My background
But before we get started, I should probably tell you a little about myself and my qualifications in the area of training newspaper advertising salespeople.

I graduated Dartmouth College in 1984 and have been either selling, managing, or conducting training in the newspaper industry ever since. I've sold advertising for a variety of small weekly newspapers, and have sold major account advertising for one of the largest New York dailies. I was advertising director for a group of ten weekly newspapers and advertising sales training manager for one of the top 10 newspapers in the country.

Along the way, I've trained hundreds of newspaper advertising salespeople at all levels to sell even more. In fact, I felt I was making enough of a difference with my training that seven years ago I decided to start my own ad sales training company. The company is called McInnis & Associates and the course I teach is called Response Oriented Selling. We've taught it on-site at over 400 newspapers in the US, Canada, UK, Spain, even Bermuda and Barbados.

The course you're about to participate in is not the Response Oriented Selling program. The Response Oriented Selling program is conducted classroom-style at our client's offices and provides specialized skills to help newspaper ad salespeople at every level be more effective. "Everything You Need To Know To Start Selling Advertising Tomorrow" has a different goal: to dramatically reduce the time between a salesperson being hired and that salesperson producing serious revenue in a territory. In fact, if you've been selling for a while, you might find this program too basic. If you haven't, we think you'll find it invaluable.

Hopefully this program will keep your stress level down, help you with the transition from new ad rep to productively managing your territory, and provide you with all the little tips and tricks that you usually only pick up after years in this industry. And bottom line, I hope this program will help you make lots of money.

Finally, I'd like to mention that I find it almost impossible to discuss potential advertisers without calling them either he or she. I just want to point out that although I'll be using the universal "he" during this program, I really mean he or she.

OK, let's get started.