Here are some excerpts from OOH Sales expert Kevin Gephart’s conversation with Chris Lytle who has trained sales professionals for 44 years. Last week Kevin and Chris discussed the importance of sales manager courtesy calls. Today they explain the importance of talking about the client’s business.
Why a sales rep should handle an account instead of the sales manager.
Kevin Gephart. Smart, aggressive, intelligent clients don’t want the manager running their business. They know they’re going to get better service from somebody who’s hungry and somebody who’s focused. The organization I started my media sales career in was very well run. They were very sales and profit motivated. One of the very biggest businesses in town only advertised with us sporadically. Guess what – it was being handled by the general manager. One of our enterprising reps went into the general manager and said “Give me this account. If I don’t more than double the billing in the first 12 months, I’ll turn it back to you” and the general manager, being smart, said “OK.” The sales rep hit the ground running. I think in the first year he tripled the billing, which was probably just a function of showing up. That famous sales manager, Woody Allen, said 90% of success is showing up. I think probably a big part of it is he just showed. I think after that the general manager got rid of all the house accounts (handed them off to reps).
Chris Lytle. Woody Allen said that part of success is showing up, but the rest is showing up on time. It’s better to see 10 people five times than 50 people once. Because that sale is going to be in the 5th, 6th, 7th, call or meeting.
Talk about the client’s business, not advertising.
Chris Lytle: Salespeople need to talk about business and talk about the client’s business rather than talking about advertising. If you’ve got people out there without a lot of training, they don’t have any control about what’s being said. The best training tool you’ve got, or the best motivational tool you’ve got, is that couch in your office. Have your sales reps sit down and talk about what happened during the day. Pick their brain and show that you’re interested in them. So often we don’t have that interaction because everybody’s flying around in their own separate orbits.
Training is important.
Kevin Gephart. US Air can’t be in the cockpit with every pilot, so they train their pilots to know what to do in certain situations. They had a plane take off in New York and a very brave pilot by the name of Sully Sullenberger, after a mid-air emergency, brought that plane to rest on the surface of the Hudson River. He made sure that everybody was rescued safely. He was heralded as a hero. He said to the news media afterwards, “I just relied on my training. I’m not a hero, I’m just a well-trained pilot.” At the end of the day that’s what you have to do is train your salespeople so that they know what to do.
Chris Lytle. The rest of that story is that all the newspapers called that “the miracle on the Hudson” instead of just a normal well-trained pilot going by the book and saving 150 people.
Some out of home sales management tools.
Kevin Gephart. Chris, I want to plug your book “The Accidental Sales manager “ It is available on Amazon. It speaks to managers who are struggling, frustrated, and wondering what they got themselves into. Sometimes you read a book and every page just jumps out and speaks to you! That’s what I got from it. I’m also going to plug my book “The Ultimate Out of Home Sales Guide “ I wrote it in conjunction with Billboard Insider.
Chris Lytle. I have a website called InstantSalesTraining.com with 400 little knowledge bites of 2 to 6 minutes each on important sales topics. Also, I have discussion questions that go along with them so a new sales manager can lead a discussion based on using my content. You can do a lot of training very quickly without having to create content all day long.
Kevin Gephart. Very smart aggressive OOH sales reps can invest the $147 for the subscription themselves in order to sell more faster.
If 2024 is your year to sell more OOH faster, I may be able to help, contact me at KevinJGephart@gmail.com
About Chris Lytle: Chris inspired and educated countless media advertising sales professionals for 44 years. He is the author of the media sales bestsellers, The Accidental Salesperson and The Accidental Sales Manager. His company, Instant Sales Training, continues to deliver sales training in easily digestible knowledge bites. Contact him at InstantSalesTraining.com
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