Are You Staying Curious -- About the Tech?

adapted from my "Sales and Marketing Minute" column for the quarterly TIVA newsletter.

Recently I wrote an article concentrating on the importance of staying genuinely curious about other people in order to enhance your sales activities.

In this article I want to once again write about being curious -- but this time with a focus on your approach toward expanding your tech knowledge.

I believe we are today in the midst of unprecedented change within the media field, much like the evolving role of personal computing in the 80’s, the expansion of appliances after World War II, cars in the 1920’s, electricity in the 1890’s, trains in the 1870’s . . . you get my point.

In each one of the above, there was first a speculative bubble that quickly burst, and then from the ashes slowly rose a phoenix of unprecedented change and growth.  Sound familiar to what happened in our industry with the internet boom and bust ten years ago . . . and today?

When I got into the media field as a producer and director, one could contemplate having a successful career in the media field without being too technical.  In fact, one might actually have felt discouraged from having an interest in the tech side back then.  It was often considered the purview of a select geek fraternity . . . a feeling further bolstered sometimes by crazy union rules.  Plus money was not as tight as it is today, so strong divisions between the producers / directors units and production / engineering teams could be tolerated.

But that has all changed.

With the democratization of media technology, relaxation of union rules, and today’s financial pressures, one cannot succeed if they are a Luddite when it comes to technology. For example, most stations and production companies today want to hire producers who can at least do their own rough-cut editing – if not also be able to shoot as well.

But how about today’s salesperson? 

I read an article in the Washington Post Business section last year that I thought was most  insightful.  It was titled, “Death of a Salesman.  Of lots and lots of them, actually.” In it, writer James Ledbetter said that from a sociological viewpoint, as the middle class that our parents knew continues to shrink in our society, the “classic” salesperson – those who can make reasonably high salaries “but [who] typically don’t require technical training or other specialized skills” is also shrinking.

Ledbetter goes on to say that the biggest reason for the drop in salespeople now is of course the internet.  That has eliminated one of the historical sacred roles of “classic” salespersons, that of being a gatekeeper, the guild-like exclusivity of access to information and products.   But now once online, people can get almost any information they desire (usually for free) and go right to the manufacturer online, bypassing any middle person.

So for today’s salesperson to be successful, he or she has to bring added value to any equation.  And in addition to delivering exceptional customer service, that means also being a reliable technical advisor.

I am not saying media salespeople have to now have an electrical engineering or computer science degree (although having those would certainly be an advantage), but I do believe we need to “up our game” quite a bit. For example, I have a rule of thumb that we need to be able to answer at least four initial tech questions from prospects before invoking the phrase “let me get one of our technical staff to join us in the conversation.”

And the goal should then be to make it five questions, six, etc. until you can answer all of a prospect’s tech questions by yourself.

OK, so you may not be a bonafide geek, and you may not have an advanced technical certification or degree.  But you at least want to be curious.  So ask questions of your staff engineers and production staff, cultivate your own network of tech gurus, read articles, and challenge yourself to attend tech-oriented networking events.  Don’t worry, no one is going to laugh at you.  Today, chances are your interest will be appreciated, and guess what, you will soon likely have a reputation as a “tech-savvy salesperson.”

David Ryan is the Marketing Director for Chesapeake Systems, an East Coast-based IT-centric media systems integrator.