Is it time to fire your ad staff and just start over?

Newspaper publishers and advertising directors across the country are stumped as to why so many of their legacy ad reps are still having trouble making the jump to selling digital.

Selling digital is not that complicated, is it? Is it a coincidence that many of those same ad reps are having major trouble selling print, too?

As print ad revenue continues to decline, it's all too easy to miss the relationship between the two problems. As managers, we're quick to explain away print revenue losses as simply what happens as readers and advertisers migrate to digital. We cut the ad rep a little slack, and let him keep doing what he's doing.

Of course, the cause of and the solution to both problems are really the same: we've hired, kept, and rewarded the ad reps who brought in revenue for us, no matter how they did it.

When I was an ad director, I was certainly guilty of this. My reps had different ways of getting the job done. Although I encouraged them to approach the sale the way I had taught them, some on my team thought they knew better and did their own thing.

They relied on sheer enthusiasm, persistence, aggressiveness or outdated sales techniques. They took shortcuts and focused on selling the media instead of getting the advertiser a response. They made poor recommendations that weren't in the best interests of the advertiser. They left money on the table.

But as long as they were hitting their goals, I could justify looking the other way. I always had bigger problems to deal with: new ad reps to train, empty territories to fill, and pressure to make my own departmental goals.

Shame on me.

I know I'm not alone. I've seen countless publishers and ad directors cringe as they watch some of their ad reps sell. But as long as ad reps are making their numbers, it's easy to look the other way. Until they're not hitting their goals anymore.

With increasingly attractive and less expensive options available, the chances of prospective advertisers choosing to spend money with your newspaper is at an all-time low.

The marketplace that forgave less than optimal sales behavior is gone. We're discovering that even a salesperson who once made their numbers may not be such a great salesperson after all. And just as we can't blame the decline in ad revenue just on digital, we also can't look to digital as the only solution.

In order to survive and thrive in this increasingly competitive environment, ad reps need to be executing perfect sales calls every time. There's simply no margin for error anymore.

Here's how to make that happen:

1. Don't allow your ad reps to choose a selling style
Many ad reps believe it's as much their right to choose their style of selling as it is to choose what color car they drive, what kind of music they listen to, or their political beliefs. They'll defend it just as passionately. Sure, everyone has their own personality, but there's a precise selling process they should be following on every call if they have any hope of thriving as a print and digital ad rep in today's market.

2. Give them a chance to improve
Teach them the right way to sell. If you teach them how to be strategists for the prospective advertiser, it won't matter what product they eventually recommend. The techniques need to be sound and the training program needs to sell them on the fact that there's a better approach to the sale. Case studies help a lot. I actually wrote a 25-page free e-book about exactly what goes into a successful training program (and we practice what we preach).

3. Coach and support them
You may not have hired some of them for their analytical skills, so they're going to need some major coaching, which should include help identifying where the money is and step-by-step hand-holding through the sales process. You'll probably need to help them build the presentations (we do all that, too).

4. Hold them accountable
Test them. Make them prove to you that they have it down. And make sure they know you'll be testing them periodically. Because we all get distracted easily with more pressing things, have them show you that they approached the sale properly on a weekly basis.

5. Fire the ones who won't adapt
No matter what you say, some of your ad reps won't believe that the approaches they've been using so successfully for years is now the problem. They'll blame it on tough times. Others might not be motivated enough to change or just afraid to change. Fire them before they bring your newspaper down and get somebody in there that'll do the right thing for your advertisers.

6. Hire true ad strategists
Want to make sure your new ad reps succeed with print and digital? Make sure they're analytical. They need to be able to properly analyze a business, its competitors, and target customers and put together a strategy to drive business to them. It's these strategies that will set your publication apart and it's something your competitors, (including many digital and social media experts), aren't doing.

Teach your existing staff the right techniques or hire new sales reps that gravitate to analyzing businesses and they'll be able to sell all your products and services, print and digital combined.

In short, don't be so fast to write off your publication's print revenue decline to digital. You work hard to create a fantastic publication. Insist your ad reps are doing their part flawlessly, too, or what they're hearing about print being dead might just come true.

I hope this helps. Leave a comment sharing your thoughts below (including how much you disagree with me). Share this post with your friends. And subscribe to my Twitter feed and check out my Facebook page for other interesting resources.

Congrats on the Cash for Gold ad sale, Shannon!

A quick congratulations to Shannon Oseen at the Post Register on her sale of last week's "Cash for Gold" Presentation Pack ad.

Shannon took a coin dealer from running a 2 column x 3" ad to a weekly 4 col x 15" ad by simply following the process outlined in the videos. 

These days, there's at least one of these places in every territory, so unless you already have more ad sales than you can handle, there's no excuse why members to this service haven't gotten out there and presented this already.

If you're still feeling shaky on the sales techniques (for shame!), pull me into a Web meeting with the prospect and I'll present it for you. We could even do it in an iPad Web meeting.

Among other things, the ad has so many ways of proving that people will receive top dollar--the only thing people really care about when selling their gold and silver--that it was a no-brainer for the advertiser, especially after Shannon reviewed the content/size/frequency concepts I talk about in the videos.

Here's the link to everything:

How To Sell A Cash For Gold Dealer

If you're not yet a member of our inexpensive live training, coaching, and presentation service for newspapers, you should learn more about our Presentation Pack service.

Flip the sale: Changing no sale into a huge sale = revenue

After: The ad rep presented this large ad twice
within 2 days. The first one ended in a definite
"no". With some changes, the second presentation
yielded a 13x contract for this 5 col x 16. Read what
she did differently that made the difference. 

Are your ad reps increasingly coming back to the office feeling beat up and demoralized, attributing it to the digital age and the economy?

It doesn't have to be that way, as this incredible case study from one of my clients illustrates. A simple shift in an ad rep's sales approach can make overcoming objections a breeze and result in a major jump in print and digital revenue, leaving one ad manager to describe their ad sales as ON FIRE!!!

This case study begins with an ad rep who gave a classic consultative selling-type presentation, one that would make any ad director proud.

But, as happens a lot these days, the business turned her down, in no uncertain terms.

• They claimed they had no money.
• That print was dead and it just didn't work.
• That digital worked even less (unless it was pay-per-click).
• That the weak economy was making it hard to justify spending anything.

Sound familiar? The ad rep was felt like she was banging her head against a brick wall.

But two days later, she returned and tried again with a different approach and this time sold a 5 col. x 14" ad on a 13 x contract.

The crazy thing is that almost nothing changed between the first presentation and when she reapproached the prospect two days later. In fact:

• She spoke to the same person.
• She showed the same spec ad she had presented before (from our ad sales coaching service).
• It was the same information about her print and digital products and how they fit the prospect's needs.
• She used the same information she had gathered from the original "fact-finding" call.
• The ad recommendation was the same size, frequency, and rates she quoted the last time.

How is this possible? Both times, all the above elements were perfect (we're sure–we helped her with a lot of it.) But the second time there was a seriously different outcome by just by changing her wording. In fact, this technique works so well, two large newspapers independently told me recently: "If every newspaper was using this sales approach, the industry wouldn't be complaining sales are down."

The real problem at the heart of declining local ad sales (and how to fix it).

Before: This was the ad the kitchen remodeler
had run before with no success. Too often
the newspaper industry and economy's
troubles are blamed instead of the ad.

What exactly changed? The first time she presented the ad, she had a sound strategy (and it looked great, too), but the advertiser didn't believe it would work. Advertising is subjective, after all, and a big ad with lots of copy didn't happen to fit into his own approach (which you can see to the right).

Because his previous ad, which he liked, hadn't shown any results, it was difficult for him to conclude anything other than what he's constantly hearing–newspapers are dead.

And so was the sale.

This exact same phenomenon is now happening in digital, too. And it's worse, because everything is so measurable. That's a big deal, because when we allow an advertiser to fail at digital, too, they may never return to either medium and start running, say, pay-per-click ads through Google instead. Or settle for Facebook. And Twitter.

That's how you run a newspaper into the ground.

So, what did she do differently?

To her credit, she went back and watched my videos where I role-play the entire kitchen presentation. She got the new approach down and went in again with the same materials, but this time she first changed the prospect's underlying, faulty theories about print and digital that were getting in the way of him believing the new strategy would work, teaching him an effective, direct-response system of advertising. We call it the "Response Model".

Once he bought into that, she then went on to show the prospect how she applied this Response Model to the information the he had given her and proceeded to help him visualize the new strategy. Only then did she show the ad.

I got this email from her manager later that day.

"Tanya presented the ad today (again). He loved the ad. Did not object because she did such a nice job on having him imagine the ad as we went along on the response model. I am so PROUD OF HER!!!!!!!! We are looking at a 13 week commitment. We are on FIRE."

This isn't a fluke. The ad manager said they've sold every ad they're presented so far. That's why many newspapers–dailies, weeklies, and monthlies alike–who make sure their ad reps take a few minutes to ensure their prospects' theories about advertising are correct before presenting, describe their ad sales as on FIRE.

Ad revenue doesn't need to be down. But ad reps who are treating spec ads as little more than a decoration, in effect saying, "trust me" on the ad strategy side are killing your newspapers more than the economy or the new age of digital ever will. Prospective advertisers have to believe every dollar is going to come back to them tenfold. They have to believe in the strategy.

What made the difference here is that Tanya went back and spent some time drawing the prospect through a solid, step-by-step approach to creating print and digital strategies that work the first time.

The result? An advertiser who could visualize getting a response from a huge ad and understood exactly why the ad needed to be the size it was, needed the frequency, and needed every word of content.

No arguments. No objections. Just an extraordinarily happy advertiser.

Want to learn more? Sign up for a 30-minute demo and learn how your staff can do exactly this with our inexpensive, all-on-one service that combines live training Webinars with weekly, category-specific coaching videos, complete with stunning spec ads and PowerPoints. Or call me at (631) 477-2505 and I'll fill you in on the details of how your ad reps could be killing it on every sales call.

And give your ad reps some ammunition when your prospects tell them they have no money, it's the economy, or print is dead.

How to get local businesses begging to advertise in print and digital

This doctor, originally only interested in a one-time run
of a 2 col x 3" ad, signed on to a 5 col x 14" for multiple
weeks once the ad rep started using this new selling
technique. We can show your ad reps how to do the same thing.
Just e-mail or call us at (631) 477-2505.

I'm going to share with you an unusual but hugely successful ad sales approach we employed recently at the 24,000 circ. daily Post Register in Idaho Falls, Idaho. It worked so well, it got local businesses emailing and stopping into the newspaper begging to advertise in both print and digital.

Some businesses, that had never advertised before, started running huge ads. Other businesses that were already running began running dramatically bigger and more frequently without any argument. And still others came in wanting to buy smaller ads, like a 2 col. x 3", and left signing up for 5 col. x 14" ads on contract (see "after" ad at right).

The approach was so well received that it even generated some angry phone calls from businesses asking why they weren't asked to be a part of it, even though it didn't involve any discounting.

That's when we knew we were really doing something right. We're expecting the newspaper to generate between $600,000 to $1 million within the year and there's no doubt that you can do the same thing, too.

What the customer wants
While newspapers are scrambling to sell more print and digital products, most are overlooking the single most effective and easiest way to drive major revenue. It involves focusing less on selling print and digital products and instead on helping local businesses solve their biggest problem of driving customers to their store.

Sure, every newspaper knows they should be selling what the customer wants. But the perceived unpredictability of advertising and its subjective nature makes it difficult for a newspaper to prove, upfront, that an advertiser's cash register will ultimately ring.

But that's exactly what we've figured out how to do with both print and digital, and, as result, we've helped generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue for many of our clients over very short periods of time.

For this very busy ad staff in Idaho (and others like them), we're even doing much of the day-to-day heavy lifting involved when selling advertising, including doing the homework, analysis, developing the strategies for prospects, and one-on-one sales coaching through a powerful yet inexpensive service we developed called Presentation Packs (join us this Thursday at 12 noon for a quick demo of how that cost-effective service works).

How it works
So what exactly did we do for the Post Register? As always, the goal was to drive significant print and digital revenue by teaching their ad reps, designers, and managers a unique approach that enables the ad reps to ultimately prove, upfront, to their prospective advertisers that they'll get a response. Part of this, of course, involved teaching the newspaper how to deliver that response.

To show the ad reps how it's done, I conducted a seminar for the local business community. It was easy to promote and get people to attend (in fact, there was so much demand, we had to move to a larger ballroom).

The unusual thing was that there was no sales pitch and very little talk about the newspaper's products. No rates were discussed. To the audience, it appeared simply to be a seminar on how to create strategies that'll work in print and digital. To be sure they bought into it, every point was drawn out of the crowd by tying it into similar dynamics they've experienced elsewhere in their lives. In effect, the approach was their idea.

At the end of the session, I mentioned that the ad reps at the Post Register were well-versed in these techniques and would be happy to help them create a strategy. In fact, we put an account profile questionnaire on each seat they could fill out to get the process started.

Despite the lack of any overt sales pitch and, or, I should say, because of it, as well as our focus on solving the customer's problems (which is Sales 101, after all), four things happened that confirmed we were on the right track:

1. Immediately after the session, current and prospective advertisers approached the publisher, ad director, and the ad reps wanting to start the process. 

2. The ad director started getting emails like this one with the subject line "I want to buy more advertising":

3. In addition to those that approached us immediately after the session, later that day the seminar attendees began walking into the newspaper announcing they wanted to start advertising.

4. The ad director began getting complaints from the business community. Evidently, word of the seminar spread to others who had not been invited (or missed the ad we ran) and wanted to learn the techniques their friends were talking about.

Of course, part of my training is to ensure the ad reps learn how to teach the techniques and use the sales approach, too, so they were able to handle the inquiries, and in the process they could shift from the "vendor" mode to the "partner" mode, opening up the entire sales process so they could ultimately recommend an entire strategy.

And since this newspaper signed up for my once-per-week Presentation Packs, where I work out entire strategies for a different high-potential customer each week (and then record a video series around each one showing how to conduct each call and close the sale), the Post Register are making print and digital sales as quickly as they can present them. We're expecting $600,000 to $1,000,000 this year in added revenue.

My program isn't for every newspaper. Those that embrace my approach and do well are those who believe the fastest way to the sale is by solving the prospect's problems. And since all the prospect really cares about is getting their cash register to ring, we teach the ad reps how to prove they can do that.

If this is your philosophy, too, why not give me a call and we can chat more about your specific situation and how I might be able to help, through on-site training or, if you're a smaller publication, through the Webinars and coaching videos in our Presentation Packs.

What are your thoughts on this approach? I'd love to hear them.

Join us this Thursday to see the easiest way to sell major print and digital contracts

Live monthly training on our popular
Response Oriented Selling techniques
are combined with a video series
centered around a different category
each week, including example PDF's,
PowerPoints and guaranteed ROI to make
this inexpensive service a nice option
for even the smallest publications. 

Want to see an easy way to close a major sale each week (and give your staff some of the best print and online ad sales training around)?

Join us this Thursday, March 7th, at 12 noon EST for a 30-minute demonstration of our Presentation Packs service. You'll quickly get an overview of one of the most cost-effective ways to drive serious print and digital revenue fast.

It's a combination of ongoing live training, weekly coaching videos, and custom-made presentations that's like you have your own full-time advertising training manager and new business development manager wrapped up into one very affordable package.

Most are presentations I've personally made and helped sell multiple times for various clients on contracts around $15,000 each, so these aren't just academic exercises.

It starts with live training (available every month for anyone who comes on board after the initial training) on our award-winning ad sales techniques (via Webinar) as well as access to one of the industry's most popular new hires ad sales courses.

Plus, each week, your ad staff receives everything they need to make a high-potential sale to a specific category, including PowerPoint/Keynote files, new videos that walk the ad rep through the entire sales process specifically for each category, and, of course, a stunning and highly effective ad you can quickly customize for your prospects (and recycle if they don't buy).

They even have personal access to me if they need a little more coaching or direct help selling a prospect. It's really worth a look if you have 30 minutes.

With all that managers and ad reps have to do in a day, we find that two things get pushed to the bottom of their "to do" list. First, managers just don't have the time to coach. And second, most ad reps don't have the time (or inclination) to do their pre-presentation homework, analysis, and all that back-and-forth with a designer to develop a solid strategy. So, often, the really serious prospecting just doesn't get done.

These Presentation Packs help with that in a big way. As one ad rep who sold a $25,000 contract from the first Pack said, "If you can set me up like this, I'll knock them down."

Drop me an email if you want to take a look either in the session or privately. Or if you're reading this after the session, contact me and I can give you more information and take you through a private demo.

Presentation Packs involve a $2,500 "entry fee" then a $250 monthly fee after that. They come with a guarantee, too: If you're not making money from them, I'll sell them for you via Webinar. Again, most of these ads I've personally sold in multiple markets already.

If you're a newspaper owner, publisher, general manager, or ad manager e-mail me or call (631) 477-2505 if you'd like to attend. If nothing else, you'll see how other newspapers are leveraging their limited resources to drive major print and digital revenue fast.

This may be the most productive use of your ad rep's time

As I explain in this video from my ad sales training, coaching and presentation service, sometimes keeping an advertiser's expectations realistic and constantly troubleshooting are the most productive thing an ad rep can do.

Here's to a successful 2013 with print, online display, and mobile!

Thanks to everyone at the Post Register for a great few days last week working with your managers, ad reps, designers, and business community to kick off a year-long effort to drive major print and online (display and mobile) revenue for both the newspaper and the area merchants.

The concept of making dramatic sales increases, not by locking unsuspecting prospects in a room and offering major discounts, but by doing the right thing and proving they'll get a response, was well-recieved by not only the newspaper's staff but the standing-room only crowd at the business community seminar. We're already hard at work providing solutions to the attendees in what's a truly win-win situation.

Our goal is $600,000 to 1 million in added revenue, which should be a piece of cake after helping another client do $300,000 in just a week.

Besides an even greater emphasis on digital display and mobile, we're adding an additional, very special piece this year which should make generating this kind of revenue a breeze: I'm going to personally help manage the staff, coach them, and hold them accountable throughout the year. As our "7 Essential Elements Every Ad Sales Training Initiative Needs to Drive Major Revenue in 2013" e-book explains, ensuring the day-to-day use of the new techniques is such a critical step to bringing in major revenue, we've decided to take over much of this responsibility given the mounting tasks and distractions ad managers and publishers everywhere are facing.

It's going to be time-consuming for us but no doubt it'll increase the already strong results for our clients tenfold. As this happens, we'll eventually raise our rates, but for this quarter, we're won't be adding on any additional charge, making our sales program a steal for any newspaper looking to get the most bang for their training buck.

If you're interested, there's still a space or two left. Just contact us and we'll share the details.