This quarter, empower your sales team to maximize 2024 opportunities and outperform goals by leveraging MediaRadar’s ad sales intelligence and enablement platform. Here are three ways MediaRadar can help you expand your reach, motivate your team, and seamlessly integrate data to optimize sales processes:

1. Review Your Market Potential and See Where You Can Grow Your Business 

A key step to Q4 preparation is understanding your true market potential by analyzing your total addressable market (TAM). With MediaRadar, you can easily calculate your TAM based on your average deal size and number of potential customers.  

However, you can further identify untapped segments and new opportunities beyond your existing pipeline. MediaRadar’s cross-channel ad spend intelligence allows you to search across over 3 million brands and spot emerging spenders in your target categories. You can source contacts for those high-potential targets and feed them directly into your Salesforce CRM using MediaRadar’s contact integration.

With an expanded market perspective, you can build out sales playbooks that align with your ideal customer profile (ICP). Enable your team to venture into new categories and close more first-time deals.

Download our free whitepaper, “How to Realize the Potential of— and Expand—Your Total Addressable Market (TAM)” here.

2. Review Your Team’s Account Lists

As you review your market potential, MediaRadar helps you strategically allocate accounts to build optimal sales books. Sync MediaRadar’s ad spend data into Salesforce to easily identify over or under-balanced books.  

Prioritize accounts with the most upside potential based on historical spend versus billed sales. Motivate your team by assigning new greenfield opportunities or re-engagements with a significant budget. Use MediaRadar’s real-time alerts to notify reps of new RFPs and budget shifts that signal prime timing for outreach.

With integrated, up-to-date spend intelligence, you can ensure every rep has a book tailored to their strengths and filled with qualified accounts primed for Q4 budget spending.

3. See Who’s Advertising with Your Competition

As your team connects with prospects, equip them to deliver highly tailored pitches that speak to each customer’s initiatives and challenges. MediaRadar provides the cross-channel insights they need all in one place to analyze competitors, inform messaging, and plan.

Help your team strategize creative ways to address prospects’ pain points by examining competitors’ ad spend allocation across channels, themes, and publishers. They can even review historical ad creatives that resonate in your ICPs for inspiration.

With MediaRadar as an always-accessible, centralized intelligence resource, your reps will deliver relevant, consultative conversations to advance opportunities through the pipeline.

Join Thousands of Sales Teams that are Driving Growth with MediaRadar

This Q4, implement the strategies leading ad sales teams use to prepare to maximize your 2024 opportunities. With actionable intelligence seamlessly integrated into your CRM, your reps will be equipped to forge new relationships and deep-sell into existing accounts. Position your team to win in 2024 by leveraging MediaRadar today!

For more insights, sign up for MediaRadar’s blog here. 

Buyers now prefer in-person meetings, making trust- and relationship-building difficult. In fact, over 70% of B2B buyers don’t want to meet reps in person.

Meanwhile, buyers are becoming comfortable with the idea of making purchases online—70 percent of B2B decision-makers say they are open to making self-serve or remote purchases of more than $50,000.

The fundamentals of the sales process are changing, but so are most markets.

The auto industry is still recovering from the pandemic. At the same time, legacy automakers, like Ford, are evolving to meet the demand for electric vehicles.

Even B2C brands that have always been all-in on traditional retail are pivoting amid the growth of the DTC model. Case and point: Adidas wants DTC sales to make up 50% of its revenue by 2025.

Of course, the down economy is causing a ripple effect across most industries. Advertisers are responding accordingly.

Internally, turnover never fails to cause a shake-up, especially when the change is happening at the top—the average tenure of a CMO is 40 months. When these changes happen, advertising changes inevitably follow in connection with the strategy and agency representation.

Many agencies pair these shifts with a reactive strategy, i.e., the prospect comes to them.

The agencies that thrive in 2023 and beyond will embrace a proactive strategy, i.e., determine which brands they want to work with, understand them, nurture the relationship, and build trust.

Regardless of the agency’s strategy, sellers must wrap their heads around the prospects.

Here are 5 things to know about your prospects before your next call:

1. Know the Key Players

Seems simple enough, right? But, as we all know, it’s easier said than done.

While high turnover rates will present an initial hurdle, some research will pay dividends.

This starts by understanding who is involved in the decision-making process. More times than not that’ll be the CMO or comparable role. Director- and senior-level players will likely play a role, too. The typical “buying group” for a complex B2B solution involves six to 10 decision-makers.

But accurate contact information will only get you so far. Sellers must also get a glimpse into what matters to these stakeholders. One way to do that is by looking at how they’ve approached advertising in the past.

MUD/WTR, for example, appointed Mike Fox as its new CMO in late 2022. The industry vet with tenures at Facebook and Snapple will likely embrace some of the same strategies at MUD/WTR that helped him succeed at the aforementioned industry giants.

2. Ensure the Call Is Timely

Make sure you are calling people at the right time. For example, calling travel advertisers at the height of the pandemic would have been fruitless.

Conversely, reaching out to education advertisers as millions grapple with layoffs makes all the sense in the world. According to a Crunchbase News tally, more than 94,000 workers at U.S.-based tech companies have been laid off. The same goes for tax service advertisers in Q1 who are gearing up for Tax Day.

Other key indicators of when to pitch are seasonality and peak spending.

Weight loss advertisers, like Nutrisystem, for example, frontload their spending as much of society sets news New Year’s resolutions.

Once you know when a business spends most of its budget, you can work backward to determine when to make first contact.

3. Review Brand Messaging

One of the easiest ways to determine if a pitch will push a prospect’s “hot buttons” is to review recent creative.

Why? It offers a direct line of sight into their mindset and the products or service they’re pushing as a business.

The screenshot below highlights 3 recent Walmart ads.

One of those ads focuses on The World Cup.

Not only did this lend light to how advertisers crafted their strategy in late 2022, but it also offered a glimpse into the ad formats and target demographics. Of course, Snapchat is popular among younger generations—almost 40% of Snapchat users are between the ages of 18-24.

4. Understand Their Ad Investment

Knowing how your prospects’ advertising spending is changing is also valuable. You can understand that by getting your hands on a spending breakdown.

Look at how advertisers for Purina Dog Chow spent their dollars in 2022.

What does it tell us?

A lot, but namely that they didn’t really start spending until February, and they love print ads (digital, not so much). These insights can influence pitches to buyers at Purina Dogs but also pitches to competitors, including Blue Buffalo.

5. See How They Distribute Their Ad Dollars

Studying your prospect’s recent multimedia campaigns and product lines will help you understand their position and offerings.

For example, if a company runs unique creative across multiple media formats, including TV, OTT, online, mobile, Snapchat, OOH, and email, you could conclude they’re all-in on digital ads and early adopters of newer ecosystems, like OTT.

Answer These Questions—and More—with Sales Intelligence Tools

You don’t need to spend hours surfing the web or scrolling through a company’s website to understand how a prospect thinks about their advertising strategy.

An ad sales intelligence tool will give you those insights—and more—all in one place.

For more insights, sign up for MediaRadar’s blog here.

That’s easier said than done.

While the market has come together to bring these historically siloed ecosystems together via cross-channel technology and universal identifiers, there’s still a lot of fragmentation.

Below, we explore how to speak the cross-platform language to your prospects and how you can leverage your fluency to increase your share of wallet.

The Salt, Fat, Acid and Heat of Cross-Platform Advertising

In Netflix’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, host Samin Nosrat makes it her mission to drive home that every recipe involves these four elements of delicious food in some capacity. It’s just a matter of striking a balance between them. With the right levels of each, amateur cooks and professional chefs alike can create the perfect dish. It’s that simple.

That way of thinking should extend to how advertisers think about cross-platform advertising.

What’s Cross-Platform Advertising?

Cross-platform advertising means you can build a stronger brand by delivering ads across multiple platforms, including search, social, display, OTT, podcasts, and other relevant channels to your target audience. A thoughtful cross-platform advertising strategy ensures a brand appears on all the channels and devices its target audience uses daily.

Nikki Gilliland at Econsultancy said, “As well as creating a single customer view, cross-channel advertising can also help brands to create and deliver a seamless customer experience – i.e., consistent and unified brand messaging across multiple channels and devices.”

Note two words: customer experience.

Today and every day in the future, consumers will put a premium on the experience brands deliver. According to PwC, 73% of consumers say a good experience is key in influencing brand loyalties.

At the same time, 77% of consumers say inefficient customer experiences detract from their quality of life.

So, yeah, the customer experience is a big deal.

Ads are a part of that.

But extending a marketing budget across multiple channels and platforms can prove difficult for brands with a finite number of dollars to spend.

The question then becomes: How can you help prospects build a strong cross-platform campaign on a budget?

Step 1: Narrow Their Channels (Salt)

Advertisers have been bullish on cross-platform advertising for years. In 2018, the IAB reported that 83% of advertisers see cross-platform measurement has improved since 2017. Since then, cross-platform advertising has advanced even more.

For example, The Trade Desk (TTD) recently debuted a tool to help advertisers activate first-party data across channels and devices.

Although brands are waking up to the idea of cross-platform advertising, many are keeping their campaigns in a silo. Some are ignoring channels altogether.

Consider OTT.

Despite OTT’s growth, only 3% of monthly digital ad spend goes to OTT.

Meanwhile, of the advertisers who invested in Meta’s ecosystem in 2022, 72% allocated ad dollars exclusively to Facebook.

This isn’t ideal, but it makes sense. The advertising world is complex—and with only so much to spend, it can be easy for brands to default to one or two channels. Or maybe stick to their tried-and-true channels, like Facebook, and neglect up-and-coming ones, like OTT.

While brands may want to land on as many touchpoints as possible, a cross-platform strategy isn’t “complete” only when they check all the boxes. A handful of relevant platforms absolutely meet the definition of cross-platform advertising.

To determine where a prospect’s limited ad dollars should go, take a step back to truly understand who they’re trying to reach and where they can get the most bang for their buck.

For example, a direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand will likely succeed on social media platforms popular with Millennials and Generation Z—think TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram.

This handful of channels can make for the sturdy foundation of a good cross-platform campaign without overwhelming the prospect’s budget or brain.

Step 2: Take Time With Good Content (Fat)

The goal in advertising is to go from first impressions to conversion. But to get there, prospects have to take the ‘middle’ seriously. Good content is in the middle.

Getting many views on a social media ad won’t matter as much if there’s no clear CTA.

Landing a sponsorship on a top podcast won’t be as effective without a concise and engaging message to share.

Getting visitors to a landing page will go nowhere unless there’s interesting content there and around the site.

Good content can be at the center of the tapestry, with all the different media threads pulling to the same point.

This has less to do with staying under budget than using the budget effectively.

Take John Hancock’s #LifeComesNext campaign.

The insurance company began the campaign with a series of TV spots presented as short stories. The screen cut to black at pivotal moments in the dramas, replaced with a CTA, e.g., “Find out what happens next,” and a link to the website.

On the site, viewers could choose one of three potential endings and continue the conversation using the hashtag on social media.

The campaign wasn’t just cross-media. It didn’t just post similar creatives on different platforms. John Hancock placed a good story at the center and used multiple platforms to connect all the dots.

Here’s a more recent example from The Trade Desk.

The campaign, dubbed “What Matters,” delivered a compelling story across channels popular with its target audience: programmatic connected TV (CTV), digital out-of-home (DOOH), online video, and YouTube.

Step 3: Track Everything (Acid)

Advertising is long past the Mad Men age of throwing an ad out there and seeing what sticks. The days of throwing spaghetti at the wall are over. Advertising can be a science, and nothing will help your prospects maintain their limited budget like keeping a close eye on the metrics.

But not just any metrics. The metrics that point to tangible business impact. Impressions and clicks are great, but return on ad spend (ROAS) is even better.

This is not the space to dive into the specifics of advertising metrics (though it is worth noting that media companies dependent on multichannel distribution, like SlingTV and NBCU, are developing unified cross-platform metrics).

We will dive into some high-level steps you and your prospects should take to ensure they get the best return on their ad dollars.

First, start by developing relevant metrics for each platform. What are they trying to accomplish on each channel, and which metrics will help them measure that?

Second, develop a means of comparing successes that otherwise may look like an apples-to-oranges scenario. Remember: Not all metrics are created equal. A video view on YouTube is measured differently than one on Facebook, meaning you can’t simply compare the two platforms to determine where video ad dollars should go.

Finally, look at what works and what doesn’t, and then adjust accordingly. No need to stick to PPC when that banner ad is returning twice the conversion for half the price. A true cross-platform advertising strategy is built on a foundation of constant iteration and optimization.

Looking for some inspiration?

Digital natives like Warby Parker and Casper are experts. While digital channels and PPC may be their lifeblood, direct-to-consumer brands have done their fair share of traditional advertising.

More recently, Airbnb shocked the advertising world when it announced it was focusing on brand marketing and not search—a focus that’s working.

Chief Financial Officer Dave Stephenson said, “Our brand marketing results are delivering excellent results overall with a strong rate of return, and it’s been so successful that we’re actually expanding to more countries.”

And now for the pun-of-all-puns we’ve been waiting for: With the right channels, content, and metrics in place, you can bring the heat. Sometimes advertisers feel like deciding on digital ads vs. traditional ads is an either/or situation. But, with the right elements in place, you can have your Russian Honey Cake and eat it too.

For more insights, sign up for MediaRadar’s blog here.

Despite more “future-facing” sales tactics entering the picture, some old-school ones will never go out of style.

We’re talking about the tried-and-true phone call—the same one 57% of C-level buyers still prefer.

But you have to do them the right way.

Here are 5 simple steps to help you make the most of your next sales call.

1. Know Your Opportunity

You’ve identified your opportunity through a system of lead scoring and researched your point of contact with a sales intelligence tool.

You may know your contact’s hobbies, university, and prior work experience, but do you know their role within the company and how it connects to your product or service?

How does their job fit into the buying process? Do they make the final decisions or are others involved in the decision; the typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to 10 people.

Do your research.

The messaging of your pitch will change depending on this person’s seniority and where they fit into the buying committee.

At the same time, what’s going on in their life?

Is their office in Los Angeles or Des Moines? The cities are different and, therefore, warrant different talking points. For example, Los Angeles and Des Moines are in different time zones and experience different weather conditions. 

What is your prospect’s objective(s)? 

It’s not all about the prospects. The pre-call planning process must also include a hefty dose of company intelligence and the prospect’s role in the greater machine.

Where can you find these nuggets of information?

• About Us section of its website
• Press clippings
• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
• Investor Relations section of the website

Dig into these sources to understand what’s important to the company and how your prospect will likely think.

For example, if you’re pitching a gambling advertiser from a company like FanDuel, a dive into the company’s Annual Report from 2022 would reveal it’s placing a particularly strong focus on profitability.

Your pitch should center around that.

Where does your prospect advertise?

If you went into MediaRadar in the past and searched for John Deere, for instance, you would find that the company advertised across seven different media formats, targeting different audiences within each.

The sales reps making the most money are interested in seeing a company’s full marketing budget. It gives them a better sense of how much the company spends with its competitors or if it has a huge budget for a new product.

John Deere, for example, recently launched 3 new product lines, including John Deere Commercial Zero Turn Mowers. All of these lines warrant ad spending.

What audiences are they targeting?

For example, advertisers for John Deere are focusing print advertising within mostly B2B markets, particularly the agricultural industries of farming and groundskeeping. They go after those who run or do landscaping at golf courses and universities.

We also see this on the consumer side, with the company dipping its toes into a new market: small-farm families. John Deere is also hitting up CES, which has obvious advertising implications—advertisers will have to heavily promote these innovative new products like its robotics-based fertilizer system and a new electric excavator.

As a seller preparing for a sales call, you want to be a knowledgeable partner and intimately understand what’s important to the company right now.

Which ad format(s) does your prospect favor?

So often, we’re told to believe that digital is always up and print is always down. That’s sometimes true, but not always.

While we certainly live in a digital world, many brands, especially those in B2C and DTC, are shifting an increasing amount of their ad dollars to traditional formats to avoid the digital noise and prepare for a world without third-party cookies.

Does the prospect’s company target audiences geographically or demographically? 

When a company targets demographically, it is interested in a contact’s job function and level of education rather than their age or marital status.

John Deere is an example of a company that targets audiences geographically.

Most of its audiences work on golf courses and in other agricultural efforts. Because golf courses and agricultural efforts happen more in certain parts of the country, the company targets geographically.

More specifically, John Deere has a major concentration in Iowa, where there’s a lot of farming.

What is your prospect’s creative like?

You want to see the creative to understand a prospect and its objectives in real time.

Three or four years ago, we found that the type of advertising in media that consumers and B2B brands would run was very different. B2C brands were all-in on Instagram, for example. Now, B2B brands are investing in the social platform as well.

On the B2B side, advertisers are buying mobile, OOH, sponsorships and events, native advertising (sponsored content), video, etc.

Here’s an example from The Trade Desk (TTD) investing in OOH, connected TV, and other digital formats.

When you’re going into a pitch, research to uncover the message, tone, and who and what kind of person the prospect features in its ads.

Also, know the specific products the company is marketing, the budget, and how they are being purchased – in print, mobile, email, or events?

Having this knowledge when you walk in the door will make you a better partner and a more appealing choice to your prospect.

2. Understand Your Prospect’s Advertising Strategy

In B2B media, do publishers not pitch integrated buys?

John Deere is an example. Few media companies that the company works with get part of the buy in multiple formats. It’s segmented that way. They either win digital or print or another media format.

You would want to know this before you go in so that you can address it.

What are your prospect’s renewal rates?

Renewal rates determine what’s working and what’s not working for the customer. It’s a litmus test. It tells a company how it is doing right now.

John Deere has historically had high renewal rates in both print and TV. It renewed business with 70% of its highly specialized B2B partners like Golfdom, Equipment Today, and Successful Farming and also renewed business with 68% of its TV partners, including ABC, the Outdoor Channel, and The Weather Channel.

The point here is that if you’re a good partner to John Deere and the company likes you, you will re-win its business.

MediaRadar tracks renewal rates because it’s important. If you’re going to be a great partner to John Deere, you need to know what’s not working and understand why the company should choose you.

3. Recognize Why Your Prospect Should Choose You 

What is their audience?

What are the key reasons why your media company and audience are the best fit for a brand?

Visualize the solution to the prospect’s problem. How will the recommended campaign, frequency, and pricing be positioned to meet their objectives?

Talking about yourself is always the easiest. Understanding your client and listening is often where reps get tripped up.

What does success look like? 

Understand the campaigns from the beginning and pinpoint the key metrics that will be evaluated. This last step is often left out. Don’t overlook it.

Increasingly, the most successful sales reps defined key metrics and really pushed them in advance. You want to know this at the beginning and write it down. Some sales reps will even sign it. This is for everyone’s benefit.

What does success mean?

Does it mean the company sells a certain number of units from a campaign? For example, if the company is Monsanto, that could be more specific seeds or pesticides or certain tractor models if the company is John Deere.

Some B2B publishers also offer guarantees. If you’re going to market a certain value of dollars at a certain frequency, the company may stand behind you because it knows its audience well enough.

4. Know the Competition

You want to know everything about your competition.

How does the audience, as well as the quality and frequency of the editorial, differ from yours?

Be ready to outshine the competitors

Don’t bring up your competition. It’s distasteful. Bashing your competitor is almost never helpful. The prospect might be spending money with them, presumably because they thought it would be a good idea. So, be thoughtful.

Know the competition and differentiate yourself from them, too.

Know your differentiators, such as campaign, price, audience, and positioning, in case your prospect asks for them.

If you can exhibit how you stand apart, you’ll be better positioned to win over any prospect.

Don’t forget about the competition

See if your competition has uncovered ways to capitalize on markets where, say, John Deere is performing below the industry average.

How will you be a good partner in understanding your prospect’s objectives so you can talk about the marketplace well?

Because B2B publishers know their endemic marketplace, you will know company names like Kinze, Kubota, Fast AG Solutions, and Apache Sprayers by Equipment Technologies (ET).

The question is: Can you be really thoughtful? Do you know more than just the surface level of the competition?

You are helping your prospect solve a problem. Knowing how to outperform your competition is important, but showing them how they can outperform theirs is paramount.

5. Be Able to Effectively Communicate Your Offerings

Did you know that 75% of executives have been prompted to attend an event or take an appointment due to a cold call or email?

Why reach out by phone?

While younger, inexperienced sales reps may disagree, reaching out via phone is very effective. In fact, about half of all directors and managers prefer the call.

Why?

• Make a Human Connection. Hearing a sales rep’s voice, tone, inflection, and conviction can help them seem more valuable to a prospect.
• Get More Information from Prospect: An open-ended conversation can glean more valuable insights and information than you’d get going back and forth via email.
• Present Your Value: Messages and value can get lost in translation when sent via email. Calls give sellers a surefire way to get their message across while allowing the prospect to ask follow-up questions.

Keys to leaving voicemails

B2B is unique – it’s about a completely endemic and very narrow market.

Sales reps aren’t robocalling millions of people. They mostly leave voicemails, so be clear that you’re human and nice and will call back your prospect.

Also, be patient and persistent; reaching a prospect takes eight to ten cold call attempts. 

Things to be aware of when leaving a voicemail:

• Lead with the takeaway
• People only remember 4% of what you say
• Avoid information overload
• Keep the message between 8-10 seconds
• Follow up with a personalized email 
• Be natural and personable

Connecting with a live person

Remember that you’re interrupting someone. Be humble.

Forty-four percent of salespeople give up after just one call, so remember to be patient and provide new insights in each voicemail.

Sales Phone Call Tips:

• Capture attention right away
• Have talking points available that relay value
• Ask for a few minutes and schedule a deeper dive

Communication through email

Email communication should be clear, concise, and succinct.

The better you follow that, the better the outcome.

Sales email tips

• Lead with their need
• Less is more
• 33% of recipients open based on the subject line, so take the time to grab attention
• Ask for the meeting and be specific when scheduling

Always follow up on your voicemails or phone conversations with personalized emails. Personalized emails improve click-through rates (CTR) by 14% and conversation rates by 10%. This will help to reinforce your value.

Making the Most of Your Sales Calls

As a B2B rep, these five sales call planning steps will help you better understand your prospect’s needs and know your value within the market.

The best reps implement these five key learnings into their sales strategy. If you do the same, you can break through the noise and get that meeting.

For more insights, sign up for MediaRadar’s blog here.

When writing an SOW, you must clearly define your offering and establish the guidelines of your relationship. 

To do this, include relevant and specific information that will catch your prospect’s eye and allow you to highlight your agency’s unique value proposition.

That’s pretty ambiguous, though. There’s a lot you could include in an SOW.

So, what should you include? Here are 7 essentials.

What’s a Statement of Work (SOW)?

A statement of work (SOW) is a document that describes a project’s requirements. Said another way, an SOW outlines the scope of the work, deliverables, timelines, payment terms, and anything else pertinent to the business relationship.

A statement of work essentially sets expectations for the customer-business relationship and holds both parties responsible. An SOW also acts as “protection.” For example, if a customer and business disagree on the payment conditions upon the project’s completion, they can reference the SOW.

Statement of Work vs. Scope of Work

Statement of Work and Scope of Work are often used interchangeably, especially because you can abbreviate both with “SOW.”

They’re not the same—here’s the (relatively small) difference:

A Statement of Work is a formal document that describes the project’s goals. Meanwhile, the Scope of Work is a part of the Statement of Work that describes the plan to deliver the outcomes for which the customer is paying. Think of a Statement of Work as the book and the Scope of Work as a chapter.

What Should You Include a Statement of Work?

No two Statements of Work are the same because no two projects are the same.

Each project requires a unique SOW that outlines the specifics of that engagement. That said, almost all SOWs will include seven elements: the Scope of Work, deliverables, time and resources, payment terms, client services, changes, and terms and conditions.

Let’s look at each one.

1. Scope of Work

We’re already covered this essential, but it’s worth repeating.

The Scope of Work outlines what’s actually going to be done or what could be done if required. This is where you’ll use words like strategy, project, plan, etc. Your benefit to the client should be made most evident.

Your benefits should be at the heart of this section. What can you include to show them you took the time to carefully craft a plan to fulfill their needs?

2. Deliverables

While it’s important to lay out your goals and schedule, it’s also important to establish a two-way flow of deliverables. These are the guidelines attached to the Scope of Work.

As you build your SOW, lay out the key accomplishments and milestones and when their deadlines.

Consider this the verbal, more friendly version of the Terms and Conditions (see below). After all, a big factor in meeting your deliverables is having a cooperative partner.

3. Timeline and Resources

You should also include a detailed project timeline and any related resources, including the project’s duration, required tools and resources from both parties, and where the project will occur.  

4. Payment Terms

It is always smart to be upfront when discussing money, so create a billing plan with clear payment terms, including payment due dates, payment methods, and any additional terms that could apply.

Typical payment terms include “by deliverable” or “by schedule.” For the former, the customer pays when you reach certain milestones. Paying “by schedule” means the customer sends you payment on a pre-defined date, like every month or bi-weekly.

No one likes to feel duped, nor do they like hidden terms, especially in a down economy forcing many businesses to pinch pennies like never before.

5. Client Services

Tell your client who they will interact with when contacting your company and across what mediums, including email, phone, text messages, etc.

Communication is important in the relationship-building process. This section of a Statement of Work establishes how you’ll do that. 

6. Changes

There will most likely be some tweaks during the project—and that is ok.

During times of “scope creep,” i.e., the unauthorized additions to a project, it is important to show you are flexible and understand that sometimes change is necessary (within reason). 

That said, it is equally as important to communicate your expectations about any changes and how they will impact the original Scope of Work and project timeline.

7. Terms and Conditions

As with any contract, you must include legal information, including contract termination, invoicing agreements, damages, and other legal issues relevant to your relationship with the customer.

The Importance of a Statement of Work

There’s no right or wrong way to write a Statement of Work, but there are essentials, including the scope of work, deliverables, time and resources, payment terms, client services, changes, and terms and conditions.

Include these—and anything else you deem relevant to the project—and you’ll be in a prime position to demonstrate your willingness and interest in forming long-standing relationships with your clients. You’ll realize a host of other benefits, too.

For more insights, sign up for MediaRadar’s blog here.

After countless emails and even more voicemails, you’ve finally got your prospect on the phone. Even better, you’ve landed a Zoom meeting. 

Before that started, you had to find your perfect target, so you focused on maintaining a near-perfect prospect list.

Great job.

Now, it’s time to ask questions—you know, to get to know the prospect and push them toward a deal. But not just any questions, though. The key to building lasting—and profitable—relationships with your prospects is to ask the right questions. 

Your level of question specificity could be looked at as a funnel:

Introduction Questions

Questions at this stage of the relationship-building process with your prospects should be high-level and aimed at building rapport. Nothing more, nothing less. Said another way, they’re questions you would ask almost anyone. 

While these questions may seem insignificant to your ultimate goal of closing a deal, their relationship-building prowess is exponentially more important in the post-pandemic world. According to McKinsey & Company, more than 70% of buyers no longer want to meet sales reps in person but are open to remote meetings. 

These “introductory” questions can go a long way in fostering your relationship with prospects and setting a foundation to close a sale.

For example: 

• How is your business going?
• What are you doing this weekend/how was your weekend?
• I’ve gotten a sense of your business from your website and marketing
• materials, but I’d love to hear more from you. Can you tell me what you’ve been up to this quarter? 
• How did you hear about us? (Your marketing team will love you for this one.)
• What was your experience buying X?
• When was the last time you purchased X?

After you get through these top-level questions, it’s time to dive deeper and connect with your prospects in a meaningful, solution-focused way; it’s time to bring your product into the equation.    

Getting-to-Know-You Questions 

Questions at the “getting-to-know-you” stage are more profound and specific but still open-ended. At this point, the conversation should still be engaging. 

While the questions are still higher level, they should be time-specific and geared toward your prospect’s company, their experience, and what they’re trying to accomplish with your product (at least at a high level). 

For example: 

• What is most important to you and your team right now?  
• Who typically works with you to make buying decisions?
• What is your biggest area of focus in the first six months of the year?
• You specialize in X niche. Why did you choose it?
• Did you use a checklist or comparison matrix to help you make a purchase decision for X?
• Can you walk me through the process you’ve used to fix X problem?

By asking your prospect open-ended yet specific questions, they will be more inclined to be transparent and honest with you. 

Getting-Personal Questions

Not personal in how you’d talk to a friend or a colleague at a work event; personal in the sense that you’re starting to understand why your prospect is looking for a solution like yours. More importantly, you’re trying to figure out if there’s a match. 

For example: 

• How will solving this problem or achieving this business goal impact your organization and you personally?
• Have you used similar products in the past? If so, what was your experience? 
• How will you be “grading” the impact of this product? Which metrics will you use, and who will you report to? 

Knowing your product or solution’s impact on your prospect and their team is essential because it helps you better understand their mindset and focus on a specific, meaningful, mutually beneficial end goal.

Relationship Building is a Question-based Process

To grow your business, it’s your responsibility to make your buyer understand your solution is helping them overcome real-life problems – not hypothetical ones. 

If you follow a discovery process that includes asking the right questions, the buyer will lay out a roadmap for how you close more business.

To know what questions you should ask, it’s important to consider your prospect as a person and nothing else.

Think about the process of becoming strongly acquainted with another person. The first thing you do is introduce yourself, plain and simple.

After breaking the ice, you begin getting to know the prospect a bit more. You learn about who they are, where they’re from, and their current situation.

From there, you get personal. As your questions get more personal, they get more specific. This is where you learn about the other person’s why or intent.

Once you completely understand the other person, you can form a meaningful, mutually beneficial partnership. This, in its entirety, is the framework for deciding what questions to ask your prospects.

For more insights, sign up for MediaRadar’s blog here.

Ad sales intelligence tools can pinpoint the right person to contact and craft the perfect pitch.

These digital tools will continue to offer sales reps a straight line to buyers—and that’s a good thing.

A McKinsey survey found that more than 75% of buyers and sellers prefer virtual sales meetings over face-to-face interactions.

That said, sellers shouldn’t discount the power of a good old-fashioned phone call.

Despite most prospects being fond of emails, only 8.5% of all outreach emails get a response.

The response rate of other digital channels isn’t always much better, especially given the volume of outreach the average buyer swims through daily.

In 2023 and beyond, a phone call will be a key cog in any well-oiled sales machine.

The problem: Most calls go unanswered.

The solution: Leave a voicemail that demands a return call.

Here are 6 tips for leaving effective sales voicemails this year.

1. Have a Verbal “Subject Line”

Much like an email subject line, give your prospect a reason to continue listening beyond your introduction.

When leaving a voicemail, it’s important to immediately present the value of your company to the prospect. Construct an opening talking point with the same intentions you would use to write an email subject line.

If you were emailing a prospect, would you include your name and company in the subject line?

Of course not.

It’s helpful to treat voicemails the same way. Make sure you hook the listener first.

Sales emails opener ideas

• Company research, i.e., “I saw your company recently did X.”
• Prospect pain point, i.e., “Are you experiencing X challenge?”
• Competitor insight, i.e., “Your competitor is doing X.”
• Strategic suggestions, “Have you considered X solution to improve your strategy?”

Relate to their needs from the start. Start with them. Wait to introduce yourself.

2. Avoid Information Overload

Information overload is real.

Like, very real. In fact, 80% of global workers experience information overload.

Therefore, avoiding giving your prospect too much information in your voicemail is very important.

If you’ve done the proper research during the prospecting stage, you should have a good idea of your prospect’s needs and how your product can help them.

Focus on a single subject or need, and speak directly about how you can solve it.

This is a way to be very specific, concise, and powerful.

In fact, keep your sales emails to around 30 seconds.

If you can get your point across clearly, and in less time than that, terrific, but try not to creep beyond that threshold. This is enough time to include essential information and make your message clear in the era of the 8-second attention span.

3. Be Personable

It’s important to take advantage of your ability to verbalize your message.

As we stated earlier, voicemails are like emails in the sense that, when constructed, they’re a one-sided affair – meaning, there’s no immediate conversation.

However, leaving a voicemail allows you to use the tone of your voice to be more personable. Take advantage of that.

If you possess a friendly, confident, and excited tone when leaving a voicemail, there’s a better chance that your prospect will remember your message. It’s one thing to relate to them on a business level, but it’s another thing to relate to them on a personal level.

That said, don’t open with, “Did I catch you at a bad time?”. It may seem personable, but it could decrease your success rate for booking a meeting by 40%.

4. Be Natural

This one is easier said than done, but it is extremely effective when done correctly.

You shouldn’t sound like a robot when leaving a voicemail, nor should you sound like you are reading from a script. You shouldn’t be overly pushy either, especially if you’re leaving a voicemail for the first or second time.

If your sales tactics are aggressive or pushy, you could drive 84% of buyers away.

The closer you are to sounding like yourself in your voicemail, the greater the chance your prospect calls you back.

If you sound like a robot, your prospect may assume that your pitch to them is the same pitch you give to everyone. You’ll get the same negative response that templated InMail messages receive on LinkedIn.

5. Have a Voicemail Ready for Every Call

In the current state of ad sales, avoiding “cookie-cutter” selling is essential. Your pitch should be different for every prospect; thus, your voicemails should differ for every call.

It might seem easier to prepare for individual conversations and have just a single voicemail as your fallback. Avoid that.

For every call, do the necessary research to build conversation talking points and a voicemail outline.

Just because there isn’t a person on the other end of the line doesn’t eliminate the need to personalize your message.

In the new age of ad sales, reps must take voicemails as seriously as they take emails, phone calls, or other forms of communication.

Impressing a prospect across multiple communication mediums could make all the difference in turning them into a client.

6. Don’t Give Up

Let’s be real: Most of your voicemails won’t get a response—and that’s ok. But don’t give up just because the prospect is giving you a proverbial “no.” In fact, 60% of customers will say no four times before they agree to a deal.

Keep this in mind if your prospects don’t call you back. They’re busy in their personal and professional lives, so getting to them may take a few tries.

That said, don’t sing the same tune each time. If you have to leave more than one sales email, craft a slightly different message each time—think of each voicemail as an opportunity to continue the story.

Each one should build off the next.

Leaving the Perfect Sales Voicemail

Just as sales reps are extremely busy, so are their contacts. This means that there will be plenty of times when the phone rings… And rings… And rings.

And no one answers.

Instead of looking at this moment as a missed opportunity, however, sales reps need to look at a voicemail simply as another chance to impress their prospect.

Many sales teachers focus heavily on saying the right things during a phone call. In many cases, voicemails are looked at as a more concise version of what the phone conversation would have been.

Preparing for a voicemail is actually a very different process, however, because it is, at the moment, a one-sided affair, like a presentation or an email.

While using the right research tools when planning your next voicemail is essential, it’s most important to use the right techniques to ensure your prospect feels the need to keep in touch.

For more insights, sign up for MediaRadar’s blog here.

Not on a whim, that’s for sure.

Every successful agency-client relationship is built on a foundation of understanding. 

However, reps must research and prepare to understand their prospects to build these relationships.

In the pre-pitch stage, this process is known as prospecting.

What Is Sales Prospecting?

Prospecting is initiating and developing business by looking for potential customers who meet your ideal customer profile (ICP). Prospecting aims to engage in conversations, nurture a prospect down the funnel, and ultimately turn them into closed-won revenue.

Why Is Prospecting Important?

Prospecting is your first interaction with a brand if you’re an agency development rep. It’s an opportunity to prove that you’re a student of their business and fully invested in being their partner.

At the same time, prospecting makes sure you’re maximizing your time, talking to the right people, and engaging with those who have the potential to turn into closed-won revenue.

Unfortunately, prospecting can sometimes be very time-consuming. In fact, top sellers spend an average of 6 hours per week researching prospects.

Arming yourself with the right prospecting tools and knowing which questions to ask can make understanding potential clients much easier and less time-consuming.

What to Look for When Prospecting

Let’s say you have your sights set on Nike.

To understand Nike and maximize your relationship with your prospect, it’s important to ask the right questions:

What ad formats do they use?

Does Nike advertise on TV? What about print?

Believe it or not, Nike has historically placed ads across many media formats, including print, display, mobile, video, native, email, and TV. 

Offering a cross-platform advertising package could be the key to winning the business.

At the same time, ask yourself if it’s also investing in more emerging ecosystems like OTT and TikTok. If the company hasn’t invested in social media ads—or hasn’t, ask yourself why?

Is it because they don’t believe there’s audience alignment?

Is it because the ads are becoming too expensive compared to alternatives?

Are the ad loads too much?

Which ad formats are advertisers using to embrace the DTC model?

Since 2011, Nike has increased direct-to-consumer sales from 16% of brand revenues to 35%.

Determine which ad formats they use—and which ones they don’t—and craft a pitch that’ll resonate with the prospect and get them thinking about how you can help them take their strategy to the next level.

How much do they advertise?

Knowing a brand’s ad spend and the number of ads placed tells you about its ad strategy.

For example, Nike actually decreased ad spending in the last 12 months, despite revenue increasing by 6.05%.

Which corners of the advertising world did they stop spending in?

Did they move away from TV, given their embrace of digital-first DTC audiences?

Have advertisers reduced spending on display ads in preparation for the downfall of third-party cookies?

Fluctuations in ad spend may signify an altered marketing strategy within the company or perhaps a lack of return on investment.

If you can provide tangible proof of return on different ad formats, you could win that share of wallet.

Where do they advertise?

What TV networks, print and online publications do Nike typically advertise with? 

This will tell you a lot about which demographics it’s trying to reach. The ability to target the right audience can be a deal-maker or even a deal-breaker for a brand.

What kind of ad creative do they run?

Study your prospect’s past creative to get a feel for their design and layout preferences across platforms.

Leading up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Nike FC released a campaign titled “Footballverse” that featured some of the best players and showed consumers how they’d match up against old-school legends—and it all happened in a parallel universe.

What agencies do they work with?

Find out who Nike currently works with.

Do they have an agency specifically for creative, TV, or digital?

Do they have an agency for each?

In 2022, Nike wrapped up its global media review by selecting two new agencies: IPG Mediabrands’ Initiative to handle media globally and in the EMEA and APLA regions, and PMG to run integrated media.

According to a source, the account is worth approximately $1 billion, with a good chunk of that going to Nike’s push into DTC.

Can you provide a better service or fill a blind spot in Nike’s strategy?

Combine this with advertising insights to see how you fare against your competitors.

Who should I talk to?

Once you’ve gained a full understanding of how your prospect advertises, it’s important to understand their people.

Research who the decision makers are within the company and who to talk to regarding different aspects of their business.

And remember, there may be a group of people you need to connect with—the typical buying group for a complex B2B solution includes between 8 and 10 people.

For example:

• Are you a digital creative agency? Find Nike’s director of digital partnerships.
• Are you an international agency looking to work in new markets? Reach out to Nike’s Senior Marketing Director for Emerging Markets
• Are you an integrated agency? Reach out to the person who selected PMG.

MediaRadar users have access to recently verified contact information that allows reps to directly connect with decision makers by phone, email, or social media, and find local information to plan convenient meetings.

Prospecting the Right Way with MediaRadar

MediaRadar helps you better understand prospects by providing the data needed to learn about them and the insights to make that data actionable—and the benefits are impossible to ignore.

Benefits of ad sales intelligence tools

So, what are the benefits of ad sales intelligence tools?

The list is long, but here are the highlights:

• Identify your point of contact: Ad sales intelligence platforms help you prospect for new business and connect with the right people. They issue reports on spending and allow you to uncover opportunities. With these insights, you can determine if this person is in your ICP and reach out.
• Insights on when to reach out: You can get insights on brand media planning and buying periods, which can help you stay on top of upcoming RFPs. This will allow you to proactively plan and craft a pitch that will truly resonate.
• Context for the perfect pitch: Tools give you information on spending data, insights into cross-channel spending, and greater industry insights. Rather than using multiple tools or doing countless hours of manual research, you can find all this information in one place.
• Leverage existing relationships: You can see who holds buying power (now and in the past) and use that information to write a compelling cold email. 
• Outperform the competition: You can only gain an advantage over your competition when you have accurate, trustworthy, and recent data. These tools give you that.

How can you ensure you pick the right ad sales intelligence tool?

Ask yourself 5 questions:

1. Can I trust the information provided? Do you know where the company sources the data? What about how often they update it?
2. Is the tool easy to use and understand? You can have the most powerful ad sales intelligence tool, but if it’s hard to use—or impossible to decipher the data—you won’t use it (or use it as intended).
3. Does the vendor take data privacy seriously? Ask the vendor if they are a US Privacy Shield Program (US version of the EU’s GDPR) Participant. Additionally, determine if they comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
4. Can I customize the platform? Figure out if the tool can be tailored to your needs and goals. Can you engage in personalized prospecting and filter the tool by factors and variables that matter to you?
5. Is the vendor a partner? Ask the vendor if they’re truly invested in your success or if they will disappear after onboarding. At MediaRadar, for example, every customer has a dedicated, personalized account management team.

A reliable ad sales intelligence tool allows you to identify and pursue high-priority opportunities. Make your perfect pitch with relevant data and a team supporting you all the way. 

For more insights, sign up for MediaRadar’s blog here.

You have your go-to-market (GTM) strategy and your sales reps have realistic goals.

Great. 

Now what? 

Create a path to success that they can believe. 

Here are four ways you can do that.

Show Your Reps Their Account List’s Potential

Whether one of your reps is working toward a revenue target, president’s club or a performance-based trip, their success relies in some part on you showing them how to succeed. 

To do this, start by showing them their account list. 

But don’t just show them. 

Sit down with them and show them its potential.  

For example, you could filter their list by “spend growth” to find the brands that have increased their spending by at least 20% in the past 12 months.

Then, have them target these high-growth brands—they’re likely more eager to do business than one with decreasing spend.

Similarly, take a look at which brands are in the RFP process, and show your rep how to insert themselves into that brand’s consideration set.

You could even look for brands approaching peak spending, like a retailer during the holidays or those that are shifting their strategies, and see if they are open to a conversation.  

Slice and dice the list however you want—the important thing is that you make the time to show your reps where there are opportunities to sell.

From there, look at their historical sales metrics, like average conversion rate and the number of meetings it takes them to close a deal, and map everything out. 

By the end of this process, not only are your reps eager to get going, but they have a clear path forward and know what they have to do to be successful. 

Get in the Trenches 

You’ve done your due diligence and understand your total addressable market (TAM), helped your reps set goals and started mapping out a path.

Now it’s time to get in the trenches. 

Remember: The best way for you to ultimately zoom out and do less hand-holding is to zoom in for a bit.

A great way to do this is by looking at one of their accounts and walking them through how you’d use market- and company-wide data to develop a pitch, talk to them, and close the deal. 

For example, I had a customer come to me recently interested in finding a water sponsor for an upcoming festival. 

They wanted to work with Dasani, but upon going into MediaRadar and looking at the data, we found that Dasani wasn’t a great fit.  

So, we kept looking and found a better one. 

This is the process I’d show to a sales rep—how to sift through the data, have valuable conversations and build the relationship with customers and prospects.

Not only did this help the rep understand how I sell, but they saw the sweat equity I’m investing, which hopefully will impact their morale and engagement.

Getting in the trenches also gives me a clear vantage point into the frontlines and the perspective I need to be an effective sales leader.

It’s a win-win-win. 

Take Your 1:1s Seriously

I’m a firm believer that 1:1s with your reps are your most valuable asset.

Why? 

Because being a great sales leader is just as much about coaching as it is about tactics and strategies. An effective 1:1 puts this into action by increasing transparency between you and your rep, while also giving you the opportunity to lend a hand.

That said, before getting into the 1:1, ask them the “cost of admission.”

I think of these as the bare minimum line items a sales rep should be doing—think things like making calls, prospecting and sending emails. 

If a rep isn’t taking these steps to build their pipeline and close deals, a more in-depth (and valuable) 1:1 probably isn’t in the cards; there are more fundamental problems to deal with.

Assuming your reps are covering their bases, you can get into the the good stuff—upcoming opportunities, the sales funnel and obstacles they may need help navigating. 

Have them map out their account list to key sales metrics.

For example, which deals should close this quarter? Which ones look like they’re going to fall through?

Try to get to the “why,” so you can see how they are taking steps to reach their sales goals. Remind them of the goals they’ve set and how close—or far—they are from achieving them. After all, the here-and-now is important but it’s all for naught if the greater goals fall by the wayside.

With so many moving pieces, your 1:1 can get complicated. Here’s a pro tip: 

Start a “living” document, share it with your reps and use it to track action items for the week, like creating a media mix report or making intro calls to prospects. 

This document should also act as a place where reps can ask questions, and note any challenges or other items they want to discuss with you. 

Play All Fours Quarters

I’m a huge fan of celebrating wins big and small alike. 

Whether it’s a toast, dinner or company-wide email, celebrating the wins is one of the best ways to improve morale and help reps maintain momentum. 

Boosting morale is becoming increasingly important as remote work takes hold and in-person interactions become less frequent.

What I’m not a fan of is reps focusing only on what’s in front of them and neglecting what’s to come. 

Whenever one of my reps starts getting trapped in this mindset, it’s usually because of time (or the lack thereof); even the best reps will get tunnel vision and lose sight of the bigger picture.

In other words, they spend all of their time closing and no time prospecting. 

If your reps are doing the same, introduce time management strategies that help them stay on course and not lose sight of their goals. 

How many calls should they make each week? 

How many times should they reach out to prospects to keep a deal moving? 

How many emails should they send to schedule an intro call? 

Figure out what they need to do consistently to succeed and then make sure they block off time to do those things.

Time blocking is an effective way to do this because it eliminates one of the biggest hurdles to productivity: making a decision. 

So, just like many successful people wear the same thing everyday to remove a decision from the equation, your reps won’t have to decide between doing what will help today and what they have to do to succeed tomorrow. 

Their calendar will make the decision for them (or at least remind them).

Creating a Clear Path: The Secret to Sales Success

For better or worse, there’s no secret formula to sales success. 

It takes a host of tangible skills and even more intangible ones.

It takes some luck and being in the right place at the right time.  

A whole lot of determination and perseverance is required, too. 

But reaching the pinnacle of sales isn’t supposed to be easy. If it was, everyone would do it. 

That said, as a sales leader, it’s your responsibility to help your reps get there. 

Setting realistic goals and showing them a clear path they can believe in is the best way to do that.

This article is based on a webinar from MediaRadar’s Chief Sales Officer, Jen Wilga. Watch the full webinar, here.

Read our first part of this series, “How to Set Goals with Your Sales Reps—and Make Them Stick,” here.

Decades of research have shown us a clear truth—setting goals gives you power. One popular statistic: a 1979 Harvard study found that the three percent of graduates from its MBA program who wrote down their goals earned up to 10x as much as the 97% who didn’t.

Before you say, “Wait…1979? How do we know this is still relevant?”—consider this study from 2015. It found that people who wrote down their goals were 33% more successful in achieving them than those who only thought about them. 

Setting goals works. It’s why I take it so seriously with my sales reps. Here, I’m sharing how I set realistic goals with sales reps and a couple of tactics I use to make them stick.

Understand Your Total Addressable Market (TAM)

Setting realistic goals is next to impossible if you don’t have a good understanding of the playing field. 

For this reason, the smartest and most realistic sales goals originate from a total addressable market (TAM) report. To start, ask yourself these questions:

• What does your market look like today? 
• How many brands exist?
• How many new ones entered the market last year? 
• What does overall spending look like?
• How has this spending changed from last year? 
• Are brands testing any new strategies or tactics such as OTT? 

(If you’re a MediaRadar client, this data is accessible in the Power Prospecting Report.) 

With this information, you can paint a clear picture of what your market looks like, and more importantly, how your go-to-market (GTM) strategy should take shape, which is increasingly important given the pandemic-fueled shifts taking place in many industries. 

Here’s an example of what I mean: I recently had a customer come to me who knew a change in strategy was necessary, but she didn’t know where to start.

So, we dove into market data and uncovered insights that told her that her reps should be focusing on entirely new categories than they did in the recent past. 

Knowing this allowed her to set realistic goals with her reps. The same applies to you.

Review TAM with Sales Reps

Now that you know where you stand and what your strategy should look like, align your reps with these insights to ensure they get out of the starting blocks strong.

Is one of your best reps not maximizing their skills because their account list is too light?

Is one struggling because they’re drowning in accounts, or worse, going after ones that aren’t aligned with your current strategy? 

By aligning your sales reps with insights on your total addressable market, you can optimize their time and make sure everyone’s in a position to reach the goals you’ve set with them.

An overview of rep alignment with active accounts will also give you insight into “unassigned” accounts or “opportunities” that may otherwise go unnoticed. 

When I go through this exercise, I often find hidden gems that aren’t currently linked to a rep. 

While I could take these gems and hand them out at random, what I’ve found beneficial for my team is to put them aside—think of this as a pool of really great opportunities that you can use to incentivize reps. 

For example, if a rep exceeds their quarterly target or closes a challenging deal, I’ll go into this bucket of gems and give them one as a way to say “great job” (but also to keep them charged up for the quarters ahead). 

How to Help Sales Reps Achieve Their Goals

Even the most strategic and seemingly realistic goals will be out of reach if you don’t take steps to help your reps achieve them. 

Luckily, there are steps you can take.

Here are two I take all the time: 

1. Inspect what you expect 

A Gallup study found that when employees “strongly agree” that their manager knows what they’re working on, they’re almost 7x more likely to be engaged.

This study is just one of the reasons why I’m such a big fan of weekly 1:1s—and why you should be, too. 

To make the most of this time, base your meeting on an accountability plan that pulls data from your CRM about accounts, values and other metrics that can act as a barometer for performance.  

At the same time, turn your attention to opportunities and their sales funnel.

• How many opportunities did they create last week? 
• What key accounts are they targeting? 
• Which deals will likely close this quarter? 
• Which deals have stalled? 
• What outreach strategies are working well? Which ones aren’t? 

With a better understanding of where your reps are on their path (the one outlined in the first step), you can come up with a plan for the week ahead—think about action items like the number of calls they should make, strategies they should use to nudge a sale along and a new account they should target.

Over the course of the quarter, these 30-minute chunks every week will increase the likelihood that your reps achieve their goals.

2. Celebrate the big (and little) wins

Remember during your childhood when someone would call a loved one, or send you home with a note, telling what a great job you did on a test or at an event? 

It felt great, right? 

You can—and should—replicate that feeling with your reps. 

Have a toast. 

Grab a bite to eat. 

Send an email to the company. 

Heck, call their mom. 

Celebrating the big and small wins can go a long way.  

Sales is a fast-paced game and a fickle beast that requires a special type of person to master, but it can’t always be go, go, go. 

Burnout is real and the past couple of years have shown us that.

APA’s 2021 Work and Well-being Survey found that 79% of employees had experienced work-related stress in the month before the survey, while nearly 3 in 5 reported negative impacts of work-related stress, including lack of interest and motivation.

So, whenever you have an opportunity to get some endorphins flowing, do so. 

Your reps will thank you. 

Setting Goals: The Most Important Step You Can Take in 2022

In a fast-paced sales world that’s evolving quicker than ever, new strategies popping up seemingly overnight and shifting consumer expectations, like a bigger premium on the customer experience, even the best reps need a clear target and a guiding hand that’s been there and done that. 

As a sales leader, that’s you.

Look for our follow-up to this article, “Creating a Path to Success,” when you sign up for MediaRadar’s blog here.

This article is based on a webinar from MediaRadar’s Chief Sales Officer, Jen Wilga. Watch the full webinar, here.