Keys to developing contract sales

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, August, 1988 by Josh Gordon

Keys to developing contract sales

There's something satisfying about selling an ad into a special issue of a magazine. You get the advertiser on the phone, pitch the issue and close the sale. The effect of your actions is clear, and when it is all over you can say, "I did that."

But if this short-term gratification shapes your space reps' selling style, their performance will be mediocre. Top space reps keep their attention focused on selling contracts, not individual ads. When your space rep sells a contract, he is selling a year's worth of advertising at once. The psychological and econnomic commitment the advertiser is making is huge compared to what happens when an advertiser sticks an ad into a special issue. Understanding this, the space rep who focuses attention on selling contracts, not individual ads, approaches his job very differently than does his issue-to-issue counterpart.

People buy magazine advertising space for a wide variety of reasons, and rationalize their decisions in remarkable, often bizarre, ways. But no matter what the criteria a client persents to justify a media buy, one common pattern exists: In the mind of everyone who buys and space, there are publications that are viewed as "core buys" and ones that are not. If your publication is viewed as a core buy, you will get a contract. If your publication is not viewed as a core buy, you will not get a contract no matter how often your rep screams and rants and raves.

This is true even of advertisers who do their media evaluating month by month. It may be presented that the client approaches media buying from scratch every month, but the media buyer will heavily favor some publications viewed as core buys; and month to month, those publications will get most of the as--regardless of how aggressively other reps pitch their books.

If you doubt me on this, examine the media buying patterns of your most adamant month-to-month media buyers in year-long increments. It will not take long to determin which publications are core buys and which are not.

The goal of the contract-oriented space rep, then, is to get his publication viewed as a core buy, and if it already is a cor buy, to get it to be the dominant core buy made.

How are your reps selling?

The selling activity of a contract-oriented space rep varies tremendously from that of an issue-to-issue space rep. The two are not just different styles of sellin, they are different professions. It's easy to tell them apart. Ask these four questions about the behavior of the space reps who work for you:

1. Do your reps sell largely over the phon or face to face? The issue-to-issue space rep sells largely over the telephone. Issue-specific information is simple enough to communicate in a phone conversation or through the mail. The phone is quick and efficient. Contact can be made with dozens of clients over a large geographic area in a short period of time.

By contrast, the contract-oriented space rep targets his attention on larger prospects and uses face-to-face sales calls as his primary selling tool. Selling contracts involves far more interaction with clients and the building of more significant relationships than can happen over the phone.

2. Do your reps know when their clients' fiscals come due? For the issue-to-issue salesperson, the timing of his or her sales activities centers around the closing date of the next issue. He or she takes this date and works all sales activities backward from it.

By contrast, the most important date for a contract-oriented rep is the day the client's annual fiscal comes due. If you are to sell year's worth of advertising, it is essential to understand when the client is in an economic position to buy a year's worthof advertising. Shortly after a company's fiscal comes due, the annual budgets for all departments, including advertising, are set. The people responsible for implementing advertising at that company are then given their ad budget to divide up. At this time they block out contracts in publications that are perceived as core buys, and most often leave a monthly "slush fund" for special issues or emergencies. The contract-oriented salesperson uses the annual fiscal as the "closing date" and works all sales activities backward from this time. If the thinking on the account at this time is that your publication is the most important core buy that can be made, a big contract will follow.

3. How hihg up in the organizations do your reps penetrate? The issue-to-issue salesperson is involved in selling advertising, "the commodity." His or her sales activities are directed at people who literally buy ad space, namely media people at ad agencies and ad managers on the client side.

By contrast, the contract salesperson gets more deeply involved with clients' sales and marketing problems. The contract-oriented salesperson is selling advertising, "the solution." To do this, the rep must gain access to levels on the account and at the agency where strategic marketing decisions are being made. Typically, his means talking to account executives at the agency and vice presidents of marketing or higher at the account.