NOBODY Buys Advertising

Shocking title for a sales tip about selling advertising, right? Hear me out. Rule number one of advertising is that people don’t buy products and services; they buy what the product or service does for them. The same is true for your client or, for that matter, you as an RAB member. Your clients aren’t buying advertising; they buy what it does for them. You don’t buy an RAB membership; you buy what you can do as a result of your membership.

One of the biggest shifts happening in sales right now isn’t about platforms, products or even pricing. It’s about how we talk. Too many sellers still walk into meetings focused on what they offer—the features, the tools, the capabilities. But that’s not what clients are buying. They’re buying outcomes. They’re buying more customers, more revenue and more certainty that their marketing will actually work. When we lead with what something is instead of what it does, we create friction in the conversation because now the client has to do the work. They have to figure out, “What does this mean for me?” Top sellers don’t make the client do that work. They do it for them.

Instead of saying, “We have access to great research and tools,” they say, “Here’s how we can help you bring in more customers this quarter.” Same product. Completely different conversation. And when sellers make that shift, something else changes. They become more confident. Because they’re no longer presenting information, they’re solving problems. They’re not hoping the client “gets it.” They’re making it clear.

As Theodore Levitt wrote in his Harvard Business Review article Marketing Myopia, “People don’t want a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.”

Try this before your next meeting. Don’t start with what you’re going to show. Start with what the client is trying to solve, what outcome they care about and how what you’re bringing connects to that outcome.

Build the conversation around that. Because the best sellers don’t walk in asking, “How do I explain what I have?” They walk in asking, “How do I make this matter to them?”

And here’s where this really hits home. The same principle applies to the tools you already have access to. For many sellers and leaders, your RAB membership is filled with resources, tools and capabilities. But if we’re honest, it’s easy to think of those things in terms of what they are instead of what they do. Take something as simple as Instant Backgrounds. On the surface, it’s a tool. But the outcome is what matters. It helps you walk into a client meeting with a clean, professional, category-specific visual that immediately elevates the conversation. It saves you time. It builds confidence. It positions you as someone who came prepared—not someone figuring it out on the fly. Same tool, very different impact when you think in terms of outcomes. Here’s what one of our RAB Superusers recently said about Instant Backgrounds:

“I’m a data-driven seller, and Instant Backgrounds are packed with insights, analytics and validation that help me tell the story behind every campaign. I actually print out category reports and keep them in organized folders by industry—it’s my quick-access library of credibility. Those stats and trends help me bring confidence and strategy into every client conversation and they often become the “aha” moment that moves a deal forward.”
Tami Kent, Southern Broadcasting LLC, Corinth, MS

Some great benefits and outcomes are buried in that paragraph:

• Helps me tell the story
• Library of credibility
• Builds confidence
• Moves deals forward

Bet you never thought of an Instant Background like that before!

When you shift your thinking from “what does this do?” to “what does this help me accomplish?” you start to unlock value that was already sitting in front of you. I’ve been talking to lots of members lately about our tools and resources, not just the tools themselves, but what they are doing for people.

I’ll be sharing more of those stories in future tips. If you’ve used a specific RAB tool, product or service and experienced tangible results, I’d love to hear it. Email me here, please. The goal isn’t to make this a commercial—it’s to learn how others are turning tools into outcomes so we can all get better.

That’s the shift we all need to make when working with our clients. It’s the old, what’s in it for them? What will the strategy I created do for them? They don’t care about geofencing technology, but they sure care about impacting shoppers at their competitors’ locations and earning the chance to win their business by reaching them in the right place at the right time.

The sellers who are winning today aren’t the ones with the most tools. They’re the ones who connect what they have to what the client cares about—faster and more clearly than anyone else in the room. And if you need help with that, chances are there’s an RAB tool available to help you!

Think Big, Make Big Things Happen!

Jeff Schmidt is the SVP of Professional Development. You can reach him at Jeff.Schmidt@RAB.com. You can also connect with him on X, YouTube, and LinkedIn.