Here’s a great blog post from Jeff Jarvis on selling value and outcomes. Stop Selling Scarcity
Jeff Jarvis | Feb. 8, 2010, 3:09 PM | 3,320 | 9
If you are selling a scarcity — an inventory — of any nonphysical goods today, stop, turn around, and start selling value — outcomes — instead. Or you’re screwed. Apply this rule to many enterprises: advertising, media, content, information, education, consultation, and to some extent, performance.
Start with advertising. I wrote in my report on a local advertising sales roundtable we held at CUNY that sites should shift from selling media — their own inventory of banners and buttons — to selling services for merchants, helping them succeed through networks of local sites and also through Google, Yelp, Twitter, Facebook, email, mobile, and whatever comes next … helping them with their business. The merchant doesn’t give a rat’s ass about your limited supply of space and eyeballs; the merchant cares about sales and return on investment. As Max Kalehoff advised in a comment on that post, “Sell the outcome.”
At a Paley Center breakfast this week, Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin — a titan of ad sales in broadcast — was blunt about the current state of advertising in media: “There’s just too much supply,” he said, “and I don’t think that supply is going to go away. The leverage is on the part of the buyer as opposed to the seller.” When there’s limitless supply, pricing is not based on supply and demand. These are the new economics of media.
