Driving newspaper revenues higher: How to sell more multimedia advertising over the phone

By Bob Davis

Over the last few years, my company—Robert C. Davis and Associates (RCDA)—has been working with newspaper organizations to help them sell multimedia advertising. In some cases we have helped our clients build multimedia sales centers from the ground up. In others, the task has been to train and coach existing inbound classified reps to make outbound multimedia sales calls. Our experience in these efforts has taught us a great deal about what drives desired results.

Hire the right people. This may seem obvious, but it is clear that not everyone is cut out for outbound multimedia advertising sales. We have learned this the hard way when trying to convert inbound reps into outbound sales stars. Many simply do not have the personality for it. We believe in training and coaching people to do the job, but some individuals just do not have the right traits. When building an outbound sales team, it is critical to test reps for several key traits:

• Empathy

• Resilience

• Energy

• Persistence

• Social boldness

Use good lists. Studies show that as much as 40 percent of success in an outbound campaign is tied to good lists, and our experience supports these findings. Not all prospects are created equal. The multimedia sales rep’s job is to call prospects who are not advertising and are too small to be called on by an outside sales rep. But this does not mean to call on just anybody. Most markets have tens of thousands of prospects, and management must target the prospects and manage the lists.

It is unfortunate indeed to go into a multimedia sales center and see reps spending time on the Internet or looking through the yellow pages for the next prospects to call. They should be on the phones. Almost as bad is to see reps wasting hour after hour calling prospects who are unlikely to buy. You may have 397 nail salons in your market, but is this a list your people should spend a full day calling? Without a doubt, building good lists is hard work that requires exceptional management skills, but it’s much more profitable than using bad lists. Here are a few tips:

• Find businesses in town that do not advertise with you, but that look like your current advertisers.

• Determine the characteristics of businesses that advertise on radio and TV.

• Build a target profile and create a list of businesses that fit it. If you don’t have sufficient resources to generate the list in-house, work with a good list broker.

Create and manage a campaign calendar. Even with the very best lists, the right timing is essential. Calling the snow removal people in the fall and the lawn maintenance people in the spring seems like a no-brainer. But without a campaign calendar to coordinate what lists to call and when, many great dates and opportunities to sell will just slip by.

Insist on 200 dials daily. Keeping the right pace is another key to successful outbound multimedia sales efforts. We believe in the effectiveness of 200 dials daily per rep, and we insist on it. To reach their sales goals, reps must keep dialing and not spend time looking up or Googling the company they are going to call next. When management provides excellent lists and firm campaign objectives, reps hit this number of dials consistently, and it shows in higher sales.

Measure ROI daily. Like prospects, not all campaigns are created equal. To keep reps focused on the campaigns that can make the most profit for the organization, measure your return on investment for each campaign daily.

Have a Quality Conversation. This is the most important and interesting part of the process. As we have talked with thousands of prospective advertisers, it continues to impress and amaze us how many people—after just a minute or two—will open up to a stranger who has called them and asked with a caring demeanor about their wants, interests and needs. The most important thing that we strive to understand is the advertising motive. As we ask prospective advertisers the right questions with genuine interest, they open up and provide the road map to the sale. It’s all part of a proven process in five basic steps:

• An enthusiastic Greeting

• Discovery questions to determine the prospect’s wants, interests and needs

• A Solution conveyed by centering on features and benefits

• An Offer that shows how the features and benefits fulfill the prospect’s wants, interests and needs

• An assumptive Close

Manage the pipeline. It would be nice to think that every sale could be closed on the first call. However, the truth of the matter is that most of the biggest and best sales take several calls. With a level of activity at 200 dials or more per day, a pipeline of interest will grow very quickly.
This pipeline must be managed, and this is the job of the sales coach, who should ask:

• How many leads are being generated by each sales person?

• What is the value of each lead?

• What is the next step to take with each lead?

Then, the sales coach must manage each next step to help the reps close the sales.

Considering the number of advertisers a newspaper has versus the number of businesses in the market, the potential for driving multimedia sales is tremendous. But simply increasing outbound efforts is not enough. It must be done using a proven, targeted and well-managed process.

Bob Davis is the president of Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net), a consulting firm in Alpharetta, Georgia, specializing in improving sales, customer service and retention results in customer contact centers across North America. Bob is also co-founder of Surpass (www.surpasscalls.com), a highly specialized outsource customer contact center serving the needs of business clients across the country.

Outbound classified sales: How to trade fear and avoidance for self-confidence and top performance

By Bob Davis

Lately I have been teaching a group of long-term inbound classified reps I consider to be among my favorites. The other day while I was teaching, a woman in the class who had been with the newspaper for more than 30 years told the group a story about computers being introduced to the department in the 1980s. Back then she and the other reps were afraid they would get cancer working so close to the computer screen for extended periods.

One of her co-workers was so concerned that she made a cone-shaped hat and a nose protector out of aluminum foil to shield herself from the presumed radiation coming from the monitor. She was so convincing in her fear that she got others in the department to wear this silly outfit. Looking back now it’s laughable. It also brings to mind an important question. Do we fear making outbound calls today the way reps in the 1980s feared computer monitors?

Indeed, I believe the number-one factor holding reps back from making outbound calls is fear driven by lack of self-confidence. This leads to avoidance behavior. In my experience in newspaper call centers, most classified reps will do just about anything to avoid making an outbound call.

The good news is that we’ve been very successful in helping reps overcome fear and avoidance by showing them how to make better outbound calls, and more of them. Here’s how:

• Be enthusiastic. If you look like you’re having fun while you are making the calls, reps will be more willing to give it a try. I like to teach a two-hour class first thing in the morning on a slow day. Then I follow the class back to the floor and work with each rep as they make outbound calls. Sometimes I make three calls, and then they make three calls, laughing and having a good time along the way. Other reps tune in to what is happening to the point that they become eager to work with me. Enthusiasm really is the key to the success.

• See the good. When we first begin working on outbound calls, reps stumble. After every call I could tell them everything they’ve done wrong, but I don’t. This would deflate them! Instead, I focus on the good things they’ve done on the calls. This builds them up and they become more open to coaching.

• Expect the best. In the beginning most reps have only been making about six dials per hour, so they look at me in shock when I tell them I expect 30 dials per hour. Yet once the expectation is out there, they do it. Even if the rep’s skills don’t improve (they always do), results improve dramatically because the reps are talking to so many more people.

• Celebrate success. At the end of each day, we have a celebration. Everyone gets to tell about their successes that day—how many outbound calls they made, how much money they generated. This really gets everyone excited about what they can do.

Based on my experience, implementing these ideas—being enthusiastic, seeing the good, expecting the best, and celebrating success—will help your reps improve dramatically. It’s the kind of leadership and confidence-building that newspaper classified departments need badly today.

My recommendation is to get started right away. You’ll love the results.

Need to know: Call monitoring and mystery calls prove vital to classified departments

By Bob Davis

Over the past year or so, based on the needs of some of our newspaper clients, we have begun to provide quality monitoring and mystery caller services for classified advertising sales departments—with very positive results.

We have learned a great deal from the experience. In fact, I am thinking about writing a book entitled I Heard What Your Potential Advertisers Had To Say Yesterday. In the meantime, however, I’ll share some of what we have learned right here and now.

Present feedback positively.
At first we were resistant to start monitoring because feedback can feel like “Gotcha!” to the sales reps. Studies have found that stress among reps goes up during monitoring. They tend to shut down if the feedback is not delivered correctly, negating the potential benefits. Ultimately, however, we decided that as long as we present feedback in a positive way we will achieve desired results. Our solution has been to make sure 80 percent of the feedback is positive so that the reps are receptive to the 20 percent that specifies areas where they can improve performance.

Provide actionable feedback.
When reps hear about what they did well on the calls, they are more likely to repeat those behaviors. Where they need improvement, it is critical to give them specific actions to take. For example, make suggestions such as, “Decrease the number of set-aside ads by asking customers how important it is for them to sell the item or fill the position—this helps them see value in the ad.”

Deliver feedback in real time.
It just isn’t very effective to say, “Last month we listened to some of your calls, and this is what we think.” Giving feedback daily is much more meaningful because the reps remember the calls being discussed.

Score the calls objectively.
Before we monitor calls, we work with the client to develop questions that will allow objective scoring. We recommend questions like, “Did the sales rep assume the online buy and include it when quoting the price?” instead of more subjective ones like, “Was the sales rep polite?”

Boost sales revenue.
We have been able to benchmark key metrics with newspapers that want to participate and share their data to see where they stand compared with other newspapers. What’s more, our clients have benefited significantly from our approach to quality monitoring and mystery caller services because we have harvested highly valuable information. For every customer who calls in and doesn’t buy, we record the reason. We also document issues such as how often money comes up as an objection. The whole process gives newspapers the information needed to reinforce best practices, solve problems effectively and boost sales revenue dramatically.

Yet classified departments don’t always have needed resources in-house to do the job. Besides their own reps, many classified departments rely on outsource call centers to handle overflow calls, making monitoring and mystery callers even more important.

Now more than ever it is critical for newspapers to generate maximum revenue in ad sales. They need to know what’s happening on their classified sales calls. Outsourcing your call monitoring and mystery calls is an excellent way to verify whether or not your classified department is achieving all it can. And in our experience, what newspapers learn in the process provides a significant return on investment.

Impressed by Tribune’s ‘new sheriff‘

A great future for newspapers rests on an effectiveness-versus-efficiency mindset

By Bob Davis

I was very impressed last month when I read about how real estate mogul Sam Zell (photo - Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University) rode in like the new sheriff in town as the new Chairman and CEO—and new majority shareholder—of Tribune Company in Chicago.

One of his statements in particular got my attention. “I’m sick and tired of listening to everyone talk about and commiserate over the end of newspapers,” he was quoted as saying in a recent story from the Associated Press. “They ain't ended and they're not going to end. I think they have a great future," he said.

His confident statement is backed up by a philosophy I agree with wholeheartedly. Unlike in some recent media buyouts, the conversation wasn’t about exerting wide editorial control, slashing costs or pushing major asset sell-offs. It was about rebuilding the media conglomerate from the bottom up to facilitate faster decisions and innovative, pragmatic thinking about how to increase revenue and reverse the effects of industry-wide decline.

The AP story continued in its coverage of a news conference at Tribune Tower, quoting Zell as saying, “I believe this company has spent a significant amount of time in the last five years cutting costs, and maybe not enough time on increasing revenue," he said. "Our focus, and our bet, is that we can significantly increase the revenue of this company and dramatically increase its profitability going forward.”

In August 2007 I wrote an article that made the same point applied to the entire industry. I think it bears repeating here.

By putting effectiveness before efficiency, I wrote, newspapers grow top-line revenue. Let me give you a few examples.

Call abandon rates versus top-line revenue
For newspaper classified call centers everywhere, the call abandon rate is a key measure. However, managing the call abandon rate with head count alone is too efficiency-minded.

A better approach is to examine call center effectiveness by asking what the call center can do to grow top-line revenue. Find out how many outbound calls your people are making in their extra time. In my experience working with classified departments across the country, the problem is that reps often cherry-pick instead of calling all current prospects and advertisers. Nationwide, I see tremendous room for improvement in this regard.

Cost of winning new customers
At most newspapers, the number of subscribers who call in to quit each year represents at least 20 percent of circulation. That number climbs to 30 percent or more at some newspapers. At the same time, the industry saves only 17 percent of these subscribers from canceling. When it was cheaper to win a new customer than to keep an existing one, maybe these numbers were OK. Today we can and must do a better job retaining subscribers.

Significant improvement is well within reach for virtually any newspaper. After all, other subscription-based industries achieve 50-percent and even 60-percent saves rates regularly. And by focusing on effectiveness instead of efficiency, top-performing newspapers are earning 40-percent saves rates.

Say you have a circulation of 300,000 and receive 100,000 cancellation calls in your call center each year, and that you save the industry average of 17 percent of these calls. The efficiency-based measure would be talk time, and our work has shown that it takes an extra 30 seconds on the phone have a quality saves attempt.

Yes, spending 30 seconds more costs the paper around 50 cents. However, the extra effort will drive your saves rate up by 23 points. This means 23,000 fewer subscribers you will need to replace at $40 or more apiece, adding up to almost a million dollars per year. It’s a great example of how effectiveness beats efficiency hands down.

Online advertising expertise
Here is another example. Most newspapers have only a handful of online advertising experts. The sales force relies heavily on these experts to help them sell online ads. This is an efficient way to handle it, but is it the most effective? To answer that question, look at the amount of online revenue you receive today from existing advertisers. If it is not as much as it should be, maybe the efficiency model is not working well for you. To boost effectiveness, train all your sales reps to sell online ads effectively so you can maximize this revenue source.

When market conditions present challenges such as circulation decline and technological changes, the natural result is pressure to be more efficient. But in my experience in the newspaper industry, organizations that resist the pressure and focus instead on effectiveness see dramatic improvement in customer service, customer retention and sales. The return far exceeds the investment.

The key place to add top-line revenue
Lastly, many advertising sales people spend so much of their time servicing their accounts that they do not have enough time for prospecting new accounts. The solution we have found in consulting with our clients is to drive top-line revenue by building sales teams with two types of players. First, have top-notch production and service personnel who will serve advertisers in a world-class way. Second, have high-performance prospectors who can win new business from non-advertisers and additional business from existing customers.

In the current environment, business is not coming to the newspapers as strongly as in years past, but it is still there for those who go out and get it!

Bob Davis is President of Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net), a consulting firm in Alpharetta, Georgia, that specializes in improving sales, customer service and retention results in media customer contact centers. He is also Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Surpass (www.surpasscalls.com) in Bedford, New Hampshire, RCDA's specialized outsource call center serving newspapers and other media organizations. He can be reached at 678-455-6812 or bob@robertcdavis.net.

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!

Maximizing classified ad sales

Five winning steps net sales from current non-advertisers

Given that newspapers earn between $25 and $85 per contact on outbound calls to classified advertising prospects, it makes perfect sense that we should be making as many outbound calls as possible. But once we get those prospects on the phone—particularly those who are non-advertisers versus expired listings—how do we maximize our sales earnings per contact?

When selling advertising on the telephone versus face-to-face, it is all the more important have an incisive, quality conversation with the prospect to quickly gain rapport and communicate value.

In my experience training and coaching classified ad sales reps and their supervisors in newspaper call centers—and in my own outbound classified call center—we have followed five winning steps to selling classifieds to prospects who are currently non-advertisers.

Step 1 - Greeting. From the very beginning we must be enthusiastic and engage the prospect with clarity of purpose. It is critical to build rapport within the first few seconds of the call by letting prospects know they are speaking with someone who can help solve their problem.

Step 2 – Modified Needs Analysis. An outside sales representative must conduct a needs analysis—an assessment of the prospect’s wants, interests and needs. By the same token, a similar process must take place when selling classified ads over the telephone, but much more quickly because prospects generally have less patience by phone than in person. We call it a modified needs analysis, and it must zero in on the prospect’s advertising motivation.

For example, the rep might ask, “What would it mean to you to have an effective ad that resulted in calls from the most qualified prospects for your job opening?” or, “What if we could help you reach more prospective buyers so you could sell your boat more quickly?”

Step 3 – Solution. Based on what we learn in the modified needs analysis, we’re in a position to address the advertising motivation directly and effectively. By listening to the prospect, we know how to frame the solution: that the newspapers print and online classifieds will get the job done well.

Step 4 – Overcoming objections. Most often, prospects will voice price objections. It is critical to answer the objections not by dropping the price, but by returning to the advertising motivation we learn via the modified needs analysis. For example, the rep might say, “By going with our print and online ads, you’ll get not only active job seekers, but also highly qualified passive job seekers who you would otherwise miss—great candidates that you’d love to have on your team.”

Step 5 – Close. If and only if we’ve done all the other steps correctly, the close will happen almost automatically. It is our job to enter this step having done everything we can to make our ad sale the only logical conclusion for the prospect.

For additional reading

Like any process, following these steps effectively takes considerable training, coaching and practice before the rep masters it. I have provided more information on in-house training and coaching solutions at http://robertcdavis.net.

However, many newspaper call centers have their hands full with inbound classified calls, as well as customer service and retention on the circulation side, and don’t have the resources available in-house to maximize the benefits of making more outbound classified ad sales calls. For details on SURPASS, a newspaper-specialized call center offering services on an outsource basis, visit http://robertcdavis.net/outsource.html.

By putting effectiveness before efficiency, newspapers grow top-line revenue

As newspapers strive to protect their bottom lines, I hear a lot of talk about efficiency. Should we centralize our operations? Can we outsource call center operations at a lower cost than we can handle it in-house? Should we send our work overseas? Yet I believe we should focus on growing top-line revenue—on effectiveness instead of efficiency.

Let me give you a few examples.

Call abandon rates versus top-line revenue
For newspaper classified call centers everywhere, the call abandon rate is a key measure. However, it is too efficiency-minded to manage the call abandon rate with head count alone.

A better approach is to examine call center effectiveness by asking what the call center can do to grow top-line revenue. Find out how many outbound calls your people are making in their extra time. In my experience working with classified departments across the country, the problem is that reps often cherry pick instead of calling all current prospects and advertisers. Nationwide, I see tremendous room for improvement in this regard.

Cost of winning new customers
At most newspapers, the number of subscribers who call in to quit each year represents at least 20 percent of circulation. That number climbs to 30 percent or more at some newspapers. At the same time, the industry saves only 17 percent of these subscribers from canceling. When it was cheaper to win a new customer than to keep an existing one, maybe these numbers were OK. Today we can and must do a better job retaining subscribers.

Significant improvement is well within reach for virtually any newspaper. After all, other subscription-based industries achieve 50-percent and even 60-percent saves rates regularly. And by focusing on effectiveness instead of efficiency, top-performing newspapers are earning 40-percent saves rates.

Say you have a circulation of 300,000 and receive 100,000 cancellation calls in your call center each year, and that you save the industry average of 17 percent of these calls. The efficiency-based measure would be talk time, and our work has shown that it takes an extra 30 seconds on the phone have a quality saves attempt.

Yes, spending 30 seconds more costs the paper around 50 cents. However, the extra effort will drive your saves rate up by 23 points. This means 23,000 fewer subscribers you will need to replace at $40 or more apiece, adding up to almost a million dollars per year. It’s a great example of how effectiveness beats efficiency hands down.

Online advertising expertise
Here is another example. Most newspapers have only a handful of online advertising experts. The sales force relies heavily on these experts to help them sell online ads. This is an efficient way to handle it, but is it the most effective? To answer that question, look at the amount of online revenue you receive today from existing advertisers. If it is not as much as it should be, maybe the efficiency model is not working well for you. To boost effectiveness, train all your sales reps to sell online ads effectively so you can maximize this revenue source.

When market conditions present challenges such as circulation decline and technological changes, the natural result is pressure to be more efficient. But in my experience in the newspaper industry, organizations that resist the pressure and focus instead on effectiveness see dramatic improvement in customer service, customer retention and sales. The return far exceeds the investment.

More contacts, more ad sales

By focusing on dials and quality conversations, reps reach more prospects and sell more newspaper ads

Newspapers earn between $25 and $85 per contact on outbound calls to classified advertising prospects. The problem is, newspapers are not talking to enough prospects.

Not the only game in town anymore
The world is changing fast for the newspaper industry, and nowhere is this change more apparent than in the classified advertising department. Competition is virtually everywhere—particularly in the form of publications that offer free advertising for homes, autos and private party items. The Internet is a strong player in employment and auto sales advertising, and it is becoming an increasingly important vehicle for real estate advertising. As a result, long gone are the days when we can sit back and wait for the phone to ring. We are no longer the only game in town. We can’t meet our goals by merely serving the calls that come in to us.

In the past, auto dealerships absolutely had to be in the Saturday newspaper. With so many different ways to advertise today, dealers don’t see the value of the newspaper in the same light as they once did. It’s time to refocus their attention on the strong value they receive from newspaper advertising.

Seeking them out
In newspaper advertising sales, we have to seek out prospects now more than ever. And when they do come to us, we must give them a compelling reason to advertise with us. We have to sell value.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that advertising clients demand—and deserve—a high level of excellence from newspaper. They expect newspaper advertising reps to understand their needs and show them products and services that will help them achieve their goals.

It’s not a stretch to say that newspapers remain one of the best values in America for readers and advertisers. We simply have to have quality conversations with every prospect, and we have to reach as many prospects as possible, to get the value story out there more effectively.

Dialing without distractions
A sales office observed recently had two sales people. One sold three times as much as the other. Interestingly, the sales person who was selling less actually sounded better when talking to the customers. So why was this person lagging behind? The answer came in watching them work. The top-performing sales person made a dial, and then immediately made another dial. She consistently made five times as many dials as the other rep.

The person who sounded better on the phone—who gave a better sales presentation when speaking to a customer—made a dial, and then took some notes. He’d look through some papers and take a drink of water, and then make another dial. The result was far fewer dials.

No matter how good a rep is on the phone, being a top sales performer still means talking to a large number of prospects. Staying focused on making dials requires the rep cut out distractions.

The value of block time
Cutting out distractions can be hard when reps have other duties. But in our work with newspaper classified advertising sales departments, we have seen remarkable success when reps have a certain time of each workday blocked out for prospecting. In doing so, reps have achieve 30 prospecting dials per one-hour of block time, and then 30 prospecting dials total during other parts of the day for a total of 60 dials per day. The result? Three times as many sales.

Bear in mind that another factor in this success has been the quality conversation itself. Reps need training, coaching and continual development on a proven, robust sales model and call flow to achieve and sustain high sales performance. The point is that a comprehensive approach to prospecting and quality conversations with prospects sells value and nets a dramatic increase in newspaper advertising sales.

Five keys to success in telephone prospecting, classified ad sales

In my 25 years of work in training, coaching and consultation within newspaper call centers—as well as five years as a consultant to Morgan Stanley, whose lifeblood is telephone prospecting—I have come to recognize five keys to telephone prospecting success that we can apply in today’s market for newspaper classifieds.

1. Enthusiasm. Successful telephone prospect

ing is 12 percent what sales reps say and 88 percent how they say it. On the telephone and with life in general, enthusiasm is the little-recognized secret of success. Prospects can only hear and feel your attitude, and it must be enthusiastic, confident and positive.

2. Good lists. Forty percent of a rep’s success will be related to the quality of the list. Besides accurate numbers, a good list has well-qualified prospects with whom reps have some sort of connection, enabling them to build rapport quickly.

Additionally, it is important today to put automatic systems in place that will generate lists throughout the year based on key criteria including:

• Previous advertisers who have not advertised within the last 90 days.
• The previous year’s seasonal or special-day advertisers, many of whom are likely to want to advertise again this year for Christmas, President’s Day, Mother’s Day and other annual occurrences.
• Advertisers whose ads are about to expire.
• Advertisers who have placed ads around special events such as business anniversaries, end-of-model-year, local festivals, athletic events or arts and entertainment.

All reps should receive such lists regularly so they can, for example, call every restaurant in town about advertising their Mother’s Day, New Year’s Eve, or Valentine’s Day specials. Supervisors should provide close guidance and frequent follow-up on using these lists.

3. Pace. Telephone prospecting involves developing a rhythm—one that comes from cutting out all distractions and allows a sales rep to stay focused on the behavior of making dials. If you focus enough on desired behaviors when telephoning, desired results will follow.

When it comes to pace, it is important to set aside block time—times of the day and week that are most conducive for reaching targeted prospects. During this block time, reps should be making at least 30 dials per hour.

4. Skill. Sales reps who have appropriate enthusiasm, a good list and great pace will see their skill level improve significantly because they will be generating enough “at bats” to get better on the telephone. The skills required to become a good sales rep—a good greeting, good discovery questions, excellent objection-handling, appropriate solution, compelling offer and assumptive close—develop significantly under fire from prospects.

It is important to consider giving reps scripts to follow so they communicate effectively and appropriately and avoid bad habits.

5. No avoidance. Prospecting is hard work and reps, by human nature, will succumb to avoidance behavior without discipline and prevention. Get creative—run outbound parties and specify special block times to drive enthusiasm and dials per hour. Have daily contact with reps to see how many dials they can make daily. The bottom line is that we must measure activity level every day to make sure reps are not avoiding what they must do.

It is safe to say that the days when classified reps could sit back and wait for the phone to ring are long gone. Newspapers are no longer the only game in town. We can’t meet our goals by merely serving the calls that come in to us. It has never been more critical to focus on telephone prospecting—and to do it very well.