Onions need to be kept fresh

by MediaWeek Media Week 17-Aug-04

Bob Morrell, director, Reality Media

I’m delighted that Phil Cutts of the Periodical Publishers Association (The recipe for onion success, page 24, 27 July) endorses the views expressed by Bruce Daisley and myself (Do sales people know their onions?, page 42, 6 July) I’d like to pick up on a couple of points, though. The PPA training approach, focused on product knowledge, medium knowledge and slightly more advanced marketing knowledge, is, as Phil says, “not rocket science”. The difficulty comes when this training is implemented on top of outdated sales and management practices.

We can broaden our knowledge as much as possible – but if we don’t change the way we interact and communicate with customers, we will get what we’ve always got.

At Reality Media we are convinced that changing the way we approach and talk to customers in order to develop understanding of their businesses is a core part of personal sales development.

Sales people who are trained in conducting “worthwhile business conversations” connect through clear definitions of their client’s customer and are in a far better position to hold rate and increase rates for their media owners through this greater understanding.

We believe that setting any targets is a sure-fire way of demotivating a sales team.

Targets are either based on past performance (out of date) or future dreams. Both are arbitrary and meaningless when you think about it. But how much time do managers and staff spend every year working out targets and budgets? Getting rid of targets means you empower your teams and managers to concentrate on their customers and achieve revenues that you could not previously have anticipated. There are plenty of other ways to inspire people – and in many business cases this leads to what we all want – over-achievement.

Of course, this is a challenge to the accepted way of doing things – at Reality Media we are committed to changing the way media owners function and are convinced that following this route of behavioural and systems change we stand the best chance of shaking off the shackles of the past and dragging our industry and our sales people into the 21st century.