Focusing On the Right Things When Solution Selling

Can you spot the real-deal from the counterfeit?

Within the Secret Service is a group of people focused on detecting and addressing counterfeit currency.

If you've looked at a $100 bill over the last 10 years or so you've noticed a serious change in its appearance, in fact there's a website dedicated to showing you what a new bill looks like called NewMoney.gov - definitely worth a quick look.

Mistaking the fake for the authentic can be an expensive, time consuming, and embarrassing experience - in currency and in life.

What does the changing appearance of a $100 bill have to do with your local media business?

Glad you asked. See, the media landscape is changing faster than currency and attempting to identify the counterfeit from the authentic is a daunting task yet you're expected to provide expertise and insights to your clients.

It's been said that these counterfeit experts spend all of their time studying the real-deal, they examine it, they feel it, they understand the key elements that comprise it and when they see a fake it stands out like a sore thumb. So it is with local media. Value comes not explicitly from the medium or the message, though both are important to understand, but from the audience you reach. This isn't a technical issue, it's not something too complicated to communicate it's about reaching the right people at the right time with the right message.

So, first look at your core and ask if you do this for your advertisers or prospects then you can look at other promotional vehicles and address how well they do this job. If you understand what the real-deal looks like then you can point out the fakes.

Authentic approach to change, evolving day-by-day

Beyond selling, this approach is important in evaluating how you and your organization spend your time. Should you put more effort into Facebook or email list nurturing? Should you focus on growing your web presence through long-format stories or shorter ones? When you know which will help you reach that audience more effectively and thus deliver more value in the process these answers become much more clear (though the "how" matters more than the "what" locally).

If something can reach the audience or complement your current activities, when done right, pursue it and use it to offer expanded value to your clients. If it takes you in another direction then it's probably something you should skip. One word of caution, new media tools and techniques have right-ways and wrong-ways just like old media - don't mistake doing it the wrong way for an ineffective medium or technique.