AE Interview Flashcards
• Tell me about a sale that you are particularly proud of. What was your sales process?
• Hearst
• Describe a situation where you built a compelling business case to turn a customer’s ‘No’ to a ‘Yes’?
o Nat Geo
Wanted to run on FB because it was cheaper
Showed them the member sentiment on fb vs li
This is what swayed them
Able to grow them 268%
First campaign that really set off our relationship with them
Figured out what the blocker was and attacked it
LI was seemingly a great fit because they often promoted content around finance and sustainability
• Tell me about a time when you had to create urgency with a customer. What did you do? How did others react? What was the outcome?
o Walmart
o Key is to provide a case for why it’s important to them going live quickly
o Stressed the importance of going on the platform in the summer, as we tend to see a bit better engagement rates/cheaper cost pers
o Showed them that their competitors are active on the platform now to create fomo
o Created parallel paths once they agreed
o Proactively set up campaigns for them
o Did a CMT walk through while we were waiting for creative
o Convinced them to front load campaigns to generate “learnings” before key back to school/holiday period
• Give me an example of when you’ve had to work with a difficult customer. How did you handle interactions with that person? What was the outcome?
o Nespresso
o Rude over emails, not appreciative
o Key is figuring out what the breakdown in communication is coming from
o Had a bad experience with a previous LI rep for another account she was on
o Came from FB so naturally gravitated towards them as a platform
o Gave her white glove service
o One of the good things with OSO is you are able to give clients white glove service that you know they aren’t receiving elsewhere
o Met up with her 1:1 to talk it through
o Came out that she just hates sales people, so it was my job to lean in
o Ended up setting up weekly office hours where I would come in
• Describe a time you use insight driven stories to build a business case with customers? What was the outcome?
o Pinterest
o Listened to earnings report – identified Canada and brazil to be primary markets for growth for them
o Used this as an opportunity to show how much little scale they were getting in these regions
o Ended up upselling Canada for $25K, and launching $100K for brazil
• Tell me about a time you used insight-driven stories to build a new relationship with a customer
o Luxury narrative
o Used it to pitch clients on the value of running with LI
o Chanel – CMS report
o Luxury is notoriously competitive
o Used our intro call to di discovery and realized that one of the primary things they look for in new partners is how much other members are using the platform
o Used the meat the member stats around luxury
o Luxury narrative got us a plan with chanel for upcoming gabrielle campaign
o LI members are 43% more likely to have researched and purchased a perdume online than the average web user
o Used learnings from hearst perfume campaign as well
• What research do you undertake to understand your customers business and the industry they operate within?
o Earnings reports
o Look at their organic presence on LI + other platforms that can usually tell me where their priorities are
o Look at competitors/what they are doing
o Google
o Looking on the site
o Had to do this a lot when I worked in oil & energy
o Not being afraid to ask customers when you’re unfamiliar with a term – sometimes people get so nervous to not look like they are uninformed, when the majority of the time, the client is fine with giving you a quick walk through
o A lot of my upsells over the years have come from googling what they are doing in the news – ex: Windstream
o Looking up narratives
o Meeting with other team members who works in that space
• What do you look at achieving from your first meeting with a new customer? How do you plan/prepare for it?
o Know their industry
o Google them, see what they have been up to in the news
o Do a deep dive into their ad account to see what and where they are currently running
o When they plan
o Who does the planning
o What their main objective is
o How they run with other platforms
o Where their focus and priorities are for the next 2-3 months and any goals they are being measured on
• Share an example of uncovering a customer’s decision-making process and how did you influence it?
o Pinterest
o A client we had to do a ton of discovery around
o We got them at the perfect time – quarter before they had spend minimally, and we got them right as they were looking to expand their marketing efforts, and be known as a go-to sales platform
o A lot of our discovery was around how decisions get made internally, and who handles budgets
o We learned that each market has a marketer who plans with our local US contact, and that each market pretty much has to be in alignment in order for them all to run
o For example, if the US wants to run with LI, all the other markets need to be in agreement because they have global plans
o In NAMER, we’re an obvious choice, but in places like Brazil or France, we are less obvious
o Because of this, we pulled together a ton of market specific data
o We used audience analyzer to see how markers behaved in these regions, we pulled examples of other marketers we worked with for any regional nuances
o We pitched them on a brand impact study to measure the lifts of their campaigns, and are about to close on a regionalize BLS
o Our goal was to influence their perception around LI
• How do you build trust with customers where they know you’re actively listening?
o Repeating things back to them is very important
o “So to recap, what you are saying is”
o “Does that make sense?” – let me say it back to you to make sure
o Always tie your recommendation back to what they said
• How do you prioritize your accounts? What are certain metrics that you keep in mind to decide whether an account is a priority?
o Spend
o Spend potential
How much they are spending with other platforms
Growth in the company itself
Earnings call call-outs
o How receptive the person you are talking to is
o How sophisticated their marketers are
o How familiar they are with LinkedIn
Also important to figure out who you are de-prioritizing
• How do you plan your quarter?
o Pursuit planning
o Bucketing clients on big wins & sustainable business
o Started keeping a calendar of when activations were
o Figure out who I need to have conversations with
o Which clients are longer term plays?
o With clients have planning cycles coming up? Who do I need to speak with in order to get in on that planning?
• Share an example of when you were successful in overachieving your targets.
o Pandora
o Werent advertising their business well – had sporadic campaigns that would turn off and on
o Werent always even advertising their advertising offerings
o Got them to verticalize their campaigns
o Got them to start running event promotions
o Wasn’t sure how much I could grow them because growth has been fairly steady half over half
o Pandora (147% HoH)
• Does your role require you to map key stakeholders?
o Yes
o Particularly in luxury
o They leverage agencies, so it’s on us to really figure out who is holding the dollars
o Have leveraged emea counterpart to make inroads and connections with US contacts
o Particularly because I work in E&M – who is actually making the decisions vs the day to day
o Work with a lot of sales teams
o In order for us to grow business, we need to make inroads with sales teams as well
o Also need to figure out who is the liaison from marketing to sales
• Share a situation where you have had to build multiple inroads for the same account.
o o Nespresso
o Did this a lot with Nespresso
o They employed Merkle to be their agency for their B2B products
o Anytime a client employs an agency, you want to make sure to make in-roads with the clients themselves, just in case
o So while Merkle were our day to day contacts, we knew it was important to meet with the client direct, as well
o And with the client, we had to get to know multiple people, as Nespresso is huge
o This paid off for us, because the agency actually wasn’t our biggest fans (Kaitlin hated linkedin)
o So while we were working with Merkle on activation and success metrics, we were simultaneously working with Nespresso on large picture ideas
o Paid off, because in the end, Nespresso ended up running a campaign directly with us, which they were able to have more behind because they weren’t working with Merkle and they didn’t need to offset those costs
