COMMENTARY

Are Consumers Really Receptive To Ad Messages?

• by Todd Wasserman , Staff Writer, 8 hours ago

Are consumers really hearing the message you paid ungodly sums to transmit to them?

A new report uses neuroscience to get to the bottom of that question. The report, by Aki Technologies, gauged brainwave activity among consumers who watched the Super Bowl. During the game, consumers were outfitted with EMOTIV headsets primed to detect six emotions: excitement, interest, stress, engagement/boredom, attention and relaxation.

Here’s what the research found:

Receptivity increased with game volatility: During the game, researchers found attention didn’t peak in the first break in action as many expected. Attention peaked after Cooper Kupp’s 11-yard touchdown in the second quarter.

Viewers were most receptive during the Super Bowl halftime. Commercial breaks didn’t meaningfully change receptivity, but the halftime show significantly boosted attention, engagement, interest and excitement.

Context is crucial. Excitement increased most when participants consumed alcohol. Still, it actually fell for those watching the game in public (at a bar or restaurant).

A consumer’s response varies by demographics. During Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, women were 14.3% more receptive to mobile advertising. Interestingly, during the Academy Awards, men were 9% less receptive to mobile advertising than women, but after the slap, men’s receptivity grew 5% faster than that of women.

Stephanie Klimaszewski, senior vice president marketing at Aki Technologies, said the purpose of the report is to help marketers make more informed and strategic media investments.  “By understanding audience receptivity in response to big media events like the Super Bowl, and other major news and cultural events, like the January 2021 invasion of the Capitol, unseasonable weather and the Academy Awards, marketers can gain new insight into audience receptivity to advertising during marketable moments."

 Local TV still tops! Philip Jay LeNoble, PhD.

COMMENTARY

Customer Satisfaction Scores Vary For Top Streaming Brands: Study

• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 6 hours ago

Customer satisfaction with some of the top brands in streaming -- including Netflix, HBO Max, Peacock and Apple TV+ -- is surprisingly lower than expected, according to a new study from research firm ACSI (American Customer Satisfaction Index).

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) Telecommunications Study 2021-2022 was conducted to gauge customer satisfaction with streaming video, subscription TV services, Internet and WiFi providers, VOD and even landline phone services.

The study is “based on interviews with 23,605 customers chosen at random and contacted via email between April 2021 and March 2022,” said Ann Arbor, Michigan-based ACSI.

“Customers are asked to evaluate their recent experiences with the largest companies in terms of market share, plus an aggregate category consisting of ‘all other’ -- and thus smaller -- companies in those industries.”

The streaming service that ranked highest in customer satisfaction was Microsoft Store with a satisfaction score of 79 (out of 100), followed by the “all others” category (78), Disney+ (also 78), Paramount+ (77) and YouTube TV (77). 

ACSI classifies the subscription services and services such as Microsoft Store, which sells movies and TV shows on a pay-per-view basis, in the same “video streaming” category.

The other majors were lower down on the list, including Hulu (ranked ninth with a 75 score), Amazon Prime (10th, with 74), Netflix (11th, with 74), HBO Max (14th, with 73) and Peacock (15th, with 72). Apple TV+ was second from the bottom in the list of 21 streaming services with a 69 score.

The streaming portion of the ACSI study covered service categories on an industry-wide basis such as Quality of Mobile App (83), Reliability of Mobile App, i.e., minimal down time, crashes and lags (82), and near the bottom of the streaming list, Availability of Current Season’s TV Shows (71) and Availability of New Movie Titles (70).

Elsewhere, the ACSI study found that satellite and broadband services ranked higher in customer satisfaction than cable providers. 

In ACSI’s ranking of customer satisfaction with subscription TV services, U-verse TV (a DirecTV service), ranked highest with a 73 score, followed by Verizon Fios (71), DirecTV (66) and Dish Network (65).

Those services were followed by cable operators such as Xfinity, Spectrum and Cox. Optimum (57) and Suddenlink (54) -- both Altice USA -- were second to last and last, respectively, in the list of 12.

In this category, HD Picture Quality garnered the highest customer satisfaction with a 77 score. The lowest score in the list of services provided in the subscription TV category was a 65 score for Call Center Satisfaction.

Rankings on the list of Internet providers in customer satisfaction were Verizon Fios first followed by (in order) T-Mobile and AT&T Internet.

The three also took up the first three spots on the customer satisfaction list for in-home WiFi service -- T-Mobile first, Verizon Fios second and AT&T Internet third.

In the VOD category, U-Verse and Verizon Fios ranked higher than Cox, Spectrum, DirecTV, Dish and Xfinity.  

A list of Satisfaction Benchmarks By Industry included in the study puts the customer satisfaction data for video streaming, VOD, subscription TV and Internet service providers in perspective.

Topping the list is the food manufacturing industry, which had a customer satisfaction score of 80, tied with full-service restaurants. Rounding out the top five, in order, are breweries, cell phones, and personal care and cleaning products.

On this list of 47 industry categories listed in descending order of Customer Satisfaction Benchmarks, video streaming services ranked 32nd (74 score).

The bottom three among all of those industries were, in order, VOD services (45th - 68), subscription TV services (46th - 66) and Internet service providers (47th - 64).

 

This Article Isn’t About Sales

By

 Loyd Ford

 -

May 23, 2022

0

(By Loyd Ford) This article isn’t about sales. But it is, right? We all fundamentally understand that people buy from people they like, but where does that come from? You meet people and they get to know you from experiences.

We’re in the radio business. By the way, it’s a business that sometimes prides itself on creativity and the use of creativity.

Yet people like me preach about radio and our continuing invisibility.

Yeah, that’s wrong. Let’s fix it.

When is the last time you threw a party all about your clients?

Did you do a good job of sending invitations and making it personal?

Making certain that you gave people a selfish set of reasons to attend?

Did you create an event that truly put the spotlight on clients, their successes, their voice, their place in the community? I’m talking about a creative theme and planned presentation where attendees felt immediately that this was their party.

Did you set up a luxury attention setting where special costume greeters welcomed them in individually to the party (maybe even announced them)?

Did you offer a presentation that shed a spotlight on specific segments of business and how certain individual business owners have grown their businesses across the last decade?
Did you include video attributions from clients talking about your radio station’s role or your cluster’s role in growing their business and how effective radio is?

Did you position one seller at each table – not as a seller – as a personal connection to the event?

Did you have door prizes and fun entertaining opportunities to allow local businesspeople to experience radio and your personalities doing what makes them special as you focus on these clients and potential clients?

Did you take photos of the guests as they arrived with your station or cluster banners behind them?

Did your popular morning shows do a presentation during the event?

Did you follow up in 7 days with your sellers arriving with a gift for each business owner attending? *What gift you ask? A framed photo of them at your event.

Notice I didn’t mention selling at the event. You won’t. Not if you’re smart.

And I want you to think about this: If you have a party – once a year – focused on clients and potential clients, you can create several ideas.

-Radio is fun
-Radio is powerful
-Radio has very successful business owners as clients
-Your radio group is fun, easy to be with

How much attention do you think you and your competitors have really placed on clients and potential clients or even how they see radio now?

Why not? It might be time to throw that party after all.

 Good message for Digital Presentations. Philip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D.

Gartner: Marketing Budgets Increase To 9.5% Of Overall Company Revenue

• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, Yesterday

Marketing budgets climbed to 9.5% of total company revenue in 2022 -- up from 6.4% in 2021, but down from 11% in 2020 and 10.5% in 2019, according to Gartner.

The Gartner 2022 CMO Spend and Strategy Survey -- released Monday at the Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo -- found 70% of respondents reported budgets increasing this year.

The study was fielded between February through March 2022 among 405 CMOs and other marketing leaders in North America, as well as Northern and Western Europe across different industries.

Ewan McIntyre, chief of research and vice president analyst in the Gartner for Marketing Leaders practice, believes that despite inflation, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and supply chain issues, CMOs appear sanguine.

Digital accounts for 56% of marketing spend, the data shows -- but offline channels have rebounded.

When asked to report the proportion of their 2022 budget allocated to online and offline channels, CMOs said online channels took 56%, while offline channels account for 44%.

CMOs allocated 10.1% to social, 9.8% to search, 9.3% to digital display, 8.8% to digital video, 8.1% to partners and affiliates, 8.1% went to digital audio, and 7.4% went to digital-out-of home.

About 8.5% went to search engine optimization took, 7.8% to email, 7.8% to content and messaging, 7.6% to organic social and influencers, and 6.9% to SMS and in-app advertising.

The amount marketing will spend rose across nearly all industries. Financial services companies recorded the highest budget at 10.4% of company revenue, up from 7.4% in 2021. While eight out of the nine industries surveyed reported budget increases, spending for CMOs in consumer goods firms has stagnated, dropping slightly from 8.3% in 2021 to 8% in 2022.

Interesting that search-advertising budgets ranked among the highest in healthcare and tech products. In financial services, CMOs said they would allocate 10% of budgets, healthcare at 9.9%, tech products at 11.7%, manufacturing at 9%, consumer products at 10.6%, media at 8.6%, retail at 10.1%. IT and business at 10.3%, and travel and hospitality and 7.6%.

Among the highest budgets, marketers allocated 10.8% to email for financial services, and 12% to social advertising for consumer products.

Event marketing reached highest for most sectors such as financial services at 18.6%, healthcare at 21.3%, tech products at 22.3%, manufacturing at 18%, consumer products at 16.3%, media at 15.2%, retail at 16.8%, IT and business at 24.3%, and travel and hospitality at 16%.

Brand was one of the lowest ranked capability gaps in the survey -- showing that CMOs are confident in their capabilities to manage brands.

When asked to report their budget allocations across marketing's program and operational areas, brand strategy and activation were near the top of the list, accounting for nearly 10% of the budget.

Other strategic capabilities gaps still persist such as marketing data and analytics was identified by 26% of CMOs as a top capability gap, followed by customer understanding and experience management at 23%, and marketing technology at 22%. 

5 Personal Qualities Necessary to Become a Successful Sales Manager

 

5 Personal Qualities Necessary to Become a Successful Sales Manager

Ryan Pell

May 19, 2022

Sales management is considered one of the most in-demand occupations right now, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics projecting 7% growth for this profession between 2020 and 2030. The yearly median pay is also pretty decent.

However, there’s a difference between becoming an average sales manager and a successful sales leader. If you want to succeed in your career, you need to possess a set of personal qualities that will help you grow.

What are these qualities? Let’s discuss.

Ability to Self-Reflect

Sales managers need to be open to new learning opportunities. You will likely take numerous courses and seminars at your job to increase your efficiency. As you acquire new skills, you will have to work on developing them, which involves self-reflection

The ability to self-reflect, in this case, means that you can give an objective review of your skills. The goal is to discover new opportunities to improve and make your work more meaningful.

To learn how to conduct self-reflection, you need to continuously analyze the following:

• Skills – what you are good at and how you can expand your capabilities.
• Problems – what doesn’t let you grow as a sales manager.
• Strengths – your strong qualities that help you grow.
• Weaknesses – qualities that hinder your success.

Giving these points a regular overview can help you find solutions and pathways to growing as a professional. You can also reflect on the performance of your peers and compare it to yours. But remember – do it in a positive way and avoid harsh self-criticism.

Perseverance

As a sales representative, you’ll have to talk with many decision-makers from large companies, which can be intimidating, especially for a newbie. And that’s the first test that differentiates a sales manager destined for success and a random salesperson. If you want to succeed, you will persevere.

So, perseverance is your ability to keep doing your job and trying your best despite hardships and obstacles. A person is not born perseverant. Experts in positive psychology recommend practicing the following:

Resilience – pushing yourself to achieve the goal while maintaining healthy optimism.

Intrinsic values – creating a vision board to remind you of a higher goal you want to reach.

Essentially, psychologists recommend using values to build up resilience. Higher goals should remind you why you are doing your job and want to grow as a professional in sales. It will also motivate you to keep moving even when you receive rejection after rejection.

Possession of Communication Skills in Foreign Languages

It is hard to imagine a sales manager without solid communication skills. Also, if you want to achieve success in your sales career, you need to know at least one foreign language. In fact, 35% of people said they were learning another language to improve their chances of getting a better job.

However, it’s not enough to just know the language; you need to be able to use it in business communication. For instance, for all non-English speakers, mastering English for business communications means:

Knowing industry-specific vocabulary. For instance, if you’re a sales manager in banking or SaaS, you need to be able to easily operate the terminology of these industries to communicate with English-speaking clients.

Using specific grammar structures. For instance, the passive voice is used in situations when you deliberately want to shift the focus from the doer to the action. And modal verbs don’t just describe the capability of the speaker but also add the level of probability to the action described by the main verb.

Maintaining the correct style. Business communication in English usually presupposes shorter sentences and paragraphs and a more straightforward manner of speaking.

Mastering these skills can take some time, but they are absolutely essential if you want to achieve success as a sales manager in an international company.

Ability to Delegate

If you’re a newbie in sales, you probably have the motivation to do all the tasks by yourself and stay as long as you need to prove your worth. However, soon you’ll understand that such an approach doesn’t bring anything constructive to the table – only professional burnout.

So, the only way out is to become a good delegator and know when it is best to assign a task to someone instead of doing everything yourself. To achieve that, you need to:

• Prioritize – Single out the tasks that need to be done urgently, and delegate all the remaining non-essential activities to your subordinates.
• Instruct – Don’t just give away the assignment – give detailed instructions of what needs to be done and how.
• Trust, but verify – Don’t take the position of a toxic boss micromanaging everything your team does. Put your trust in them, but check the quality of work once it’s done.

Also, when delegating, be ready for failure. Expect that someone from your team may not close as many sales as expected due to various circumstances.

Empathy

Finally, no matter if you’re going to manage a sales team or not, you need to have empathy if you want to build meaningful relationships with clients. This is especially important for B2B sales managers, who need to put all the effort into turning a prospect into a returning customer who trusts the company and product completely.

Here’s how you learn empathy:

• Understand your biases. Analyze where they are coming from – it will help you neutralize them.
• Become a better listener. When talking to people, try to understand the emotions they feel when telling you a story.
• Seek new experiences. Learning new languages and traveling to experience different countries can help you become more empathetic.

By the way, for all sales team leaders – being empathetic increases innovation. According to Forbes, 61% of employees said they felt more inspired to look for new approaches to work when led by an empathetic manager.

Over to You

As you can see, a successful sales manager needs to possess a few important personal qualities. Luckily, you can acquire all of them; you just need to strive for self-improvement.

Ultimately, a sales manager should be a good communicator (not just in their native language), perseverant, empathetic, able to self-reflect and delegate. These are the five qualities you should be aiming for if you want to achieve success in sales.

Why Real-Time Feedback Is Vital to B2B Sales Performance

 

Why Real-Time Feedback Is Vital to B2B Sales Performance

SMM Editors

May 24, 2022

Sales leaders don’t have insight into whether they have a sales experience problem until it is far too late. Whether it’s a deal-closing slump or a poor customer journey that keeps repeating itself, measuring quality now can help avoid these potential issues in the future.

When managers have access to real-time data analyses powered by AI, it helps them isolate exactly where a salesperson may be struggling so they can address it. It also helps inform the organization’s messaging, coaching and training, by isolating win/loss patterns across the team.

In this Q&A, Jen Allen, chief evangelist at Challenger Inc., shares insights about the importance of more real-time feedback in the sales process to remove uncertainties.

Q: How does real-time feedback in the sales process remove uncertainties for sales reps? How does it help them pivot during the purchase process?

J.A.: With many of us still operating in a predominantly virtual selling environment, sellers miss out on the previously common post-meeting opportunities when prospects would walk the team out of the conference room and back to the building’s reception desk. Those hallway walks often included conversations like, “How do you think it went?” or “How did you perceive Dave’s response to the solution?”

Because we’ve gone increasingly virtual, sellers are often left to their own subjective perceptions of the quality of the meeting. Sometimes, it’s overly positive: “They loved it!” and sometimes, it’s overly negative: “That meeting did not go well!” Either way, sellers’ perception of the meeting causes them to make choices as it relates to next steps that may be unnecessary, incorrect, or even harmful to the sales pursuit. Any misstep could lead to the biggest pain point for sales teams: preventable loss.

To reduce preventable loss, sellers need to improve the purchase experience, and the best way to do that well is with real-time feedback. That’s why Challenger created Loop. By providing an opportunity for the customer to weigh in on the sales experience they received, sellers are armed with the confidence to know exactly what did or didn’t work in the meeting, and what next steps are left to address in order to earn the customer’s business. By gathering 360º feedback during the sales process, teams can pivot quickly and course correct in order to meet buyers needs and preferences and close more deals.

Q: How does it help them analyze the process once a sale is won/lost?

53% of a customer’s decision to do business with a supplier is related to the sales experience they received. Yet, how often do sellers seek to understand exactly how that sales experience led to a positive or negative outcome? All too often, sales teams are left to their own assumptions about why they win or lose.
As a result, it can be difficult to isolate positive or negative patterns within sellers’ control. So, they miss out on an opportunity to replicate aspects of the sales experience that lead to wins, or remove aspects that lead to losses. With real-time feedback, sellers no longer have to make assumptions in their win/loss analyses.

Q: Why haven’t organizations used customer feedback regularly before? What were they missing out on by only reviewing CRM data/what incorrect assumptions were made?

J.A.: Organizations haven’t used customer feedback regularly before because when sales leaders hear the words “customer surveys,” it’s often followed by an audible groan. They think, “Customers hate responding to surveys, don’t they?” It feels like a nuisance to ask a customer to complete a survey, so salespeople and their managers are often left to rely on subjective and possibly inaccurate data. For example, how often do sellers select a win/loss reason that is related to their own delivery of the sales experience? It’s unlikely. More often, it’s due to “price,” “a bad fit,” “value,” or something else outside of the seller’s control. Because of that, leaders may be operating on inherently flawed data.
It’s extremely important for sales teams to reconsider their own assumptions about customer surveys. They must consider when they ask a customer to complete a survey in the sales experience. It’s typically after the team has won or lost their business, but why not during? They also must consider what’s in it for the customer. Perhaps, if the seller did an amazing job, they’ll complete it so the seller is recognized internally at the organization. But – what’s in it for the customer who chose to do nothing, or selected another supplier? The benefit is entirely to the supplier and how they position it.

However, with an “in-flight” customer survey, the benefit is mutual. For example, a potential customer may be looking to have a sales conversation where they can get specific questions addressed by the rep, but instead they’re going through slides or delivering a one-way demo. Now, the customer has an opportunity to express their dissatisfaction with the sales call, while there is still an opportunity for the rep to address it. As a result, this feedback increases the likelihood that the next call is more aligned with what they are seeking to get out of the experience.

Q: With inflation and economic uncertainty affecting businesses’ budgets, how can real-time feedback help sellers find the most impactful solution for their potential customers and close more deals?

J.A.: Challenger’s analysis shows that 38% of opportunities are lost to no-decision or status quo. While the buyer often agrees that how they’re currently solving the problem isn’t the “best” approach, they also know that a “better” solution introduces significant risk. They are thinking “What if it doesn’t work?” “What if the team disagrees with the new approach?” “What if I look bad for asking for more budget from my boss?”
Sellers often assume the reason is “price,” “budget,” “bad timing,” or “competing initiatives.” But, without any input from the customer, it can be difficult to isolate how to evolve a pitch and solution positioning to avoid losing other customers, especially when economic uncertainty is impacting business decisions. By having direct customer feedback, it removes the subjective bias on why sellers win and why sellers lose. As a result, sellers can work to ensure potential customers feel confident in the purchase decision.

Q: How can managers use these insights to help with seller training and how can AI-driven tools support this initiative?

J.A.: Many managers are well-intentioned in their desire to coach and develop their reps. But, their capacity is often constrained by special projects, forecasting/reporting, hiring and recruiting, onboarding new hires and more. Additionally, preparing for a coaching interaction is time-consuming, and managers who face capacity challenges will either default to simply asking “Where do you need help today?” or skipping the interaction all-together.

Imagine if managers could open up a dashboard and be able to see where each rep is strong or falling short from a customer’s perspective. When managers have access to real-time data analyses powered by AI, it helps them isolate exactly where the rep may be struggling so they can address it. It also helps inform the organization’s messaging, coaching, and training, by isolating win/loss patterns across the team. When investing in talent and their development is more important than ever, real-time feedback can provide organizations with invaluable insights. Challenger launched Loop for this reason. Uncovering vital data points and patterns helps sellers win moments that matter.

OAAA/Comscore Study Finds Out-Of-Home Nearly As Good As TV In Driving Search

• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, 4 hours ago

The Out-of-Home Advertising Association (OAAA) this morning released findings of consumer recall study conducted by Comscore purporting that out-of-home ads are nearly as effective as TV commercials in driving people to search for a product or service online.

Specifically, 41% of consumers said they initiated an online search after seeing an out-of-home ad vs. 45% who said they did so after seeing a TV spot.

The study, which surveyed 1,580 Americans 16-64 between March 3 and 31, was billed as a “partnership with Comscore” and comes on the opening morning of an annual Out-of-Home Media Conference & Expo jointly hosted by the OAAA and out-of-home media audience measurement service Geopath.

“The results of this research with Comscore should send a clear signal to advertisers: OOH is a vital part of the media mix,” OAAA President-CEO Anna Bager said in a statement announcing the findings this morning.

The Comscore study, which was sponsored by the not-for-profit Foundation for Outdoor Advertising Research and Education, also reports findings of seven other online actions triggered by out-of-home ad exposures, including searching social, searching video, posting social, posting video, downloading an app, visiting a website, and making an online purchase.