Know what your hole is!

In Marketing 101, we always learn that we are not the sellers of drills, we are the sellers of the holes the drills provide.  You don’t sell a vacation destination, you sell the memories they’ll have with their family.  You don’t sell the organic, grass fed burger, you sell the healthy conscious carnivore lifestyle.

Now that I’m on the sales side of things, we have another hole to sell.  Our hole helps clients sell their own holes.  (Can I make a pun here? Thank you – “And you know there’s one thing about holes… Everyone’s got ’em.”)

Ahem.  Anyway.

Something very interesting and forward-thinking is happening in my office.  I am honored to work with some very creative, talented, and client-focused sales people.  These amazing client-focused sales people are about to adjust their sales paradigm to also include being consumer-focused sales people.  Our job is to help our clients sell their holes and if we understand their consumers better we will be able to bring to the table better ideas that are more centric towards the actual people that hold our client’s checkbook, their customers!

As a media planner, I used to have to work with clients who kind of knew who their audience was, but it was my job to not just plan their media, but discover the hidden truths about their consumers’ lifestyles, buying patterns, AND their media consumption.  All of these go hand and hand.  Probably about 40% of my time in the media planning cycle was researching those consumers and trying to fill in the timeline of their day and figure out where my client’s message would best be seen and received.  And then I also worked with the creative team to help them formulate what this particular audience member wanted us to say to them.  Whew.

Also as a media planner, I was so happy when I had a sales rep come in and bring me more insights on my client’s customers.  I’m only one woman with a finite amount of time.  If they could bring me a golden nugget of consumer insight that they were able to discover through their company or just through research they had done to help me they would 1) gain a research nerd friend for life, and 2) gain an advocate to getting them on the media plan.  Of course, this was seen very few and far between.

Onto finding those golden nuggets! Yay!