Media Sales


How To Stay Ahead of Your Customers

If you are not providing leadership to your customers you will be relegated to the commodity media file. You’ll be the company that occasionally receives business when it suits your customer-base. On the other hand, as a leadership media company you’ll drive new business, win greater market share, and expand your market.

Use leadership to get ahead of your customers

A Sales Call Is Like a Blind Date: Are You Talking Too Much?

What do dates and sales calls have in common? You probably need to win another meeting or date to accomplish your goal. You are, in fact, building a relationship. You know good and well that talking about yourself too much on a date is a way to make sure it’s […]


Unlike Print: Digital Ads are Out-of-Sight, Out-of-Mind 1

I have been advising and training digital publishers on how to sell advertising for 20 years.  After a career in selling print advertising, first I predominately worked with digital publishers.  Then, after the internet advertising industry was off and running, I was most often hired by print-advertising, sales-driven publishers to […]


Young People Like Print, Too 1

Last week I wrote about how digital-direct-marketers are using print to drive more and better sales results.  I have asserted for some time in my Hybrid Media sales training that consumers use print for different reasons than they do digital media, and that the two together are more powerful than […]


Have a Hypothesis, Be Humble, Ask Questions like Columbo

The solution to overcoming fear of being wrong, is avoiding the need to be right. Journalists do this all the time by asking first the obvious, then the un-obvious question. Columbo, my favorite disheveled TV detective, would pose two conflicting sets of facts and ask questions trying to resolve them.


Discuss the Path to Purchase When You Sell Advertising

Smart advertising sales managers know that they can’t skip selling to the ad agencies and media buying services, but they must never forget where the power is; at the client. And getting client appointments is harder and more valuable than ever.

What gets the attention of clients? Certainly it’s not your circulation or your demographics. That is what they pay agencies to put in to spreadsheets. In order to be successful working at the highest level of advertising media decision making, at the client, you need to be adding value by contributing to their understanding of how customers make purchase decisions to buy their products. If you bring value to keeping up with the changing habits of buyers you will always be welcome in the executive suites of your advertising media customers.

It is the Path to Purchase that is intriguing to customers. It is not simple, rather it is nuanced. It is not static, but rather is changing with the changing media consumption patterns of consumers and business buyers.


Overcoming Call Resistance: How to Get More Ad-Sales Appointments

Did it really take research at Stanford to prove Calvin Coolidge right? “Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence.  Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.  Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.  Education will not; the world is full […]


How to Sell Advertising: Know Your Customer 1

60% say that “input from the client” is always “a resource use when preparing/selecting the list of media for consideration.” This is the highest of all reported sources, far above SRDS itself (27%) and above “research,” the next highest at 56%. And 54% say “client dictates” “always” or “often” are the cause of changes/turnover in a schedule. Are you getting the client sales calls you need to win ad-sales in this environment?


Advertising Sales Objection Handling: Lets Go to the Research

How many times have you talked with a prospect when they voiced an objection and wouldn’t agree with your answer even though you answered with evidence that was logically irrefutable? Now, maybe, we know why.