ValueClick Tests Its Sales Mettle...And Comes Out Fresh and Sparkly

What a great time I had last Tuesday as a judge in ValueClick's (VC's) sales pitch competition to get their key folks ready to sell Predictive BT, their new entry in the crowded and confusing behavioral arena.

So I must admit that for me this event had two big things going for it: I love hearing a good pitch (I really do,) and I am fascinated by BT.

ValueClick had five people prepare their own presentations and selected 5 mystery judges to roleplay actual clients with actual challenges and predispositions toward VC. While each seller's counterpart posed a specific kind of challenge, it was up to the judges how they behaved, engaged (or didn't), asked questions. We could lob easy questions or try to set their feet on fire. It was all unpredictable just like an actual sale must be.

Each judge engaged with one sales person but rated the performance of all five by listening and filling out a quantitative survey.

Selling BT is always a challenge, and it is particularly difficult in light of:

How different VC's solution is from other BT platforms
The frosty privacy environment
The seemingly counter intuitive concept that there is an ideal number of data points to truly predict future behavior.

But their sales team was up to the challenge.

Let's pause for a moment for a commercial message, both because I heard about this solution five times, and because I have always liked ValueClick -- their products and their people.

VC's BT solution differs from other BT models in four key ways:

1. The model attempts to distinguish between "in markets", "drive bys", and "fanatics." By which I mean that they believe that there needs to be a system whereby people who are truly contemplating a purchase are separated from browsers and people who devour content on a subject but are not actually in market. Think cars. I hear about the new Scion XB replacement, and visit MotorTrend to read about it. And then forget about it. Or, I love cars so much that I visit MotorTrend 12 times a week, even if I am not about to buy a car. Or I am someone that is weighing options with a finite number of contacts with relevant brand information online.

2. The model does not assign individuals to one "bucket" but rather enables marketers to target people who may be prospects in a variety of categories.

3. The approach offers a real melange of data points -- from classic banner ads to search (on VC's comparison sites and via buying 3rd party data,) to affiliates via the CJ.com subsidiary. And it does this without needing PII. VC's subsidiaries in multiple lines of web business are a real strength here.

4. The model is constantly adjusting to changing circumstances. I liken this to a broad set of dynamic regression analyses, though that may not be how it works. That's just how I understand it to work.

So my role was to be a person who knew a lot about BT and ran digital planning and buying for a credit card. My plan was to be polite but disruptive, which is a common problem with people who know a lot about something. They try to run the meeting, and in the process make it very difficult to tell a cogent and coherent study. The meeting can devolve into racquetball, with the prospect hitting the ball in different directions and the salesperson forced to essentially do polite combat, returning the ball defensively. At the end the salesperson is tired and no sale is made. S/he didn't lose per se, but not losing is not the same as winning.

My plans were foiled by Nick Kounalakis, the salesperson I was assigned to role play with. Here's the play by play.

0. Before I could throw a wrench into the Nick show, he recited all the research he had done about my supposed problems, and had really deep knowledge of the special issues of my company. He also identified points of relationship -- shared life situations, etc., which made it much tougher to give him a hard time. Not that I intended to be hostile, but it was all part of his approach to directing our interaction and moving toward a close.

1. I tried to take control of the meeting by setting an agenda of three topics that relate to the product but don't allow the salesperson to tell the story. Nick got the better of me by reasserting control of the discussion by making me accept his agenda. Which I was sort of forced to do out of a sense of decorum and because his agenda was far more coherent than mine, What he did was listen to what I said and reframe it in the context of the story he wanted to tell.

2. I had a great deal of questions about privacy and issues surrounding it. And Nick answered every one, but each time reframing it into the next bullet point on his slides.

3. I tried to lead him astray in the discussion of the range of data points they use by focusing on Search and whether Google and Yahoo were part of their model. They aren't, of course, but rather than telling me that, he told me what WAS included, which included a variety of very appealing contexts that I had never really considered before.

4. I tried to steer him to a discussion of cookies and the issues that cookie deletion creates. And dammit if he didn't shut me down with a 4 second answer. And I want to emphasize that I didn't FEEL shut down. But I was.

5. I tried to get us on four different tangents, but Nick was like a chess player, always redirecting me to the point he wanted to make on the slide.

I was particularly impressed with how he created a broader sales platform -- that BT would be a component within a larger set of products VC could offer a credit card issuer. Mo' money was his very logical objective, and hey, if a salesperson can devise a solution that spends mo' money responsibly, then why shouldn't s/he get it?Which was very sharp because the challenge of BT in the credit card business
is that it really isn't going to be the lynch pin of a buy -- credit card companies will always buy a lot of cheap junk because it is DR-efficient and retargeting because it works like a dream in this category.

In short, he sold. He didn't just teach, he didn't just explain, he used education and empathy to meet my roleplayed needs.

Nick won the contest. And by focusing on him, I do not mean to diminish the excellent selling that was done by others in the competition. Each of the contestants did a great job of dealing with the at times rather difficult role players.

So congrats, Nick.

And even more to the point, kudos to ValueClick for recognizing the complexity of this sale, offering a comprehensive training environment, and giving their new messaging a dry run before they went out into the market so they can be better prepared when they actually deal with prospects instead of thespians.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.