The Power of Prospecting

Reps who shift their focus find no shortage in ad business

Imagine the scene: a newspaper advertising team is gathered for an end-of-day celebration. They form a semi-circle around a large whiteboard. There are cheers and jeers as each rep reports prospecting success and sales results for the day. Kathy, a long-time real estate rep writes $15,000 on the board as her results for the day. She turns to the group and says, “There’s a lot of business out there from people who are not going to call us.”

For years I have worked with advertising reps to help them improve their sales effectiveness, and recently we’ve all seen how the marketplace has changed. Today newspaper leaders are recognizing that reps are spending too much time servicing existing accounts and not enough time prospecting for new business.

The competition—alternatives to newspaper advertising—have focused on prospecting for a long time now. Perhaps it’s because their product did not give advertisers the ROI that newspapers provided. Maybe advertisers weren’t calling and the reps had to prospect just to stay in business.

I have known radio sales managers who didn’t allow their reps to be in the office between mid-morning and late afternoon. That was prospecting time. I’ve seen others require their reps talk to at least 10 potential advertisers daily. These might have been tough policies, but perhaps they were necessary to survive!

My experience in working with newspaper clients has shown me that today’s market holds a tremendous number of sales opportunities for newspaper reps who go out and get them. What’s more, the competitive landscape has changed, making it essential for newspaper reps to spend more time prospecting, and consequently win more business.

So here are some tips for newspapers that want to capture more advertising dollars:

1. Communicate compelling expectations to reps. Most reps tell me they are too busy servicing existing accounts to do much prospecting. Tell them that the competitive landscape has changed, and that spending more time prospecting is not optional.

2. Communicate specific, measurable, actionable prospecting goals.

3. Inspect what you expect. If the goal is to call 30 non-advertisers a day, inspect the call sheets regularly.

4. Celebrate successes. In 1955 no one believed a human could run a four-minute mile because no one had ever done it before. But when Roger Banister reached this goal, 16 other runners achieved it within weeks. Celebrating advertising sales successes will have the Roger Banister effect on your team.

5. Don’t blink. Your people are not going to like prospecting. They will come up with every excuse imaginable to avoid it. If you accept a rep’s excuse for not reaching prospecting goals, you’ve not only blinked—you’ve also lost business!

Newspapers whose reps are prospecting have discovered that, despite changes in the competitive landscape, the advertising dollars are out there to win. So the message for reps is, don’t wait for the calls—go out and get your share!