Principles of contemporary selling

The act of “selling” in the traditional sense of the word weakens your place in the buyer-seller negotiation. Cut down on selling emphasis and begin using psychology and philosophy to translate your value. When you stop selling, your prospect will feel prone to open up and give you the reasons why he or she needs you to fix his or her problems. Isn’t that what we want anyway? Salespeople who sell hard and relentlessly sometimes don’t understand human nature—and it costs them.

You still do your dog and pony show to sleepy eyes. Stop the show and ask questions about their problems and existing conditions. “ What conditions exist in your company that caused you to be interested in our publication?’

Let them talk. You’re working too hard. Let them work a little.

 Never underestimate the propensity to purchase

You have seen this happen. A prospective advertiser will balk at spending $1500.00, then turn around and spend $2500.00 with a competitor. Why? Because the belief was there. The energy was there. The money is always there. Money is conceptual. Many times, the danger is that salespeople will make decisions for the prospect before they do. Don’t make the decision for the prospect before they do. Don’t make the decision for the prospect about anything, especially money. Also, sometimes the more one pays for something, the more value they attach to it—providing the value is actually there. The world is full of buyers who have bought half a solution only because of the salesperson’s fear to talk in larger terms that would have solved the entire problem of the prospect or customer. Think about that last statement.

        Never let your fears affect your selling

Often, we won’t ask the question because we’re afraid of the answer. The prospect is telling you about a severe problem he has. You need to ask    

“ Why haven’t you learned to solve this before/” By asking, you will be finding out an important part of his values—his own fear. From that, you can determine the best corrective action to take.

            Don’t overwhelm your prospect

You have tremendous knowledge about your publication –type styles, printing press capability, demographic statistics, website benefits, etc. You feel good about what you know and you want to start spouting all this information to the prospect. Many times, the reaction to all this rhetoric is actually wearing the customer out. Never wear out the one with the check.

So you know everything there is to know about newspaper advertising. But many times you don’t know the customer’s compelling problems that need to be solved—and you need to know them.

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                By Bob Berting, Berting Communications

There continues to be a  battle to enhance publication online presence and  to  be concerned about search engine optimization.  When the spiders and electronic robots visit your publication website, do they represent interested readers who will trust and believe in your journalistic expertise or just curiosity seekers who just want to grab bits and pieces of your news content. The burning question is  whether you are going to charge for your content or continue to run chunks of it on your website without charging? The answer lies in how much your audience wants your selected online local  news to pay for it. Clearly it could be different from your print publication. For example, if you have a weekly publication and a story breaks between publication dates, it can run on your website. Most free papers are happy just to have paid advertising on their website and not worry about news content being paid.

    People still want to read an actual newspaper

While the public is being bombarded by new technology like the Amazon Kindle

phenomenon, they need to make a decision as to what really is important in their reading habits. These habits can involve buying an actual book in a bookstore or a local newspaper that is delivered to their home or in a rack at a business location. Contrary to negative mass media , people still want local news. What is really interesting is to visit a popular bookstore like Borders or Barnes and Noble. You would think they would be deserted because of the internet or Kindle, but what a surprise to find these stores crowded with people of all ages shopping for books.

                The newspaper website

Although having a great looking website is important, there should be a balance between the advertising in your print product and your online product. Strategically, if you strive for dominant ads in your print publication, you must also emphasize dominant banner ads on your website. Too many times, there are a cluster of small website ads than keep running week after week until they eventually fade away in time.

         Current online sales training programs

A major drawback in current online sales training is that much of  it is conducted by trainers who have never worked in the newspaper industry. To make things worse, the material being taught could be given to salespeople in practically any other industry. The answer is to know that your salespeople are learning from a newspaper expert and who customizes the material to the newspaper industry.

 While many publishers don’t believe in rate cutting, they feel forced to do it to stay competitive. However, rate cutting can be a tricky game. There are many financial, budgeting, managerial, and sales reasons to stay on the rate card. Let’s take a look why:

                 Effect on the sales team

Rate cutting puts a lot of pressure on the sales team by creating ambiguity and confusion about how they are to conduct business and how far to go with cutting deals. On the other hand, publishers are sometimes frustrated by the demands of their salespeople who want to make easier sales by offering clients special rates.

        Creating insecure salespeople

Forced into price-cutting and deal making, many salespeople perceive themselves and their publications as weak. No one can be convincing as an advertising salesperson if he or she is insecure about their product. Breaking the rate card is also viewed as unprofessional by many media buyers, as well as advertising agencies. Also how can a client trust your word if he or she discovers their competition got a better deal from you? On the other hand, prospects who pressure salespeople to get a price break, often turn into difficult clients, who will desert you for the next better deal.

             Salespeople get side-tracked

Instead of concentrating on building and selling the value of their publication, many salespeople are busy worrying about how much to give away and when.

Negotiating rates encourages salespeople to focus too much on price. Instead of working as consultant-counselors, they must now operate as “deal-makers”. Instead of building long range relationships, they are in danger of losing the confidence of their clients. For the new salesperson who is still learning sales skills and gaining confidence, they do not need to see experienced salespeople negotiating rates.

 Rate cutting establishes a dangerous      precedent

Many salespeople offer rate deals because they think once the advertiser is in their publication, they can get them back on  regular rate card rates in the future. But the salesperson is setting a precedent that’s on the record with their customer.

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                    By Bob Berting, Berting Communications

When a movie turns out to be good or bad depends on a variety of things depending on the director, cast,  music, and editing. This principle applies to  successful advertising campaigns which encompass strategy, execution, marketing, creativity, graphics and copy. Let’s look at instant recognition and customized imagery. A basic principle of publicity for movie stars is to make them instantly recognizable. This principle applies to creative advertising, by a distinctive layout style, use of typefaces, unique style of art, use of color or some element that is dramatically different from the competition, which is customized imagery.

 In the movies, there is a theme that needs to be established at the start of the film. In a display ad, there is an optical weight of the ad, which in effect, sets the stage for the reader to be motivated to continue reading—in effect like the early movie theme. This optical weight is the upper left hand quadrant of an ad. Creativity can start in that quadrant namely with a well designed logo, the start of a provocative headline, a dominant eye-catching graphic and possibly spot color. It’s not easy to create an award winning movie. It’s also not easy to produce an award winning ad campaign. The key is for the advertiser to tell the story of his or her business.  This story is the movie about their business.

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I once conducted a 2 day sales training program for a chain of papers who were struggling to get more business. They had readers tell them that their ads were hard to read. As a matter of fact, their whole paper was hard to read. After looking over several issues of their paper, I saw the problem—their paper was crammed with reverse type ads—white copy on a dark black background—a sea of black ink everywhere. To make things worse, the ads were crammed full of type from border to border making them difficult to read.

I suggested that they change their ads to eliminate much of the reverse type. I also explained that ads need to be designed so there are units of thought—that each unit of graphic art and copy blocks need white space around them, making them far easier to read. Once these changes were implemented, the paper had a new look that drastically improved their readership. What had happened was the advertising sales staff had slowly caused the ugly look on a gradual basis. They felt by creating reverse type ads this would make their ads stand out. When their customers saw all the reverse type advertising, they even thought that was the thing to do.

Ugly ads in many cases are a production process

The more ads brought in and run rapidly through the production department, the better. I call this the “sausage grinder mentality”. Unfortunately well-designed ads fall by the wayside.

Many times, quality advertisers resent the look of a paper and its poorly designed ads. In a study by the Readership Institute, it gave the opinion that people will spend more time with a paper if they find the ads interesting and enjoyable to read. Also, editorial content was better read when the paper had quality advertising content.

On the other extreme, there are publications who spend excessive amounts of time designing ads with the hope they’ll somehow win awards in press association ad contest divisions. These beautiful ads are just that—beautiful ads. They aren’t designed to really pull business for the advertiser.

          The impact on future advertisers

The publication with ugly ads needs to recognize the impact on future advertisers. The new chic restaurant thinking about running in this newspaper wants an upscale image and may go elsewhere for their advertising campaign. This movement can create a domino effect and can be devastating if large chunks of advertisers start rejecting the idea of advertising in the ugly ad newspaper. Worse, competing media will notice it too and take advantage of the situation.

So if you’re worried about declining readership, start looking at your ads—they may be ugly.

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The role of the salesperson
The salesperson has to become a trusted advisor to the client and have the ability to get the client involved in the planning and content of the ads.  They must be able to demonstrate that they are a marketing pro who knows good layout design, can write good copy, knows type faces, and can sell long range campaigns. It is obvious that this type of salesperson should have these skills when hired  by the sales manager and then trained to be extremely good at them so as to be in control with the customer. The optimal word is control.. The salesperson has to take control and work with the client like an advertising agency approach. One of the major problems in newspaper advertising is that the customer thinks they know more than the salesperson who is calling on them. The salesperson has to establish themselves as an expert and trusted advisor. Even a new salesperson can be perceived as someone who the customer can trust and be guided toward a meaningful advertising program.

Rough layout organization
The  content has to be organized so that the client can see and approve  the format. This format includes the selection of headlines, art work, suggested copy, and overall ad design. The idea is to also find the customer’s personalized beliefs and goals (CPBG) and work them into the ad ideas. This can be done by showing a head shot of the customer to personalize their ads, featuring employees in the ads, and special goal/belief statements pledging quality, dependability, and dedication to excellent customer service.

The next critical action
The final step is for the salesperson to explain that they want to tell the story of the client’s business with an ongoing campaign but that research needs to be done to know why their customers shop with them and the benefits they are receiving. This information can build an ad campaign with the different reasons becoming the headings of the ads.The CPBG points can be distributed into feature copy boxes. An objection may arise that the customer wants to run special promotions as the ad headings from time to time. That’s OK as long as the campaign reverts back to the “story” of the original strategy. The next step is to tell the customer that they will be brought a campaign kick off ad layout (don’t call it a spec layout) or 2-3 sample ads depicting the start of a campaign. It is important that the customer fully agrees to this and gives permission to do so. Objections might arise which could delay the creative process but that’s OK because it’s better to know before the work is done than after the time and expense of doing the layouts.

The role of the layout artist.
Keep in mind that the salesperson knows what image is to be projected, what goals are to be targeted, and how the campaign is to flow. Any rough layouts done with the customer are given to the layout artist, incorporating the customer’s personalized beliefs and goals (CPBG). The artist proceeds to develop a kick off ad for the campaign or a series of ads to give a feeling of the campaign flow. It is important that the salesperson and the artist carefully go over the layouts before taking them to the customer, making sure that the proper image is projected.

The layout presentation
The presentation layouts are ready and mounted to give a more professional look. It is important that the layouts are shown to the customer before any marketing plan. This procedure ties in with the adage “ sell with emotion and justify with facts”. It’s very important that the layouts tell the story of their business, designed for efficient readership, and to utilize the customer’s personalized beliefs and goals.

The happy ending
If all the groundwork has been laid by the salesperson, if the presentation layouts really sparkle, and if the customer has complete trust and belief in the publication as the key player in their media mix—they will buy the plan. As a final word of caution, you can’t rush the process of creativity. There might be more than one meeting to thoroughly understand the customer’s personalized beliefs and goals.

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When a movie turns out to be good or bad depends on a variety of things depending on the director, cast,  music, and editing. This principle applies to  successful advertising campaigns which encompass strategy, execution, marketing, creativity, graphics and copy. Let’s look at instant recognition and customized imagery. A basic principle of publicity for movie stars is to make them instantly recognizable. This principle applies to creative advertising, by a distinctive layout style, use of typefaces, unique style of art, use of color or some element that is dramatically different from the competition, which is customized imagery.

In the movies, there is a theme that needs to be established at the start of the film. In a display ad, there is an optical weight of the ad, which in effect, sets the stage for the reader to be motivated to continue reading—in effect like the early movie theme. This optical weight is the upper left hand quadrant of an ad. Creativity can start in that quadrant namely with a well designed logo, the start of a provocative headline, a dominant eye-catching graphic and possibly spot color. It’s not easy to create an award winning movie. It’s also not easy to produce an award winning ad campaign. The key is for the advertiser to tell the story of his or her business.  This story is the movie about their business.

A new wave of sales training programs is bombarding the newspaper industry. Although most of them are well structured and are developed by sincere people, they miss the mark of what advertising salespeople need to develop in a profitable clientele for them and their publication.

The major drawback is that the sales training experts who write and present these programs many times have little experience in the newspaper business. A great majority of them have either an overwhelming background in electronic media –or they are internet gurus who have never worked in the newspaper industry. The material covers such topics as interviewing skills, needs analysis, quantifying measurable value, post sales analysis, etc. These are all good but unfortunately can apply to almost any type of salesperson and hardly focused on the specific needs of a newspaper advertising salesperson.

The other aspect of this type of sales training is that the emphasis dwells on step-by-step procedures based on classroom theory rather than actual field experience. The thrust of these programs deals with an information gathering process which develops into a feedback phase, which leads to positioning the value of the product, to achieve the goals of the prospect. After the prospect is led through this process, an action phase creates the sale. Again, note the informational process can apply to a broad area of selling and not targeted to the newspaper advertising salesperson.

What makes a good advertising sales training agenda?

1.    Self Motivation and intensive self confidence
All the sales training in the world won’t help if advertising salespeople have poor attitudes and have no desire to improve themselves. In many cases there is an order taker syndrome rather than an advertising counselor reality.

2.    Understanding media competition
In today’s selling climate, a good advertising sales counselor must know their media competition and how to outsell it. A good training program will show the advantages and disadvantages of other local media.

3.    Plans, packages, and programs
The ability to present long range programs and effective campaign packages is of paramount importance. Most media buyers want plans, packages, and programs which require creative thinking and extensive demographic evaluations of their market.

4.  Creativity
The ability to create great ads which are part of a continuing program is very important. A good advertising counselor knows how to design  eye-catching ads, write exciting copy, and put everything together for a long range program, which basically tells the story of the prospect’s business.

5.    The newspaper website
Although having a great website is very important, there should be a balance between the print product and the online product. If dominant ads are the case for the newspaper , they must be emphasized on the website also. Vertical banner ads on the website are preferred  over repetitive smaller unit ads which fade away with time.

Most merchants today have endured the slick sales approaches and know all the ploys and step-by-step selling procedures. What they want are advertising salespeople who can help them solve their marketing problems, not just spend their budget…salespeople who really know advertising strategy…salespeople who know how to develop the image of their business effectively. This is where a sales training program conducted by experts who have extensive newspaper advertising sales experience can really help.

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