I’d like you to think about the last time you bought a new pair of shoes. What was the first thing you thought of when you began to contemplate shoe shopping?
Maybe your shoes were worn out and didn’t look good anymore; or you needed a pair to go with an outfit or a new suit that you didn’t have a pair to match. Maybe you bought some boots because you were ruining your dress shoes or loafers wearing them walking out in the rain or snow. Maybe your feet were starting to hurt in your old sneakers because they no longer gave the support they used to. Or just maybe you saw a pair of shoes that were so attractive that you just HAD to have them!
One thing that all of these scenarios have in common is that the purchase (99 ¾ % of the time) was not made based on the least expensive price you could have paid for those shoes! It was based on an emotion. When you decided to buy that pair of shoes, you did so in order to overcome a problem (real or perceived). Problems are a rich source of emotions.
Consider this: why are you investing time in reading this blog? My guess is that you are reading these words in hopes that you will learn something, or be reminded of something, that will help you overcome some problem or challenge that you have in selling OOH. Maybe you are doing better than average, but you know you could be doing even better and that bothers you…there is that emotional component again.
People don’t buy products or services based on price. Even people who believe that they are price shoppers who believe that’s how they buy…don’t really. Think about it. I would be willing to bet that you own ALMOST NOTHING that you could not have purchased a less expensive alternative. The shirt you have on, the car you drive, the food you buy, the home you rent or buy, etc. ALL of those had much less expensive alternatives you could have purchased.
Most OOH salespeople that I meet often struggle when prospects and clients push back on the pricing model that we use for our boards. Always pushing for a lower price for our inventory, trying to beat us down on our average rates. Why does this happen? Well, from a prospect or client’s perspective it’s because it works too often not to try it!
What we tend to forget as OOH salespeople is the buy is only about price when we don’t understand the cost of the problem the prospect is trying to overcome with an OOH buy. In that scenario, whatever rate we quote will be perceived as an expense rather than an investment to overcome an expensive problem.
It’s only about price when we are competing with other media for the buy and there is no perceived difference in value received from either media. (You and I both know there is always a difference in the value).
How good are you at helping a prospect identify what their issues are that OOH advertising is capable of helping them overcome? How good are you at helping them identify what it is likely costing the prospect to do nothing about those issues? Do you know and are conversant in the unique value selling propositions of OOH advertising? Digital OOH advertising? Your company’s unique value propositions versus your competitors?
Without those abilities and that knowledge, you are almost certainly guaranteed to continue to struggle when you inevitably deal with “rate push back”. Is that a problem big enough that you are willing to invest your time, energy and effort into overcoming it?
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.
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Lisa & Dan Nausley and Reggie Piercy of Sandler Chattanooga have developed the OOH Sales Mastery Program after more than a decade of training/coaching thousands of OOH Operators across the country in sales, leadership, and executive coaching.
