How to Build an Effective Sales Force in Your Advertising Agency (Part 2 of 2)

Hi everyone! Today, I would like to continue our discussion on how to build a stellar sales team and gain more business in your advertising and creative agency. Last time we spoke about how to hire the right salesperson, new sales-hire onboarding/training and the importance of having sales metrics in place. Although all of these are crucial items to improve the bottom line, in this blog we will discuss the significance of sales training and how the quality of the training could dramatically impact your sales results.

Master with Confidence What You Are Offering (Service or Product)

Do your account managers have an appropriate depth of knowledge about your offering? What is your value proposition?

To help your team gain knowledge on the service your agency offers, mix your more experienced account executives with newbies. Senior Account Executives will transfer their knowledge quickly to new hires which will help tremendously with confidence and understanding.

A weekly sales meeting is another tool that will help shape your sales team. Conducting brainstorming on topics such as how to improve sales results, reducing time spent on internal admin work, and sharing best practices among your team members will immediately begin to pay dividends.

Training your sales team on your company’s product and service offerings, and clearly understanding both your value proposition and those of your competitors will definitely increase success in your advertising agency. All of these different components should be part of your sales training program, which can be reviewed on a quarterly or semi-annual basis.

Sales Techniques and Methodologies

There are a variety of sales techniques and methodologies available in the marketplace. I have used a few different ones throughout my sales career, but the bottom line is to pick the one you feel more comfortable with. Additionally, you can take advantage of a few different techniques that can be adjusted and applied to your specific sales scenario. One of the most important things to consider is establishing an effective sales process that will be used by your sales team in your agency.

For instance, last year our sales team participated in a sales workshop organized by the Whetstone Group called Common Sense Selling. It was a very interesting workshop where we discussed the common sense selling technique used by the Whetstone Group. Our sales team used this opportunity to bring that knowledge into our sales reality. This sales seminar is one example of many events, seminars and sales training programs we have invested in for our sales team, and we continue to find them of value.

In most cases, it isn’t possible to take your entire team to a sales training seminar. If that is the case, make sure you have one member of the team who will present and share the content from the course or seminar with the rest of your team. Use part of your weekly sales meeting to discuss lessons learned and exchange ideas with the team on how to apply any new learning to your agency.

No matter what sales techniques and methodologies you use at your creative agency or advertising firm, make sure you have an effective sales process in place so everyone in your agency is speaking the same language to not only to your prospects, but also your clients, vendors, and partners.

Stay tuned for our next blog post and let us know if you have comments or suggestions on future topics.

Our blog content is focused on the creative industry in an attempt to help production managers, traffic managers, designers, creative directors, copywriters and anyone else who is passionate about the business of creative.

Speaking about the business of creative, feel free to join our LinkedIn Group called The Business of Creative – For Creative Agency Management.

This article was contributed by former Function Point employee, Leonardo Maia.