By: Carson Bodnarek
Most salespeople know the famous Alec Baldwin movie quote “Always Be Closing.” For many of us sellers, that means we’re never truly finished selling, even after the deal has been signed.
Once the deal has closed and the campaign has started to run, a new source of anxiety emerges—it’s now time to deliver on your promises to the client.
As sellers, we’ve all sat in front of our clients, delivering the metrics of the campaign, a monthly recap, or the results right before renewal, and anxiously waited for their reaction. Will they think the results are good? Are they going to be disappointed? Am I going to get the renewal?
Stick to the following guiding principles to avoid anxiety:
- Recap the goals and value for the campaign
- Use data to support campaign successes
- Incorporate visuals where possible
Emphasize past, present, future conversations
Recap the Goals and Value for the Campaign
Planning for a campaign review can often be daunting. To reduce stress,try asking yourself a simple question: : “What do I want my client to take away from this review?”. Celebrating a campaign success, feeling confident in recent optimizations, or feeling reassured in your value as a digital partner are all possible “story endings” that we can the guide the conversation towards.
Before the campaign launched, there were likely in-depth conversations about goals and KPI’s. Start off by reinforcing those campaign goals and audiences. Remind them how these tactics and strategies will reach that audience. This will set the tone for the meeting and remind the advertiser why they needed the campaign to begin with. If their goals have changed, that can easily be addressed in this initial phase of the meeting to ensure a productive conversation after you begin sharing data.
Use Data to Support Campaign Successes
On too many occasions, I’ve seen sellers walk into a campaign review meeting with a client only to get flustered over the dozens of printouts of reports, Excel sheets, and pie charts. This common pitfall comes from sellers thinking they need to overshare data simply because it’s available. As you’re planning for your campaign review, decide which data points emphasize the end takeaway you established before the meeting and carefully edit to avoid overloading your advertiser with data
Avoid data-dumping by limiting data points shared to just a few key highlights from each tactic. It’s easy to focus on industry benchmarks for performance but remember that each advertiser’s goals are unique. Try to focus on improvements within their campaign and their own benchmarks that you’ve helped to establish. If all the data points need to be included, include them, but preselect and physically highlight which metrics you will call out in advance. Focus on limiting data to only pieces that contribute the overarching narrative of the meeting. In short, focus on your “highlights reel”.
Incorporate Visuals Where Possible
Adding visuals can also be a great way to illustrate campaign performance and break up heavy data sets in a more meaningful way. Telling the story of metrics showing an uptick in delivery, ad engagement, or even major decreases in cost-per-click metrics can all be illustrated visually and often increase the impact that the data has on your meeting. While sellers may have access to report generators or internal dashboards, Basis partners also have access to a graph generator in the Basis Resource Library that can help take reports to the next level.
Access the report builder template here!
Emphasize Campaign Past, Present, and Future
Every story has a beginning, middle, and end. When you share campaign reporting, be sure to emphasize trends over time and set expectations for focus areas going forward. Crafting statements that model past, present, and future will not only naturally set you up for a follow-up meeting, but will also help to create an assumptive close opportunity as you near campaign renewals.
For example:
“During the month of FEBRUARY, we saw great things happening including an increase in overall click-thru-rate across all tactics.
I’m having your campaign managers make the following changes and remove these websites that are generating lower performance than we expected TODAY.
I expect in the NEXT THREE MONTHS we should see an uptick in conversions and engagement from these changes that our team will continue to monitor for you.”
When you can position your reporting conversations following these guiding principles, it not only reinforces your skills as a digital partner but demonstrates confidence in your abilities to manage your advertiser’s campaigns. As sellers, you will find it puts more emphasis on an overall process of continued campaign growth, and when you’re able to tie data into campaign reporting, it ultimately puts less pressure on you as the seller to “sell” the campaign’s success, letting the numbers tell the story instead.