As a broadcast sales leader, your focus is on revenue. Your sales team must do more than meet budget. You need sustainable ways to keep it growing. Unfortunately, salespeople often stray from revenue-generating activities to deal with administrative tasks.
You’ll find that technology is your friend when it comes to keeping salespeople focused. However, many organizations are hesitant to adopt technology because of misconceptions regarding skill levels or cost. Others may be apprehensive about change.
But what if technology is what can enable you to capitalize on revenue-lift opportunities? That’s certainly the case with advertising sales management database platforms.
What if technology is what can enable you to capitalize on revenue-lift opportunities?
Let’s dive into what they are and how they can impact revenue generation.
What Is an Advertising Sales Management Database, Anyway?
An advertising sales management database provides tools and features tailored to the sales cycle. Its purpose is to simplify and scale the sales process by streamlining it.
Such a solution typically includes:
- Contact management
- Tracking of proposals and deals
- Reporting and forecasting for the sales pipeline
- Automated administrative functions
- Analytics and reports based on various filters
These features align with every part of the sales cycle and should complement sales actions. It’s true that some may see technology as too complex or unnecessary. On the other hand, many will welcome these tools as solutions for their challenges. No matter the reaction, you should highlight such a platform’s ability to lift revenue.
Should You Adopt a Broadcast-Specific Solution?
In deciding which management tool to implement, you’ll begin with the question of whether to select a general system or a platform purpose-built for advertising sales. A general system is often a more mature product. It’s also one developed for many users, not just sales. It may have advanced features, but they aren’t custom to broadcasters. If you want them to be, it will be costly.
Compare the options, and identify the tool that will be most helpful to your team. When you do, adoption will be much higher.
With a broadcast advertising sales management database, you get a system purpose-built for your workflows. It should be sales team-focused and integrated with your traffic and revenue management platforms, reducing or eliminating any additional expense or customization needs.
Compare the options, and identify the tool that will be most helpful to your team. When you do, adoption will be much higher.
Ad Sales Databases Support Revenue Generation
An often-heard cry from salespeople is that they don’t have much time to actually sell. They spend time tracking down information, performing admin tasks, and jumping around in systems to get avails and other data. It’s a never-ending swivel chair that’s inefficient and impacts productivity.
A sales management database can eliminate and alleviate many of these and support revenue-generating activities. Here’s how.
Keep Your Data All in One Place
In working a deal for an existing or new advertiser, you want all the information in one place. If it’s scattered among multiple systems, it may be difficult to find. Additionally, if a salesperson leaves your station, they take all their knowledge out the door — unless it’s recorded and systematically stored.
Centralizing customer data and notes of interactions, past proposals and anything else pertinent is so valuable to sales. It can improve the accuracy of the data you have on customers. With this access, salespeople can prospect, propose, communicate, and win the business more adeptly.
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Be More Strategic
Without an advertising sales management database, your sales team’s ability to be strategic is minimal. Instead, they rely on instinct or a pile of sticky notes all over their desk. Neither helps with revenue generation. With such a solution in place, the opportunities are much clearer.
That’s because they can track and manage deals through stages. Visualization of this in a platform informs them instantly. They can also forecast the impact of those pending deals to understand where they are with budget goals. Your salespeople won’t let things fall through the cracks with reminders and cues. With this functionality, they know what deals to focus on, creating more revenue streams.
As a sales leader, you … can understand seller performance, pull pipeline reports and identify top accounts.
As a sales leader, you can benefit, too. You can understand seller performance, pull pipeline reports and identify top accounts. Those insights help you coach your people, determine gaps to close with training and be more strategic in everything you do.
Reduce Sales From Hours to Minutes
How long does it take your salespeople to go through the entire sales process? Without technological assistance, it’s likely hours of work.
It starts with finding customer details and developing a proposal. Then comes checking avails and pricing, order review, rate adjustments and order approval. Once the sales manager signs off, it then must go through traffic. On average, this can eat up to three hours!
No salesperson wants to waste this time. By leveraging an advertising sales management database as part of a broadcast sales platform, you’ll reduce the process to just 15 minutes. That gets people back to selling and out of admin work.
Better Tech = More Time Actually Selling
The gift of this platform is how it empowers your salespeople to be more productive.
With centralized information, access to insights and a streamlined process, your revenue can increase dramatically. Once sales professionals understand its true value, they’ll be eager to embrace the technology.