OOH Sales Blog

Leaders...Are You Focused on the Right Things?

“The main thing is the keep the main thing the main thing” Stephen Covey
‍
We’ve been working extensively with OOH owners and senior executives for many years now. The majority will have increased their occupancy rates by 10, 15 percentage points, increased revenues on existing inventory 10, 20, 30% year after year. I still find it humorous when these same high performing owners and senior executives will ask, “What should I be doing? What should I be focused on?”

‍
My answer is always he same…remember what got us from where you were to here and make sure that you keep doing those things like a broken record! What are those things? Well, there are a lot of them but if we were to boil it down to the “main things” let’s focus on these to start…

‍
1. Hire the strongest individuals you can find for every role in your company. To do so you must have a rock solid, fool proof hiring system that you follow. Once we have them we must always be “pouring into” our people to grow and develop them to their potential. Keep them sharp. The old adage that you are only as strong as your weakest link is true. Do you really believe that realistically you could not do better than each person you have in each role?

If you cannot truly say that, you have work to do!

‍
2. Set clear, well understood expectations. Each person: ad sales, real estate developers, bill posters, front office personnel, graphic artists, etc. ALL must know exactly what the expectations are for fulfilling their role in the company’s success. Define EXACTLY what is meeting expectations? What EXACTLY is exceeding expectations? As simple as this concept is, you would be amazed at how rare it is to find this in any organization.
3. Avoid Complacency: Over the years, I've emphasized to my clients that adversity often sharpens leadership. When times are tough, leaders are naturally driven to optimize resources and maximize outcomes. Conversely, success often breeds complacency. Yet, no OOH firm will truly excel without ingraining a culture of accountability. The pursuit of excellence requires a diligent, continual commitment to upholding high standards of performance.

‍
4. Emphasize Revenue Generation. When you have strong revenue, most problems tend to be minor in nature and are easily handled by investing what it takes to provide a solution. However, when revenues are depressed and we are struggling to pay the bills and eak out a paltry profit, ANY problem becomes a major stumbling block. As leaders we can never lose sight of the importance of keeping revenue generation as the highest priority that we focus upon day in and day out.

‍
Ensuring your focus remains on these fundamental pillars can be the difference between good leadership and exceptional OOH leadership.

----
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 have 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.

Read more Outdoor Sales Mastery Blogs

OOH Leadership

Five Best Practices for Leading High-Performance Salespeople

One of the mistakes that we see often with leaders of OOH sales teams is that they spend an inordinate amount of their time working with the team members that are not performing at an acceptable level. Sometimes spending as much as 75% of their time on the weakest performing salespeople. Trying desperately to raise the bar on their performance, often they will by in large neglect interactions with the high performers on the team.‍It may sound counterintuitive to not focus all your efforts trying to improve the reps who have the most opportunity for improvement. However, think of it this way. If you have to lose a salesperson, who would you rather see go? The high performer or the one that never seems to come close to reaching the minimum level of production you expect. The most valuable investment you can make in your salespeople is your time, your attention, your guidance and your coaching. ‍While we are not suggesting that you shouldn’t work with and spend time with the under performing reps, we must avoid at all costs the perception that the only way to get your attention is to under perform.

OOH Sales

Qualify Hard, Close Easy

In OOH Sales Mastery, we teach and relentlessly reinforce a simple principle, an impossible-to-forget idea that carries massive implications for optimal revenue production: qualify hard, close easy. One of the big problems we see, though, is that people sometimes imagine they’re qualifying hard, but aren’t. Why not? Because they aren’t completing a non-negotiable element of qualification: qualifying the potential buyer’s Pain, (or in layman’s terms…their problems, issues or concerns). If we haven’t done that, we have no place making any formal recommendation or presentation to the buyer. And, as a result, we can’t expect to close easily. When we qualify effectively their Pain, what are we doing? We’re clarifying, in emotional, practical terms that resonate for the buyer, exactly what all the potential costs are for not taking action on a problem that’s keeping them from getting where they need to go next in their world. One of our most famous tools for clarifying the emotional impact of those costs is known as the Pain Funnel. It’s a powerful series of questions that is designed to allow the prospect to self-discover not just what is happening but why it is happening and most importantly, how does that issue affect the bottom line.