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Five Best Practices using Buzzboard in the field

Alisa Cromer
Posted

Here are five best practices on using Buzzboard as a selling tool, provided by Richard Cowan, Digital Sales Manager, 435Digital, the interactive agency of the Chicago Tribune. Cowan has 19 sales reps using the tool for small and large accounts, with plans to hire ten more (see all this review on why Buzzboard is a "game changer" for sales people).

1. Work the "huddle factor":  Show how the merchant compares to competitors.

"The biggest advantage of Buzzboard is the 'huddle factor,' when reps show how businesses are doing and how they stack up with their competitors."

This conversation immediately engages the client and utlimately strengthens the relationship.

"(New) customers are standoffish until we talk about competitors, AdWords of the cost of CPC. All of a sudden the person across the table wants to come over and sit in your lap.

"Then I can be standoffish and make them come to me and it works," Cowan said.

2. Assume SMB's have the money to market - rather than assuming they don't - when recommending a digital proposal.

"When you assume the SMB community doesn't have enough money, you are doing a disservice to some. BuzzBoard treats the SMB exactly like a large company."

"It's amazing the budgets that some of them have."

3. Don't limit use of Buzzboard to sales calls on smaller advertisers.

While Buzzboard was developed for SMB's, Cowan's team uses it on larger sales calls as well. "There really is not a big difference (between large and small SMB's) except for the extra zeroes...We recently used it for a $7000 a month proposal."

"(Buzzboard helps) target the three big areas SMB's are interested in... fear of comptetitors, greed to make more money and pride in their business up to speed.... This is twice as important with the larger accounts," Cowan said.

Brian Talty, director of business development at vSplash, says top account representatives at media clients around the country use the tool to provide quick, sophisticated research on larger accounts.

4. Use the recommendation tool as a starting point, but customize every proposal.

"The proposal the Buzzboard generates may shoot out things that a rep didn't think of, such as reputation management or social media to use as a launching point, then incorporate other things they have talked about such as SEO and SEM."

Cowan insists reps still customize each proposal by click the customization option.

5. Prospect competitors that show up on Buzzbaord during sales calls.

Cowan doesn't use Buzzboard as a prospecting system, however, competitors that appear in the analisys during a sales call are great leads.

See also this review of why Buzzboard is a "game changer."  

See other useful  sales tools used by media member  in MediaExecsTech here. 

Alisa Cromer

The author, Alisa Cromer is publisher of a variety of online media, including LocalMediaInsider and  MediaExecsTech,  developed while on a fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute and which has evolved into a leading marketing company for media technology start-ups. In 2017 she founded Worldstir.com, an online magazine,  to showcases perspectives from around the  world on new topic each month, translated from and to the top five languages in the world.

Buzzboard, Richard Cowan, Sales, Chicago Tribune, 435Digital, vSplash, proposals, recommendations, social media, crm