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 […]
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 […]
Your cold-calling is adding extra targeted, customized, frequency to the rest of your ad-sales-marketing plan that helps you win new business. Your calls are targeted to the prospects with the greatest need or potential for business volume. Think of your cold-calling plan as a personal brand-building process.
“One of the biggest problems of publishers and advertising sales staffs today is falling behind the customer.” Leading advertisers are moving as fast as they can to keep up with the changing information habits of their customers. But most publishers are more focused on selling what they have, the way it’s been sold in the past, than thinking about how to sell new services or sell advertising in new ways. So publishers and advertising sales executives are falling behind the perceived needs of their customers, the advertisers.
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?
Digital content environments are known for short attention spans, and difficulty introducing advertising for unknown brands and products because the user has so much control, to the point of blocking banners. “Magazines don’t have the issue of ad avoidance… People happily read ads alongside content in magazines, and are equally likely to remember ads and editorial.”
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.
Perhaps what the publishing industry hasn’t understood is that we were in a print bubble in the late 1990’s and early years of this century. We believed, for some reason that the market needed dozens of home magazines. We believed that the world needed hundreds of tech magazines and more than a dozen national parenting and baby care magazines. In many, if not most, business-to-business sectors there have been 3 or 4 or even five entries.
Print has not lost the values that make it important to loyal readers in any sector. Print is far more trusted than online, readers love the permanence of print and the experience of browsing through the pages of a favorite magazine discovering new ideas and products and services through advertising that they would never have searched for in a digital world.
Too many sales trainers take the “be like me” approach to teaching advertising sales. But there are successful advertising sales people of every size and shape, and of every personality. Successful advertising sales people, the ones who sell more then their competitors or more then their colleagues, make the extra sales because they do one or more of the 5 Secrets of Advertising Sales Masters
