The case of the missing client - making decisions using special skills

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Feb 15, 1994 by Josh Gordon

When the real decision-maker is invisible, inaccessible or a corporate group, you need special selling skills.

At some organizations, media-buying decisions are decided by politics rather than based on marketing needs. A high-up person may have delegated decision-making for media buys, but when media are bought, he or she descends briefly from on high, rewrites the media plan, then vanishes. Over time, the people on the media-buying frontline learn to base their decisions not on the opportunities that exist in the marketplace, but on what their superior thinks is right.

In extreme cases, the true decision-makers are so out of touch with fast-changing details that the media buys they dictate seem to have little or no connection to reality. Over the years I have seen a book kicked off a schedule because a company president's wife didn't like it; a company president buying media from people he knew from "the good 'ol days," even though things "today" were very different; and a major contract bought according to the company CEO's personal reading preferences, even though his preferences ran contrary to those of the company's customers.

These extreme cases make little sense, but pointing that out to the people involved is a formula for disaster. Political buys are personal. If you attack the buy, you are attacking the person who made it--usually someone high up in the organization. Other times, the person making the buy knows it makes no sense, but views his buying as a way to advance his career--not as a way to advance the company's sales and marketing objectives.

Navigating internal politics is difficult, especially if you are flying blind. If you find yourself in such a situation, here are some pointers that might help you out.

Remember, everybody has a boss. Because politically motivated media buys are based more on upper management's perception of your magazine than on its true merits, make sure your client's management's perception is positive. Get your publisher to meet with the higher-ups. Join an association in the industry or category in your area so you can meet them yourself. And add top management to your comp list.

I once sold an account by getting a copy of the company's annual report and adding the members of its board of directors to my comp list. When our annual issue that focused on this company's product came out with no ad from them, the company president got a few phone calls.

Make the person you call on a no-risk proposal. Sometimes the political buy persists because the person who knows better doesn't have the courage to fight upper management for the better buy. But even if this person is a fighter, putting your book on the buy list can be too much of a risk for him personally. After all, it's his neck on the block. If you can find a way to take his neck off the block, you could make both a friend and a sale.

For example, once while working on a magazine that pulled sales leads well, I told a media planner that placing an ad in my book would cost a certain number of dollars per lead generated, up to the cost of the ad. If the ad didn't pull, he wouldn't pay much for it. Another version of the same technique: Run the ad in an issue studied by an advertising performance study (like Harvey's Ad-Q Study). If the ad doesn't generate a certain level of readership, the client doesn't pay.

Create an event. Political buys have momentum; to derail them often requires an event beyond the ordinary. You need to figure out a way to get the various layers in the organization you are selling to focus their attention on your magazine and reach agreement. For example, I once turned around an account by conducting a booth survey that included a readership question at a major industry trade show. Secretaries from the company handed out survey cards, company salespeople saw that the cards were filled out, and the company president tabulated the results in his hotel room after the show closed every night. It was an event in which everyone in the company participated.

Another time, my associate, Ann Belle Rosenberg of Video Systems, and I hosted a spectacular dinner. Ann Belle discovered that the company CEO had a favorite Manhattan restaurant. By securing the CEO's presence there, we were able to get the company president and all the product marketing managers to join us. The dinner took on a life of its own. Even our publisher flew in for the event (a detail we were grateful for when the check arrived). There were no sales pitches at the table. The guests showed up, had a great time, and went home happy. Soon we were doing more business with them than ever before.

Play to the corporate culture. Maybe you can't meet with the CEO or the president who influences your media buys, but you can position your magazine so it sells to the company the CEO is shaping. A corporate culture is that hidden body of rules and values that affects how individuals within a company interact with one another and are rewarded. It is no surprise that corporate culture also affects how the company treats and buys from vendors like you. So, play to your audience. If, for example, you are dealing with a "nuts and bolts" kind of company, present your book as a practical marketing tool. If you are calling on an image-conscious company, sell quality. Of course, it gets much more complicated than this, but suffice it to say, sell the person you are calling on as if he or she were the president of the company.