The Response Oriented Selling

Components

The Response Oriented Selling program is a complete ad sales program that has 10 different components that can be mixed and matched in a wide range of configurations depending on your needs and budget. They're outlined below.

First, we teach ad reps the new philosophy of selling the complete response package.

 

Your advertising sales staff then learns simple but powerful ways to eliminate up front stalls and objections, get the information they need from their prospects, create consistently effective ad strategies, make flawless presentations with very high buy-in, effectively overcome size and frequency objections, and in the end, deliver a response to the advertiser.

 

Here are just a few things we teach your ad reps:

Module 1: Live Training in the Response Oriented Selling techniques

Available on-site or via webinar

Cold Calls Made Easy

  • Identify high-potential advertisers
  • Overcome initial objections
  • Prove you’ll deliver a response
  • Retrieve key pieces of information
  • Secure another appointment

 

Becoming A Response Partner

  • Master a new system of ad strategy creation
  • Analyze a prospective advertiser’s business,
    products, and competition
  • Transform information into an effective ad
    strategy

 

Making Flawless Presentations

  • Get agreement that your publication is a good fit
  • Get buy-in on account analysis
  • Get buy-in on the effective advertising techniques used
  • Prove the proposed recommendation will work

 

Selling Ad Size And Frequency

  • Determine the precise ad size for each advertiser
  • Sell the ad size the prospect needs for response
  • Determine the best frequency/impressions for each advertiser

 

Selling Digital Products

  • Create effective digital advertising
  • Conversion architecture: converting online visitors into customers
  • Maximize the client’s digital presence

 

Overcoming Objections Including:

  • Print is dead
  • In general, digital ads don't work
  • Your rates are too high
  • Reduce the ad size/impressions
  • The other publication is cheaper
  • The other publication works better
  • Your print and online ads don’t work
  • I can’t run that frequently/that many impressions
  • I have no money
  • I have no time
  • You don’t have enough circulation
  • You have too much circulation
  • I only run with the big daily
  • I only run with the weekly
  • I just do pay-per-click
  • I only do social media
  • My budget is already allocated
  • Change the ad (for the worse)

 

Special Considerations: Automotive Dealers and Real Estate

  • Selling these difficult categories
  • Significantly improving response rate

 

Selling Against Social Media

  • How paid print and digital complements social
  • How to create a program that leverages the strength of social and print
  • How to use content marketing and marketing automation to drive revenue

Once the sales staff is trained as ad strategists, in a separate session the designers are taught how to take the salesperson’s strategy and develop it into a finished ad using the Response Oriented Selling principles. We even give them stunning, ready-make strategies in more than 40 of the the highest-potential categories that they can quickly and easily adapt.

 

To ensure that both salesperson and artist are truly working together as a team, designers also learn what information the salesperson should be retrieving from the prospect, the analysis that needs to be performed on the information before the designer begins work, and ultimately, how the salesperson intends to be selling the strategy to the prospect.

 

Both the creative staff and the salespeople work with the same terminology, dramatically improving their communication and their ability to produce strong results for your current and prospective advertisers.

Module 2: Designer Training

Available on-site or via webinar

Anyone who has ever taken a sales course knows the feeling when they begin applying new techniques. It's a little uncomfortable at first, especially if the ad rep doesn't have it down perfectly.

 

To avoid a disastrous first attempt where the ad rep gets discouraged and decides to revert to their old ways, we hold the hand of each ad rep through the first sale.

 

In a pair of web meetings, we work one-on-one with each ad rep, the first one analyzing the information the ad rep gathered from the prospect and creating a presentation. In the second meeting, the ad rep practices their presentation with us.

 

We help them get the kinks out of the process so their first attempt is a successful one, ensuring some fast revenue for the newspaper and cementing a belief in the techniques from the start, ensuring long term use.

Module 4: One-On-One Target Account Sessions

After we teach the ad reps the techniques to sell response, we make it easy to put them into action fast. We've taken over 40 of the highest-potential prospective local advertisers and created a series of videos around how to sell each, complete with spec ads and Powerpoints.

 

Once per week, ad reps receive an email with links to a lesson on a different business category. Accompanying each is a stunning spec ad with a well-thought-out strategy ready for your designers (or an ambitious ad rep, ad director, or publisher) to adapt.

 

In the videos, ad reps learn more about how to approach that specific category and exactly what questions to ask. In another video, ad reps watch a time-lapse of the ad being created with the strategy explained, including the logic of the ad size and cost, just like the ad rep will then explain it to their prospect.

 

Finally, ad reps watch a role-play of the final presentation and how to overcome expecited objections. These are real-world presentations and most have been sold by us to real advertisers in multiple markets before making them available here.

 

The videos can be watched on any device and the accompanying PowerPoint/Keynote files can be displayed on laptops, tablets, and phones.

Module 5: Weekly Tutorial Videos & Spec Ads

 

Every month we conduct live Webinars where we focus on different parts of the sales process such as lowering resistance, asking questions, and overcoming objections.

 

We also conduct sessions to keep your ad staff up-to-date. For example, how to sell against "free" social media.

 

We also conduct condensed Response Oriented Selling sessions where any new ad reps that have been hired since we conducted the training can get up to speed on the techniques.

Module 6: Monthly Live Webinars

If you've downloaded our e-book on "The 7 Essential Elements Every Ad Sales Training Program Needs" you can see our lead nurturing program in action. We'll set up a similar program for your advertising department leveraging your publication's access to local businesses. It's like having an an additional business development ad rep on your team.

 

Once we help you set up this lead generation program, you're continually delivered fresh leads without doing anything. It's completely automated.

Module 7: Inbound Lead Generation

Now that your ad reps, designers, and managers can deliver the entire response package (and you have the ad sales tools to prove, in advance, that response will occur), an easy way to let the business community know about your publication's unique skills (and generate some quick revenue) is by running a current and prospective advertiser seminars.

 

We've been doing these for years both on-site for larger newspapers or over the web for smaller ones. While they appear to be a cross between an effective ad strategy and design session for print (and digital if appropriate), what's really going on is exactly what the sales course shows—how to eliminate virtually all the roadblocks advertisers put in the way of your ad reps by proving, upfront, that you have what it takes to deliver response.

 

Besides great PR and an effective prospecting tool, the ad reps get to see the techniques in action (and the positive customer feedback afterward), which is a huge benefit in itself.

Module 8: Current & Prospective Advertiser Seminar

Once you're our client, you're a client for life. We're here for your ad reps if they're having trouble with a current or prospective advertiser or just have a question about a recurring objection.

 

A typical week often involves a few ad reps from our client-newspapers sending over a presentation they're working on for input. We're always glad to help.

Module 9: Ongoing Support

Every configuration of our course comes with access to our popular basic new hires course (or it can be purchased separately like many of these components). This is a self-paced, Web-based course specifically designed to get your brand new hires productive fast, with expanded chapters on territory management, spec ads, sales calls, and overcoming objections. It covers both print and Web ad sales.

 

Many newspaper groups and newspaper associations in the U.S. and Canada rely on this course to train their own new hires and has become the most popular way to get an ad rep up to speed and productive fast.

 

While it's not designed to get a seasoned ad rep selling more, it'll reduce the time it takes for a complete newbie to stabilize their territory fast and gain some traction.

Module 10: New Hires Program

The Response Oriented Selling System is far more than a sales training program. In addition to teaching a highly effective approach to newspaper advertising sales, we also install a complete management system to help it continue to pay off long after the initial training has ended.

 

That’s because we find that even when you provide your staff with great selling techniques, if a system isn't put in place to help the staff consistently and successfully use the skills, then the investment can stop paying off quickly.

 

The Response Oriented Selling System’s management coaching provides managers with an easy-to-use system of coaching and follow-up that will ensure strong increases in revenue month after month.

Module 3: Managment Coaching & Follow-up

ABOUT THIS SITE  |  This site is the home of Bob McInnis' Response Oriented Selling newspaper ad sales training program. It also shares a number of insights as well as offers a basic new hires program for brand new ad reps just looking to stabilize their territory.

 

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