The P's to Success

About 13 years ago, I first entered the interactive space. I had been involved in the telecom space for many years, going from sales rep to manager, and, ultimately, running my own office in Westchester County, with about 25 people reporting to me. I felt that telecom was on the decline, and was anxious to move into another space. But where can I go without taking a hit in compensation?

As it turns out, one of my sales people had been employee number 6 at LinkShare, and introduced me to the VP Of Sales, Stephen Denton. I shared with him that I was not interested necessarily in a management position. I was interested in a position where I can have the opportunity to make good money, and in a growing space. He hired me, and I started my interactive career.

There was a great training program set up by Steve, and LinkShare. Not formal like in a class, but more one on one meetings and other important components. When Steve asked me one day how I was doing, about three days in, I said I was ready to go. He then said those famous words to me that I continue to share with others: "You can't run the ball without the game plan."

When I look back at the company's I have had the most success with, it has been those where I have had the opportunity to interact with others while getting up to speed. When I tried to sum it all up, I equated them all to what I call The Four P's: People, Platform(Product), Process, and Paperwork. Lets look at these one at a time.

The people are not just your potential prospects and customers, but also your internal team. Who handles what? After you turn a deal over to an AE to manage, are you following up? Before the handoff, are you educating the AE on the client? Most importantly, what do you know about your AE? While it is not necessary to know everything about your co workers, showing some interest in them goes a long way to a great relationship. This is true with anybody-and everybody-you work with in your organization. Legal, technical, credit, management, administrators, etc! All are important components to a group effort towards the success of your campaigns and the company's success. Even though I have worked remote in some of my positions, I make it a part of my schedule to reach out to my team. When I am in the home office, I make it also part of my schedule to catch up with team members. Regarding the people who are your potential clients, are you speaking with the right people? How are you treating them? What do you know about them? Take the time to establish a lifetime client, not just a temporary one.

Learning the platform is extremely important. When I went from telecom to interactive it was a huge change then from, say, seo to programmatic. But once you learn the platform you are halfway there, if you are a great salesperson. It is extremely important to not only know about the platform(product) that you are selling, but to stay abreast of what is going on in your industry, and what differentiates your platform from your so called competitors. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? How are you going to address those weaknesses? How are you going to differentiate yourself? Learning the platform(product), and the ins and outs will go a long way towards success.

Every company has a different process to getting their clients up and running. The most common things necessary are legal and credit. If this is the case, I suggest you take care of them right away. If your prospect will not pass credit, why bother to try to sell them? Same with legal. If you are handing the deal off, are you prepared to share with the next person in line all the information you have so they can do their job effectively. Once you have everything ready, are you setting the expectations with the client? While many things are necessary for a launch, and you probably have a good idea of a time frame, nothing moves unless the client gives you what is necessary to get things rolling. To be proactive, it is valuable to get the assets while waiting for the paperwork. Besides saving time, this will show you if they are serious or not. If they are hesitant, then this deal may not move through the pipe as quickly as you hoped.

Get paperwork right the first time. Know what is needed, make a checklist, and get to it. Having to send a client back an io because they forgot something that needs to be filled out by them may give them pause, and set the whole deal back. Don't set yourself up for that. Get it right the first time, and move on with the deal.

There are other P's important to look out for, too. Some of them include a plan, persistence, and patience, all at the same time. And if you put them all together it adds up to the road to success. I believe that a good sales person is much valuable than somebody who has experience in a specific space. I had somebody tell me recently that people in the affiliate space did not work out in their company. I found this to be an incorrect blanket statement that did not differentiate good sales people from the service or product they were selling. Get yourself educated on the space you are interested in, and embrace the platform. And keep the P's on your mind at all times to assure ongoing success for you, your company, and your client.

Thank you, please follow me on Twitter, @kscowen.