Print Marketing to Salespeople

Recently I got an email inquiry from a buddy of mine at Lucidera asking what publications salespeople read. Even though I was in sales for years, Jigsaw’s main community target is salespeople, I talk to them all day long and Jigsaw is partnered with several content providers for sales, I nonetheless was about as useless as a pre- dotcom bust business development manager in answering the question.

The simple reason is this: I honestly don’t think that there is a much of a noticeable overlap in what sales professionals read as it correlates to their job function. I asked our salespeople and got answers like “Maxim, Sports Illustrated, J Crew, People, Car Magazine, Travel and Leisure and Men’s Health” but all those are read based on personal interests (or because they are sophomoric knuckle-scrapers). Unlike marketers, who read the DMA, etc., and IT folks that keep Ziff Davis in business, there really isn’t a sales publication that I feel can really keep the sustained interest of your basic bag carrying rep.

I like Gerhard Gschwandtner, the Editor of Selling Power magazine, a ton but I’ve never heard of anyone who actually sits down and reads the thing from cover to cover.  Everyone and their brother has tools and tactics type pubs, but how much real new ground is being broken on this topic? Salespeople read the business sections of local papers, the Wall Street Journal, etc., but that is more to keep up with happenings of their target companies, not to consume sales-type content. When they read industry trade rags it is always according to what vertical they happen to sell into- not because they have sales as a job function. That is why Hoovers(and Jigsaw very soon) get such high CPMs; they bring together a general business audience that is hard to deliver.

Pretty much the only thing I could think of was airplane mags that get read by road warriors- and that will dry up when all the airlines finally implement wifi and you can send email and surf the web.

Truth be told, I bet a lot of salespeople don’t read anything. This for two reasons

1- it gets in the way of sitting by the fax machine waiting for orders (time constraints)

2- sales guys as a group don’t read that much

In fact, one of the best salesguys I know is basically illiterate. He graduated from a second tier liberal arts college, he is extraordinarily adept at simplifying complex software into business value presentations, but the guy writes in a Cro-Magnon dialect made up of ill formed contractions and tech acronym run-on fragment jargon. (“Your smart so its a nobrainor to do are deal”) With very few exceptions, I always took over the job of editing important communications from my Sales VP’s to customers so they wouldn’t recoil in horror at the pure absurdity of the message.

I’m sure this post will be controversial to my readers that are actually purveyors of fine print publications geared toward salespeople. So I invite you to write in and tell me I’m wrong- if you were even able to read all the way to the end of this post…

PS- Check out my look for this week…

Comments

[gerhard gschwandtner]

Unfortunately you are right. Salespeople don't read much of anything. I started Selling Power with the goal to give salespeople tools to close more sales. The original name was Personal Selling Power. I quickly found out that the publication would not survive if we targeted salespeople. When we began to focus on sales managers, our circulation went up, and our advertising went up. Today less than 5% of our circulation goes to salespeople. Salespeople are not readers, and they don't go to seminars to learn about their profession, they expect their companies to take care of their ongoing education. That's why there is such a high turnover in sales. I know many companies where the turnover is over 100% a year. That's why sales managers read Selling Power, because they desperately want to understand how to squeeze productivity out of their sales force. They want to know how to hire the A players, how to compensate them, how to incentivize them, how to get them to adopt a better sales process, how to train them, how to measure their results, how to get them to forecast more accurately, and how to get them to adopt CRM technology. The truth is that 80% of all sales organizations are hopelessly mismanaged because 80% of all sales managers have been star salespeople before someone promoted them into management. In other words, sales managers who read do this because they want to help others become more professional. What distinguishes the professional in sales from an amateur are three things:
1. The professional will deliver consistent success, while the amateur will score occasional wins.
2. The professional is able to teach others the skills and best practices.
3. The professional is taking charge of their own education. They are the few readers of sales books and professional magazines.
There are 19 million salespeople in this country, but less than 1% read anything more intellectually challenging than the Wall Street Journal.
Gerhard Gschwandtner

[Garth Moulton]

Hi Gerhard-
There are more intellectually challenging than the Wall Street Journal?

Seriously, thanks for the informative post. It is an important distinction between sales people and sales managers. I also agree with your definition of professional salesperson- except with a slight variation on number 2: They have to have a set process, best practices and skills that can be observed and taught by someone- I think you can be an awesome salesperson and just not be capable of teaching or managing yourself.

[Martin B.]

I don't read sales publications but I recently found a site that has many (50+) of the top sales blogs (including this one):

http://sales.alltop.com/

It's great because you can mouse over any article and see the first few sentences without opening new windows or tabs, and most of the info is not only valuable but also very entertaining.

Regards,
Martin B.