majority of a salesperson’s “selling time” is actually spent drilling dry wells.  You could even say that its just the nature of selling… got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince!  Let’s face it, not every business needs or wants outdoor advertising in their marketing mix.

Are we as professional salespeople therefore doomed to spend an inordinate amount of our time with the many just to find the few?  Before you get to thinking this isn’t that severe of an issue, let’s look at some facts.  Ever stop to think about all that a salesperson does?  Paperwork, CRM data entry, service current clients, internal meetings, research to find likely prospects and prep for meetings, get artwork, ad copy, secure approval for creative, prospecting activities, conduct sales calls, etc.

Into statistics? Here’s one for you…depending upon the study you read, the average OOH salesperson spends only 30 to 35% of their time actually selling…to both businesses that become clients AND to those that do not. Doesn’t take a ‘rocket surgeon’ to figure out that very little of our time in front of prospects that have a high degree of likelihood in becoming our client.  Anecdotally, if you made us guess, probably falls in the area of about 5% of a salesperson’s total time is spent with fully qualified prospects who have a high degree of opportunity.  Given all of the other non-selling activities that must be done, we have to find a way to be as efficient as possible with the time we have to devote to pure selling.

Interestingly, it doesn’t seem to matter if we are meeting a person who has 20+ years of experience or one that has 1 year of experience in the industry.  Almost no one has an effective method to quickly qualify/disqualify a prospect.  To determine if this is an opportunity that I should invest more time in or back out gracefully and find a more qualified prospect to spend my time nurturing?  To be fair, most were never taught any methodology to do so.

In the absence of an ability or process to qualify, salespeople must hang in there and keep pitching to see if we can say something that might spark an interest, something that gives us some sort of sign that there is life in this conversation, some potential for a sale. Let’s be honest, we can spend a tremendous amount of our day in these types of conversations that lead nowhere.

If you lack a systematic, no pressure approach to OOH advertising prospects that:

• Effectively communicates business problems/issues that OOH helps other companies overcome
• Determines if the prospect struggles with any of those issues
• Allows THEM to express a desire to see if you could help

…then maybe it is worth pausing to consider how this could radically increase your face time with qualified prospects, allowing you to be a resource to more businesses and grow revenue FAST!

Need help with sales skills or coaching to take your out of home company to the next level.  Learn more about OOH Sales Mastery at oohmastery.com  or Contact Dan Nausley at  dan.nausley@sandler.com, 423.702.5579.

Lisa & Dan Nausley of Sandler Chattanooga developed the OOH Sales Mastery Program after more than a decade of training/coaching scores of OOH Operators across the country in sales, leadership and executive coaching.

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