Advertising Training or Education

MPrince

The question is how much does the average sales person need to know about advertising or "Advertising Training or Education".

Ace Coldiron

It is partially for that reason, RM, that the giants of advertising--Caples, Ogilvy, Burnett, Hopkins, Barton, etc. saw advertising as SELLING rather than marketing. Your point is well taken.

I can't speak for an average salesperson, but I would guess that they don't venture into too many areas of study in their chosen field. Advertising would probably be not one of them.

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Bald Dog

I think advertising people should understand that their advertising should be measurable and should result in putting salespeople in front of qualified buyers.

And here we have to go beyond brand recognition. Ford, GM and Chrysler are great brands. They just don't sell, so all the advertising is useless.

However, as long as advertising and sales people are paid differently, we can't expect them to respect reach other and work as a team.

So, advertising folks keep producing cute images and slogans, and sales folks keep hunting for good leads, so they can convert them to clients, so the advertising folks can have their paycheques at the end of the week.

Cheers

BD

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MPrince

What I think is sales people should know what they are talking about before they voice an opinion. It is not the advertising "folks" job to get sales leads for sales people. It is the sales people who need to get off their butt and generate their own sales leads. It is not advertising folks that create cute ads and slogans it is the creative departments at the TV stations, radio stations, agencies, etc. Advertising folks work with businesses to determine when and where to place a businesses advertising buy. That is what I do. I am an Advertising Sales Executive and a very good one I might add. I have never been paid at the end of the week. I work on a commission basis. If it were not for advertising "folks" a lot of people might not get paid.

Bald Dog

I disagree but it's only my opinion.

Then what is the role of advertising? Nuclear warfare?

What's the point in having a department in a company whose objective is not about improving the company's financial performance and overall success?

But... My experience is in the complex, B2B world.

And I think it's a huge mistake to let them do it. It all should be done in-house with accountability for ROI. And sales and advertising people should work in close collaboration on it.

I think another great question is what sort of ROI your clients are deriving from the ads you've sold them. I'm not doubting you. I'm just putting out a way of measuring things you sell.

Look at most car dealerships for instance. The salespeople make good commissions while the dealerships go broke. The two have almost no correlation. IN the early 90s, when IBM was going down, salespeople were still making great money.

The commission structure often creates the quick buck mentality, which is often against the long-term objectives of their employers and their clients.

BD

MPrince

Well BD...let me put it this way whether you doubt me or not doesn't alter my way of doing business one way or the other. It only stand to reason that some very powerful business owners have put their trust in mine and other advertising B2B sales people over the years for some reason and that reason is; advertising is an investment and business owners get a healthy track-able return on the advertising dollars they spend. Now if that doesn't increase a sales person's (at that business) sales then maybe it is time for the sales person to look at their sales techniques. Maybe they need to make some changes. Again, it is not the job of advertising to make sales for you. Advertising gets people to the door or gets the phone to ring.

marky

MPrince

I think that sales people should have a better understanding of the entire marketing process. Rather than seeing advertising and sales as 2 separate processes within business, they should really see and understand why the 2 are inter-connected.

What is also important for sales success is that sales people understand what the aims and objectives for their advertising campaigns are and how they should support the campaign (not all advertising directly drives footfall for instance). For instance we have a fairly large ad campaign on TV presently, for one of the countries largest insurers that is focused on letting customers know that they're about to change their name. I don't expect that people will rush to buy their products because they've changed their name, but their sales force will need to understand how to leverage this opportunity.

Following on from other posts on this subject, I think that advertisers should understand the marketing process, but don't necessarily need to have such a detailed understanding of 'selling'. As long as business advertising meets its defined goals and has a positive impact, then what sales people do to leverage this impact, isn't too much of an issue for advertisers.

What is an issue for advertisers, is when advertsing has no impact, or effectiveness isn't measured. It is often sales people that are able to provide the data to demonstrate the success of an advertising campaign.

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Mark Brown

Ace Coldiron

I could not disagree more with that statement. Nobody should ever be allowed to construct a single ad, let alone an ad campaign, without realizing that advertising IS selling.

Marketing is one of the most vague terms in all of the lexicon of business. There is no singular "marketing process" to be understood. The principles of Selling are learnable and those very same principles are found in Advertising.

Again--the giants of advertising--Caples, Ogilvy, Burnett, Hopkins, Barton, etc. saw advertising as SELLING rather than marketing.

BTW, Jeff has made available for download, Claude Hopkins classic book, Scientific Advertising. As David Ogilvy said, nobody should attempt to create advertising without reading Hopkin's book at least seven times.

Jumpman

I have taken some serious training classes, but not much to do with advertising.

Teach me the wonderful ways of advertising.

Thanks

MPrince

Jumpman

I will be happy to share with you all that I know and all that I can dig up on Advertising and Advertising Sales and yes advertising is sales. If you have a question feel free to ask. I have been making a very good living for a long time in Advertising Sales but if I know anything it is that I know nothing and that is why I love the world of Advertising. Each client offers a brand new opportunity and I have to constantly read, study and develop my skills. I have to keep the ability to stay humble and listen to others who have been before me and others such as Ace whose has profound wisdom in the matters of sales will help me or you to the next level. The way I see it is we are all in this together so, when I have a little more time I will share more or if you have question fire away.

MPrince