When I was asked to contribute to this blog from a “sales perspective,” I leapt at the opportunity to stir the pot and stand up for all the hard done by, hard working sales men/women in the media world (queue violin).
Although we like to portray that all we do is sit around on Chesterfield lounges, drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes, sadly, we do not live in an episode of Mad Men.
The truth of the matter is that we do work hard, and it is not uncommon for us to punch out a series of 12 hour days (although not on a Friday), spending countless hours on presentations and chasing our ever increasing budgets. But that’s what we signed up for.
Sales isn’t as easy as a lot of you may think and here I have tried to give you all a (somewhat biased) view of the life of a salesman…
The cold call
I expect most of you are familiar with the concept of a blind date. You’ve been set up by a mate (or nagging boss) to meet someone with similar interests to yourself, but you don’t know anything about them. No matter how much research/facestalking you do, you still can’t quite tell if you’d make a good couple.
Now imagine if the person you are trying to ask out holds all the power. Yes, they may be interested in what you have to offer, but in their mind, there are plenty more fish in the sea - so what makes you the trophy catch? So next time you’re sitting with the phone in your hand, palms sweaty, practicing your pick up line in the mirror, waiting to call that mystery boy/girl – imagine making 20 of these a day!
The postponed meeting
Now I know people within the media industry have all been guilty of this one. You’ve made it past the first step and have agreed to the date, but you’re just not that enthusiastic about listening to yet another story about a man and his dog.
It’s the morning of and you’ve woken up with a hangover from last nights media junket, and to be frank, you’re just not feeling up to it. Normally, you’d pick up the phone, apologise and re-schedule. But we’re in advertising…
Your head is throbbing, your throat is sore, and you can’t be bothered ruffling through the rolodex of business cards (aka wastepaper bin) to find the number. But thank God for the internet. A simple tool that requires no emotion, a click of the button and (little to) no remorse – meeting cancelled.
The Friday lunch
Thanks to caller ID and voicemail you’ve been able to dodge the “cold calls” all week, and the internet has made it all too easy to re-scheduled your meetings… indefinitely.
But now we have a problem, it’s 10am on a Friday, and after last night's Media Thursday you’re craving a hair of the dog. But who are you going to call?
On second thought, lets reschedule that meeting with Joe Blo, better yet, get the new assistant to organise a meeting with their team. But tell them it’d be more productive if we got out of the office environment, suggest we go up the local. Actually, I heard that new two hat restaurant in town has good ambience, lets see if we can get a table…
Of course this is an exaggerated version, and designed to get a response from my agency mates – of which I have many (well, used to). But I’m sure most of you could relate to at least one of these points at some time in your media career.
So next time you want to have a refreshing Friday beverage, a free water bottle for Xmas, or even just a coffee and a chat; answer that call, go to that meeting, and while you’re there, you might find out we’re not all bad.
Now I’d like to throw it out to all you readers (no, not you mum and dad) to have a crack at next weeks blog and turn the tables on us sales guys. I’m sure we’re not always a dream to work with…
Lachlan Fergus
oOh!media