What Most Media Salespeople Know But Fail To Use To Their Advantage

Former advertising strategist, speaker and coach David ‘Fishy’ Fish (lead image), who held senior roles with Initiative and GroupM, has launched his first book, What it Takes to Create Winning Presentations. In this extract, Fish offers expert tips for adland’s salespeople…

As a result of the desire to ‘be in the market’, the meetings quotas, constant pressure on educating agencies on what is new and the latest audience numbers, and, of course, entertaining the agency folk who make the decisions on what goes on the plan, as an account manager you know something incredibly valuable. You know your buyers; in fact, you know them far more intimately than many realise.

What can we sell today?

However, so many presentations are created without really considering who the content needs to connect with, let alone what matters to them and what they need from this content. When you build everything around what you have and what you want to sell, this can create a very unhelpful tension that can play out as a frustrated and agitated audience who are sitting through slide after slide thinking, What has this got to do with us, and how does any of this help us or our client move forward?

Presentations without this anchor

This problem started long before you stood up to present; when the audience isn’t clear at the outset, you are like a boat in a harbour without an anchor, at risk of drifting off at any moment. And drift you will as the opinions, content and ideas of others creep in during the building of your presentation because you were not focused enough at the start, “Don’t forget you need to include this month’s sales focus and make sure those new digital slides are included too…”.

How do I know what they want?

The most effective way to define your audience is to think about the roles you interact with and present to each week and then determine what it is like to be in that role. What defines and shapes that role, what type of people are in those roles, what challenges do they face, and what needs do they have?

When you do this, two things will probably become evident very quickly. At a role level, there are some very distinct differences in the backgrounds, interests and motivations across different roles, say, that of the trading function or the strategic leadership group.

Almost in contradiction to this, although actual titles may vary significantly across the industry, there are many common attributes within each role type that allow you to draw a very clear picture of what the people in these roles want and need, their drivers and how what you know and do might be of help to them.

When you paint this picture, you can move from generic and bloated presentations to curating a story that connects and engages based on your understanding of what they want and need in their role. When you work through this, you will be surprised at how much you know and how easy it is to tailor your message to the right people.

But who is my audience for this presentation?

Now, not everyone who might show up to see you present matters quite as much as they might think. To establish who does, there are three crucial questions to ask yourself before you begin creating slides:

· What roles would be best placed to take what you present and convey it to others to get their buy-in?

· What roles have influence over how your content and ideas will be viewed – a subject matter expert or a role that controls the budget allocation, perhaps?

· What is the problem that this audience wants to see solved?

What matters to them

This is your audience, and now you need to do everything you can to make it as easy as possible for them to see the benefits and find and share what they need. That is not what you want to sell but what they need to do their job. Imagine being in that role; what would you want to see, and what do you need to make it easy to share this information and do your job effectively? The value of your solution lies in how it solves a problem they care about and helps them to do whatever they need to do next. Sadly, so many miss the opportunity to leverage this knowledge. Taking just a few moments to pause and consider who your audience is, what you know about them, and what they need from you can create an incredible advantage.

However, the benefit is not the understanding but the application of this process, how you leverage this understanding to connect your story and narrative to them, cut down your content, summarise key points and make it easy for them to take your content forward.

That is the shift you are looking for, the change in perspective from what you have to present and sell to what they need from you. When you give them what they need, you are more likely to get back what you want – a real win–win.