Houston, we have a problem. I need advice regarding sales

[martinn12005]

I own a 2 year old free newspaper.

I started it myself in my local area. We've gone from having 10,000 readers per issue to know having over 100,000 every issue and we distribute it to a large area. Despite the doom and gloom image surrounding the industry, it is actually going quite well..

I'm a bit stuck regarding selling advertising space. As we grow, we need to sell more of it. We've contacted most advertising agencies but despite our efforts, we do not get any work from them.

Most of our work comes from cold calling and dealing with small local businesses. As we expand we now need to get many of the larger companies advertising in the newspaper. However, this is the hurdle we are having difficulties overcoming.. We have a small call centre where we try and generate leads. Generating leads is very difficult and we find it very difficult to get any appointments to pitch what we can offer to these large companies or their ad' agencies.

We are also finding it extremely difficult to find any good sales people at this moment in time.

Any professional advice is greatly appreciated. If you are a sales guru, I want to hear from you

 

[SamRapidSwitch]

Generating leads takes both time an consistency.

1) make sure your pitch is decent, and perhaps play off some of that company's competition or neighbouring offices having already signed up. Assume the sale.

2) offer some incentive: a % discount or free for first x amount of days/ weeks. Everyone loves a deal.

3) you want bigger clients? Use tools like LinkedIn, networking events, social media to get yourself known and have conversations with those that matter - the people who are going to make decisions and buy space.

4) don't be afraid to get straight to the point - an underrated approach nowadays, as people consider their time precious.

5) evaluate your sales team - can they actually so the job? Give them achievable figures to hit and let the proof be in the pudding. If they're good, they stay, if not, needless to say there's people out there that might love the opportunity.

6) make sure you incentivise your staff - this is massively key. Why would you work your balls off, only to get nothing in return? Simply, you wouldn't, so make sure staff are rewarded for decent conversions.

7) never give up, some business requires time to nourish and turn into cash.

8) this might sound simple - have you thought about advertising yourself that you have space to advertise?! Lol, you never know who's reading!!

Hope this helps.

Sam

 

[Merchant UK]

Unfortunately thats the only way your going to sell advertising space and thats via cold calling. You say that your finding it hard to get the sales people involved, mainly because i'm guessing its commission only?

Now lets look at it from a different angle, Women is your secret weapon, now i would certainly buy from a woman as opposed to a man if they were cold calling, but where are you going to get your gaggle of women from?

How about you tap into an area which could see you get some great sales staff but are unable to commit because of staying at home with kids etc.. There are loads of young girls who would love a clean hassle free job and the potential to earn £££'s but they can't because they have children or babies.

How cool would it be if you could get staff like these by incorporating a creche within your workspace where women could leave their children free for the morning with proper child care assistants whilst they work for you?

The cost of hiring a couple of assistants to look after the children would be nothing compared to the amount of revenue these girls could make you (as long as the script they use is good)

if you got one group in the morning and a different group in the afternoon then no member of the sale team would need to be away from their children for longer that 4 or 5 hours

Would this work for you??

 

[blake07]

Sounds as if you require some professional Sales & marketing, as you have learnt this comes at a premium, as most professionals will require some sort of commitment up front. I may be interested in offering my services based on an Equity share of the business, will need to know a little bit more about you and the publication.

 

[martinn12005]

Thanks for the tips...

Yes our sales people are commission only. We've experimented paying a basic, giving people company phones etc and had terrible experiences.

Its true that the best sales people seem to be women. Especially for cold calling and phone manner for the call centre. We've found that women always tend to be better workers too. They fill in the booking order forms, they hand over the cash to the office after they've collected from a cold call, update their superiors regarding progress and generally all around good - and yes, some do have kids to work around, we do need to implement a child care facility when we can accomodate it, but they don't do bad working around their kids at the moment and we provide them with a lot of flexibility, some even operate from home and perform well.

We've had a complete nightmare of experiences with male sales rep's. During the last 2 years of operation, we've had thousands of ad' revenue stolen, taken male sales reps to court because of this, some have fled the country with a "wod" of cash in their pocket stolen from our clients. Needless to say we still published our clients ad's.. We try to encourage clients to pay by cheque or bank transfer where possible but many prefer to pay a sales rep in cash. We have what I believe to be a reasonable system of interviewing sales reps, but we have had many slide into employment with us.. It has also been very difficult for us to motivate male sales reps. They are very secretive too, won't update you regarding progress, you can never get hold of them when they are out on the field. I've spoken to other publishers who have experienced the same. Just seems to be standard where we operate..

We understand the basic fundamentals in regards to sales. We have structured an incentive based system, set reasonable targets and support our reps where possible.

One area that we lack in is training. I don't have a background in sales and I find it very difficult to recruit people who require large amounts of training. The problem we face is that it is difficult to find experienced sales reps. When advertising sales vacancies, we have a lot of young people apply with no qualifications or background in sales. Head hunting is difficult because our company is still quite young and some people will look down on the position when compared to our long established competitors.

 

[Merchant UK]

perhaps you need to offer something that other call centres don't? do you offer any incentives at the moment?? Perhaps if a staff member brings in £5000 worth of sales then they get say £100 bonus etc..

What you need to do it look at companies that already have sales staff, if they are advertising phone them up and see what they are offering, pretend you're interested in the job, and see what incentives they use to keep staff etc..

There are a lot of companies which depend on cold calling, companies like solar panels, eco utilities, Double glazing, Home improvements... etc

If you think that these types of companies have already experienced call staff then perhaps getting them over to you may mean upping your commission rates which certainly wouldn't be such a bad idea for good quality sales staff.

You need to give them a reason to come to you, once you've decided what that reason is, then go for it

One area that we lack in is training. I don't have a background in sales and I find it very difficult to recruit people who require large amounts of training. The problem we face is that it is difficult to find experienced sales reps. When advertising sales vacancies, we have a lot of young people apply with no qualifications or background in sales. Head hunting is difficult because our company is still quite young and some people will look down on the position when compared to our long established competitors.

Perhaps employing a full time sales manager experienced in this field may be able to train and take the worry away from you?

 

[beasty]

Unfortunately thats the only way your going to sell advertising space and thats via cold calling. You say that your finding it hard to get the sales people involved, mainly because i'm guessing its commission only?

Now lets look at it from a different angle, Women is your secret weapon

ER what? Women have never been top of any sales industry I have been in and I have been involved in them all

, now i would certainly buy from a woman as opposed to a man if they were cold calling, but where are you going to get your gaggle of women from?

1, you do not want a gaggle of women as WOMEN buy from men who can turn on a bit of wit and charm and men trust men in sales in general

How about you tap into an area which could see you get some great sales staff but are unable to commit because of staying at home with kids etc..

Pointless theoretical fantasist waste of energy

There are loads of young girls who would love a clean hassle free job and the potential to earn £££'s but they can't because they have children or babies.

Loads who will suck at it and waste a more of your time setting up, great


How cool would it be if you could get staff like these by incorporating a creche within your workspace where women could leave their children free for the morning with proper child care assistants whilst they work for you?

Cool has nothing to do with this working, it would be cool, but it will not work and you are leaping from no effective staff to a creche? I hope there are a lot of sales in the meantime to pay for all that

The cost of hiring a couple of assistants to look after the children would be nothing compared to the amount of revenue these girls could make you (as long as the script they use is good)

What kind of nut would seek out people who require childcare to work!


if you got one group in the morning and a different group in the afternoon then no member of the sale team would need to be away from their children for longer that 4 or 5 hours

File under do not waste any more thought on this

Would this work for you??

NO


What you SHOULD do is

Stage your calls

Have a pre sales call, do this at low cost and high volume, it can be subtle
pass warm leads to your commission only staff who will then convert higher

Work your old data like a madman, previous customers and lost customers are the greatest resource for fast business.

I come over as grumpy and i apologise but stupid, expensive, doomed and time consuming ideas deserve a response that highlights the flaws

 

[Merchant UK]

NO


What you SHOULD do is

Stage your calls

Have a pre sales call, do this at low cost and high volume, it can be subtle
pass warm leads to your commission only staff who will then convert higher

Work your old data like a madman, previous customers and lost customers are the greatest resource for fast business.

I come over as grumpy and i apologise but stupid, expensive, doomed and time consuming ideas deserve a response that highlights the flaws

Unfortunately quite a few companies are offering creches for their staff. There are a lot of experienced Sales staff which have taken time off work to be at home with their kids, You need to tap into this market by helping them back to work with an incentive.

What you SHOULD do is

Stage your calls

NO!, Not possible with no staff

Have a pre sales call, do this at low cost and high volume, it can be subtle
pass warm leads to your commission only staff who will then convert higher

Would be nice if the staff was there to pass leads onto

Work your old data like a madman, previous customers and lost customers are the greatest resource for fast business.

This would be the first thing any reasonable person would be doing so not an idea at all

I come over as grumpy and i apologise but stupid, expensive, doomed and time consuming ideas deserve a response that highlights the flaws

YES!

 

[Homer J Simpson]

I don't it's been raised yet, but if you are constantly struggling to get advertisers, what are your existing ones doing? Are they renewing? If not, why not?

If this is the issue, a little time spent sorting this issue out could save you weeks/months of trying to get new ones. You'd only every need to replace 'dropped off' ones.

 

[patientlady]

I own a 2 year old free newspaper.

I started it myself in my local area. We've gone from having 10,000 readers per issue to know having over 100,000 every issue and we distribute it to a large area. Despite the doom and gloom image surrounding the industry, it is actually going quite well..

Sorry as a 'sales rep' myself I cannot offer any assistance lol, but I am thinking that if you want to get advertising from the big boys will this not change what is going well with your newspaper! I might take a look at advertising from local businesses, but probably switch off when I see advertising from BT...

 

[telemax]

Thanks for the tips...

Yes our sales people are commission only. We've experimented paying a basic, giving people company phones etc and had terrible experiences.


We've had a complete nightmare of experiences with male sales rep's. During the last 2 years of operation, we've had thousands of ad' revenue stolen, taken male sales reps to court because of this, some have fled the country with a "wod" of cash in their pocket stolen from our clients.

Take a calculator out, add up, over the years

Time taken advertising for staff
Time spent On the interview merry go round
Money 'stolen' by reps'
court time and fees
time chasing reps all over the place
value of lost sales while chasing all over the place

Then ask yourself is it worthwhile either exploring your network eg Linked in or going to a reputable recruitment agent, paying someone the right mix of basic and commision plus car etc and finding someone who is excellent!

It might be a better way forward than making unfounded generalisations about how good the different sexes are at selling.

 

[martinn12005]

Thanks for the great feedback.

I agree that I need to just dedicate more time into finding the right person regardless of their gender and finding a package that can be agreed upon between both parties. It is easier said than done, but I will persist with it a bit more..

I have a few queries that I would appreciate your input on regarding this subject..

How about trial periods whereby we insist a person works on a trial basis for say 3 months so we can judge their potential? Instead of offering them everything from day one i.e the car, phone, commission, wage etc make it where this is something to work up to. Perhaps this will work well as an incentive. Perhaps start on a commission for a month or 2, if they perform well or show promise, we can then put them on a wage with commission etc.. What are your thoughts?

Our classified section in our newspaper is starting to become quite popular. To pickup the pace and increase sales I am trying to come up with new ideas in regards to selling classifieds. We sell them for 0.50 cents per word. I called a friend of mine who owns a newspaper in a different country where I am based. He told me that they sell their classifieds over the phone using their call centre. I asked how do they accept payment and he told me by credit of debit card. I asked how do people respond to this. Does it come across like your a scammer? He simply dismissed it by telling the potential client that your transaction is protected by VISA. I realise this is true, however, I am sceptical if telephone sales works. I will never know without trying. Anyone on here had this kind of experience who could give me some tips? I'm also thinking that this could be a good work from home position for house wives and similar.

Our newspaper is free. We sometimes get people writing to us asking to subscribe even though it is available online free and in print free. Do you think selling newspaper subscription services in the same manner as the classifieds will work?

Input appreciated.

 

[pjajackson]

Hi

Have you profiled your ideal customer? e.g. advertising spend, current advertising publications, requirements from advertising to conversation into sales.

This can be a very useful process to enable you to begin to design your offer to meet these requirements. It will take you from "you need to advertise in my paper as I have 100k audience" to "you need to advertise in my paper because we have 100k audience and our capability to convert your advert to X% sales conversion.

In the target companies you would like, what is your exposure to the people who decide where advertising budget goes? Can you identify any of the following roles:

• Financial purchaser - The person who has the ability to say yes and no
• Tutor - This is the key person who can help you navigate the requirements of the organisation
• Specifier - The person who advises whether the service you offer is right for the buying organisation
• Operator - The person who will deal with your service on a daily basis

Finding out who plays these roles can make it much easier to target your sales approach and move you from cold calling to speaking to a person who has a clearly defined influence in the buying process.

If you want to look at this process in a bit more detail go to my site in my sig I have presentation there that explains it.

All the best

Paul