The Sales Call Introduction Consultative selling Sales call structure Introduce yourself Lowering resistance Explanation of products Asking questions Back at the office The second call Smoke objections Straightforward objections Second call objections The fastest way to increase sales! Participate in this award-winning, newspaper-specific ad sales course on-site or in a Webinar.  • Get past upfront stalls and objections without any pushing  • Make the account believe he really needs you  • Get better information from your prosepct  • Develop quick ad strategies that work the very first time  • Eliminate size, frequency, content, cost and most other objections before they ever arise  • Get dramatic responses for all kinds of advertisers  • Never have to push an advertiser to run again click here

Once you've got your spec ad and newspaper information prepared, it's time to return to the account for your final presentation. While the first sales call was very open-ended and involved a general conversation about the account's business, the second sales call should be more controlled. If you've done everything right so far, the rest of the sales process will actually be the easiest and most fun part.

Step One: Review the account's information
You might want to open up with something like "Thanks for meeting with me last week. I took all the information you gave me and came up with an recommendation for you, but before I show it to you, I'd like to make sure I based it on the correct information. Now last week you told me..." and get into the specifics.

Basically, you should review anything that you found was important about his business, especially his target demographics (that you'll later prove you reach) and other information about his business, competition, and target customers (that'll later appear in the ad).

This is a pretty easy step since you're just confirming what he said last week. However, it shows you care enough about his business to listen and remember. It'll also show that you're qualified to make a recommendation. Just as importantly, by getting him to buy into the important issues in your presentation up front, you're eliminating any of the too common arguments that may come up about what you based your information on.

It's critical you only discuss the facts he gave you about his business and not jump ahead to any conclusions you've made about where and what he should run, which takes us to the next step.

Step 2: Matching his target customer's demographics to your newspaper's demographics
Now you want to show him that you do, indeed, reach the exact people he just confirmed he was trying to reach by reviewing quickly any pertinent information about your newspaper. The key word is pertinent. Don't launch into pages and pages of benefits of your newspaper or the newspaper's rich history or you might lose him.

Instead, keep it short and sweet. For example, "You told me that you were trying to reach homeowners between the ages of 30 and 60 with an income above $40,000. Here's a recent survey that shows we reach 60% of these people in your immediate market area." When will you know if you've gone on too long and need to bail out if this step? Again, you'll see his eyes glaze over and almost hear him thinking, "Not another one of these boring newspaper presentations." If you start to see this, move on to the next step.

Step 3: Showing the spec ad
Take out the spec ad and say, "and this is how I recommend using our newspapers". Now, in many cases you would have designed an ad that is much bigger than the account was expecting. It's not that you're presenting an ad that's too big, it's just that advertisers who don't run effective ads often start shrinking down their budgets in defense. If this is the case, most likely the account will say something right away like "Oh, this ad is much too big. I can't afford this. How much is this ad, anyway?" If these questions come up, don't get sidetracked. You haven't yet had a chance to show the account the effectiveness of the ad, and therefore, whether it's worth paying for.

So, to keep resistance down while you go over the ad, you can answer these early objections with, "Look, we can shrink it down if you want, let's just go over the different parts of the ad." Then proceed to explain each element, and, just as importantly, what the target readers will do when they see or read each element–hopefully seeing, reading, and responding to the ad as I discussed in the spec ad chapter.

Once you discuss the ad's effectiveness, summarize (or close) with, "Look, I'm convinced you'll get a response from our newspapers. We reach plenty of the right people you're looking for and we have an ad here that's designed to capture the attention of the right people, to get them reading, and to get them responding. What do you say we give it a try?"

And then you wait for the prospect to say something.

Very few of the ad reps with which you're competing will have properly used this needs-based selling approach. Instead, they probably took the lazy way out by just pushing the newspaper onto the account on the first call, perhaps following it up with a token spec ad designed by artists without any strategy behind it. This will make you and your solid, well-thought-out recommendation stand out even more, so don't be surprised if the account just says, "OK, let's do it."

Most likely, though, they'll have a few concerns. The next page will give you some ideas on how to ease the prospective customer's fears.

Next: Objections