Sell, all the way to hell!
My wife & I have a deal. And the deal is summed up in 6 simple words “We are on the same side”
When we talk about which school our kid should go to, she says “the school you want”. I say “the school you want” and then we take a call on the school we want.
Which religion should he follow? She says “your religion”. I say “ your religion”. And then we take a call on our religion. The religion of humanity.
Which country we should plan our next holiday to? She says “the country you want to go to”. I say “the country you want to go to”. And then we land up in the country we want to go to.
We are on the same side.
Let’s bring this back to the agency-client discussion, when it comes to the brands we work on.
The client wants his brand to be the best in the world. The agency does too.
The client wants his brand to sell like crazy. The agency does too.
The client wants his consumers to clamour for his brand, like Apple consumers do. The agency does too.
The client wants to win Cannes awards. The agency does too.
The client wants fame. The agency does too.
So why are we constantly in a battle of wits?
Not saying that there shouldn’t be disagreements, arguments, fights etc. My wife & I have that all the time. But its all a negotiation at the end of the day, because…
Our goals are same. Our end destination is the same. Our religion is the same. Our school is the same.
We are in the same marriage.
And I am told marriages work better when the husband & the wife know that they are on the same side. The rest of the world can take a chill pill!
Get on the client’s side today. They will get on yours.
Try selling a mouse trap to someone who has not seen a mouse
Or
Try selling a fire extinguisher to someone who has a fire resistant home.
The net result will be the same. They will not buy it.
It’s the same with a lot of the work we present to our clients. And we know it.
Everytime we walk into a client’s office, we think the work we are carrying is nothing short of an award winner. But we also know most of the time, that the client might not buy it. So to turn on the pressure, we agency folks take along a horde of senior management agency people, so that the client might find it difficult to say that the work is not good. I have committed this mistake myself, many times over.
OK, before we try and figure out how to sell the work we know the client will not buy, let’s take a look at what are the reasons why the client will not buy, some of the agency works.
Contrary to popular belief among agency folks, most clients are very intelligent people and here are a list of reasons why they won’t buy everything we throw at them:
a) They won’t buy something they think they don’t want
b) They won’t buy something they don’t understand
c) They won’t buy something that makes them uncomfortable
d) They won’t buy something that appears unethical to them
e) They won’t buy something that they think does not meet the brief
f) They won’t buy something they think is offensive
g) They won’t buy something they think doesn’t work at all
h) They won’t buy, if they hate the seller.
So how do you sell work, if you know that the client will not buy the work?
The most important step is to recognise that “the client is not going to buy this work easily”.
If you have recognised that, you will not try to sell the work…….yet.
Keep the work aside and investigate the reason why you think the client will potentially refuse to buy it and start working on that. Sell the work only after you have dealt with the client’s reason for not being open to buying what you will be selling.
Here are a few simple steps (Please note this is not a formula, its just a tip):
- Start the process, days before your important client meeting.
- Start planting thoughts in your client’s head, that will aid your pending sale.
- Do not share work upfront.
- Spend more time trying to get your client closer to the work you want to sell eventually.
- Share the work, only after they have warmed up to the idea.
- After sharing the work, take pains to explain how it meets the brief, the way the client understands it.
After all this, if the client still does not buy it…probably he had a tiff with his wife in the morning or maybe some other reason, which we might not know of.
Going back to the mousetrap I talked about at the beginning of this article, I just googled “dangers of mice” just now and it scared me enough to think about……well, a mouse trap.
So next time you want to sell a mousetrap to someone, don’t talk about the mouse trap. Try telling him about the “ fatal dangers of mice”. I am sure he will request you to hand over that “mousetrap” you are trying to sell.
Sounds dramatic..huh?
A friend announced “ We have not yet figured out how to sell to clients we meet, selling to the ones we don’t meet is not something we worry about today”
Another retorted “ Selling to clients you will never meet? Ridiculous. Not possible”
Yet, come to think of it, we as advertising folks sell to clients we never meet, quite frequently. OK…atleast as frequently as can make us want to figure out how to sell to these clients.
The reality is that most often than not, the most difficult client to sell to, is not in the meeting room!
Picture this. The agency team puts hours & hours into devising strategy or the creative product. We believe in it. Then we pick up our bags and get to the client’s office. The meeting has started. We present with all the passion. The Marketing Director is nodding. His team in tow. All good. Thank you very much.
As we get up to leave after a meeting well done, the Marketing Director says “This is wonderful. Well thought out and all of that. Just one more line of alignment before we can go ahead. Tomorrow, I have a meeting with my Board of Directors for approvals”.
The Board of Directors?
Now that’s a client you might never meet!
Yet its your agency’s strategic or creative product that is on the line. And their decision can make or break it!
So “How do you sell to clients you will never meet?”
Here’s how. If you can’t sell to the clients you will never meet, make sure you help those who will be meeting those clients and selling your agency work, i.e. the Marketing Director & his team
a. Get the Marketing Director to believe in the work you have presented to him.
b. Equip the client you are presenting to, to sell your work to his Board of Directors.
c. You could give the marketing team a virtual “selling kit” that covers the barriers, the insights, the Big Idea and a demonstration of how it can pan out
d. Give them examples & elements that can aid their selling efforts
e. Arm them with arguments that support the work
- Arguments that make business sense
- Arguments that makes the work relevant
- And arguments that will make it easier for the “unmet” client to buy the work
And when we have finished doing that, we would have turned our regular clients into being strong salesmen of our agency output. And we would have made our best attempt to “sell to the client, we will never meet”.
Let’s close this with a funny yet confident remark (during a corridor smoke break with some agency folks) made by a top Marketing Director, who always managed to sell the agency work he believed in, to his conservative board. “The bastards always give in…in the end”.
Sell, all the way to hell!