Products continually change. This is especially true in the digital space, where the “next big thing” is considered obsolete within months. Change is good for optimization and customer engagement, but constant transformation can make selling more complicated – even more so – for sales managers. How can you ensure your employees remain current with mutable digital trends, all while hitting necessary sales goals? Here are tips to help sales managers keep their team up-to-date through this constant flux in the digital space.
Accept the fact that technology evolves continually
Consumers once had simple questions about impressions and engagement. Now, they expect detailed insight into behavioral targeting, algorithms, and data sharing.
Sales teams have also had to recently deal with yet another evolution in the digital ad space: programmatic advertising is revolutionizing the way we buy and sell. This technology is automating the buying, placing, and optimization process of delivering ads to consumers.
Does this mean that your sales staff will be replaced with faultless machines? Absolutely not. Many publishers are using automated buying and selling of their inventory and combining it with direct deals to fully boost their internal sales strategy. Programmatic buying saves money by nixing convoluted ad-operation analyses, ultimately resulting in the right ads getting to the eyes of correct consumers. But automated buying won’t completely take over the digital media world – and programmatic will never replace sales teams.
Still, many advertisers and publishers struggle to understand programmatic complexities. According to the Association of National Advertisers’ 2014 State of the Industry Report, employers spending on training for their employees continued to be an important trend. Organizations spent an average of $1,208 per employee on development and training in 2013, and that number is expected to increase throughout 2015. So how do you ready your staff for new technologies like programmatic buying? You don’t replace them, you train them.
Certify your staff
These recent changes in ad space, CRM technologies, and online marketing channels have directly affected the importance of sales training.
Even if programmatic buying hasn’t yet become part of your sales strategy, training sales staff to wholly understand digital media, including automated technologies, is vital. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) offers a certification program for individuals and teams of digital advertising professionals to ensure employees in the digital space acquire the baseline industry knowledge, and are able to truly understand what they’re telling clients. Mark Hobson, VP of Business Development at iPromote, guides his sales team with the knowledge he’s gained from IAB program. “The program serves to bring the team to a common, contemporary understanding of the state of the industry. It makes us more accountable in delivering quality proposals and solutions to our customers,” says Hobson, “It gave us a deeper understanding of trends, value, scalability and measurements, which help us guide our clients towards better solutions.”
Spending on corporate training has grown in the last year across all industries. In fact, companies are providing continual education of their employees and spending billions to do so. According to the 2014 Corporate Learning Factbook, over $130 billion was spent worldwide on employee training. IAB’s Digital Media Sales Certification is just one of the many successful programs contributing to this growing shift.
Educate your sales people
The best sales managers are the ones who can transform their team of traditional sales people into educated digital salespeople.
The need for data-driven staff dramatically affects sales forecasting. According toHubspot, only 40% of forecasted sales actually close due to subjective forecasting methods and gut instincts rather than data-driven, historical data. Using CRM and Excel to produce skewed estimates won’t cut it anymore. According to Zorian Rotenberg, sales and marketing veteran of InsightSquared, sales managers and sales VPs need to ditch the legacy methods of “forecasting stages” and embrace forecasting with “opportunity stages.”
Sales people must be able to sell not only their solutions, but also interpret and understand the optimization/operational process as well. This is where continuing education becomes crucial. Programs like IAB Certification support this where in addition to the initial accreditation, recertification is required to help your team stay well informed in digital media year over year, no matter what new trends arise.
Ultimately, sales managers must always remember that technology – be it programmatic buying or whatever may come in the future – won’t replace the human aspect of selling. Technology is streamlining processes and boosting efficiency, but marketers will continue to rely on direct sales. They’ll want relationships with brands, and the sales people behind the curtain, who are authoritative and data-driven.
Learn more at iab.com/topics/certification/
