Relationships are the key to ad sales success

Successful adspace selling depends upon strong relationships with your clients. Unless you enjoy tearing your hair out by the roots and cursing the mother who bore you, you MUST build a network of customers with whom YOU have a strong relationship.

Adsales people who are on quota know that 80 percent of their business regularly comes from a few accounts. Others may envy their steady stream of bookings and referrals -- but often THEY aren't willing to make the EXTRA effort to build strong business relationships.

Building these relationships usually takes a lot of 'out of hours' work. In addition to making contact during 'office hours' .... you need to meet your clients in your own time, and spend some of your own money on them. While GENUINELY trying to help them find more business.

Most adsalespeople chase too many prospects. They have to. Because they don't have enough strong relationships with a solid core of clients.

We believe you should target a limited number of top-quality accounts, and then focus EXTRA activity on this target list. (This list would have more prospects for a new adsalesperson and fewer for a high producer with a strong referral base).

Your goal should be to build a limited network of high-producing business sources. Then help them to sell truckloads MORE of whatever it is they advertise with you.

Focusing your efforts on a network demands considerably less energy -- once it's up and running. You're less likely to run yourself into both creative and physical exhaustion.

It's hard -- at first. You can't instantly move from calling 200 new clients a week down to calling only 25 without a sales catastrophe. But you can move SLOWLY from a shotgun sales approach to a sniper rifle approach.

Let's face it. You can only sell a certain number of pages in your publication.

So.

Do you sell your space to a large bunch of NEW clients every issue? Then you'll spend your time shaking the trees and looking under rocks all day for those new clients. Lots of cold calling, lots of rejection and lots of stress.

OR. Do you find a group of regulars who FIGHT to keep their spot in your advertising vehicle, because (they BELIEVE) they get so much extra business from advertising with you.

In fact, as a new salesperson you have no choice. All your clients are new clients. You need a PLAN to transport you from the swamps of seeing TOO MANY strangers every month. Move towards owning a strong network of regulars. Then you only need to find a few new clients to replenish the pool of close business fiends (who also book ad space with you).

Since planning precedes success, you should have at your fingertips a written target list of those you intend to do 'SPECIAL' business with in the next six months. You need to RESEARCH this list, so that the people on it are prospects who will improve your network.

Professional adsales people are CONFIDENT. Part of this comes from knowing their existing clients will book enough space each month for them to be successful. They are able to perform as valuable consultants, rather than being product pushers. If you want to do more business, SEE FEWER PEOPLE. Don't reduce your call activity, but focus on your high producing regulars. You want to develop strong relationships with your netwok, not emphasise individual transactions.

You know that you have a strong relationship when you can call someone and ask them to book in this issue "because I need you to ...". You can tell them you're in a hole, and that if they book with you today, you'll make it up to them over the next couple of months.

How many of the people in YOUR network can you call up and ask to book "just for me"? Most senior adsales people have two or three accounts that they can treat this way. (And over the next few months they DO deliver. They 'go the extra mile' and use some of the techniques we have been discussing in previous letters to bring in the extra business for their trusted clients).

Your aim is to have 20 to 30 accounts you can treat like this.

Help your partners be more successful and no competition will ever take them away from you. In fact, we would all be more successful if we spent more time thinking of how to HELP our clients, and less time pushing adverts.

By serving a restricted number of accounts you have the TIME to do this. As an adsales person you can help them find new business with:

' Promotional handouts which will help them resell your product
' Product information ' Leads which have contacted you directly
' Financing options
' Follow-up material
' Co-op advertising
' Encouragement
' Friendship

Most SUCCESSFUL adsales people know that working with their network is both easier and more satisfying than dealing with someone they don't know. They can spend time on the beach, listening to the sound of breaking waves, instead of spending time on the phone listening to the sound of breaking promises .... as another 'contact' fails to book the advert they'd agreed to try.

Building lasting business relationships is worth the initial time investment. But it takes time. And it's done in 'your' time, not 'office' time.


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Roy Preece has sold ad space, trained and managed ad space sales executives for over 20 years. The adsalespeople web site has been helping with advice, encouragement and sales tools for over eight years. It's at: http://www.adsalespeople.com