Advertisers care about their results. Results are influenced by environment. Why don’t advertisers care about the environment their ads run within? More important, how can ad-sales executives induce buyers to care enough to pay for a premium environment?  

I have taught sales training and blogged on the idea that the answer to an objection is often a question. The answer to the price objection is a series of questions: How important is trust in the purchase decision of your customers? How much would it be worth to get a customer over the tipping point from product interest to purchase by building trust into your media plan? How much would a 144% lift above campaign averages be worth?

One hundred and forty-four percent is one end of the range of effectiveness lift found in an analysis by Moat of ad campaigns monitored by Moat.

Chart of results of change in advertising effectiveness for brands running in trusted digital environments.

If media buyers didn’t have objections, I guess they wouldn’t have sales people, at least not highly paid ones. So the real issue for ad-sales people, to achieve their own engagement with prospects, is to makes the sales environment a friendly, and informative one. Beginning with a question is a time-honored way to engage.  

Of course, many factors will effect how much a premium environment will help an advertiser’s results. But since the advertising sales executive is not making the creative, they are not responsible for the final result, only getting it into the right place at the right time.

When you walk by a pan-handler on the street the best way for them to stop you is to ask a question. They’ll often ask an easy one like “what time is it?” You can use a question with stopping power, too. Try “how have you analyzed the differences in results between the most trusted media you buy and the others?”  Then you might try “how much more effective is your most trusted media-buy vs. the others?” If the buyers don’t know, they should  be embarrassed, but you can offer them the data from Moat to help them get started understanding how to build results through the halo effect of trusted media.