You don't have to accept flat ad sales when the market gets tight. You don't have to experience the anguish of seeing your market share slip away or the size of your book shrink. These are not necessary consequences of a market turning downward.

Instead, you can hold your own as others see their sales slip. You can even increase your sales.

But that may be hard to believe if you're experiencing a sales pinch.

You may be asking yourself, "What am I doing wrong?" Perhaps you just became painfully aware that 12-month sales figures were down from the previous period, and you're looking at a continued downward trend? That's bad news for any publisher.

The sales force probably has an explanation. It is that there's been a market setback. Everybody is tightening up. As a result, your publication should expect a softening in sales. After all, the sales force isn't doing anything differently. Therefore, they can't be expected to make up for the slump. Or, so they say.

What is the real reason? Is the publisher doing something wrong? Has the sales force lost its effectiveness? Is the slump inevitable?

What Do You Mean By a Tight Market, Anyhow?

A tight market for advertising sales can mean a variety of things.

1. It could be that there is a national slowdown or recession. Sometimes when an economic downturn is just a forecast, advertisers hedge their bets by reducing advertising expenditures.

2. If you publish in a vertical market, perhaps it's not in the best of shape right now. Periodically, we see quite a few industries that have their ups and downs.

3. Then, there's the matter of competition. A new competitor, or an old one that's gotten stronger, can make the market for advertising space tight -- even when the industry and economy are robust.

Any one of these factors, let alone a combination of several, can make the market for selling your ad space tighter than tight.

But a slump in your advertising sales is not inevitable.

Your Sales Can Blossom in Spite of It All

Face your declining advertising sales situation -- and do something about it.

Before the market tightened, your magazine may have even been on top of the heap. The leading magazine. Everyone loved it, readers and advertisers alike. And the publication's staff may have worked hard to produce and sell a highly-respected, first-rate product. But that was then and this is now.

As the market tightened, sales fell. Perhaps you've questioned whether your editorial focus has gone off target. You may have wondered if the sales staff has suddenly become ineffectual. I'll bet, however, that neither is the case.

Sizing Up the Situation

The reason ad sales fall when faced with a tightening market is simple. The approach used for selling during more prosperous times is neither longer effective nor appropriate anymore. In all my experience, that is the number one reason most publications have trouble selling in tight-market situations.

When times are good, of course, advertisers are in a spending mode. If you can show them a leading publication that serves as an effective vehicle for bringing an advertiser's message to buyers, there doesn't have to be much more convincing than that.

Thus, the approach used by your sales staff may have been to tell the prospects about the next issue and, voilà, there was a sale. The sales people did a good job and worked hard at it. The group of advertisers they called on was likely a pretty stable group. Not many newcomers or dropouts.

But Is That Really “Selling”?

That kind of a sales approach, however, is what I call "order taking", not selling. When a large number of a publication's ad sales are taking place because of the reputation of the publication and its affluence of the field or industry, an active element of salesmanship is certainly not in the forefront.

"Selling" takes place when you are dealing with a prospect who is not favorably disposed toward buying. It involves (1) identifying what are the needs of the advertiser, and then (2) skillfully proposing how they can be met through advertising in your publication. It's a "Mentor Marketing" kind of selling, as opposed to the old pitchman's banter. This type of selling also involves constantly looking for new prospects and avoiding the tendency to work the same old list. Breaking new ground and covering new territory are important elements of the equation for success.

How to Pull Up Your Sales

My prescription for you is simple. It is to stop using sales methods no longer suited to the times. And to start utilizing a whole new approach to sales that involves:

1. Using the new Mentor Marketing sales techniques.

2. Mounting a concerted effort to find more and more prospects.

3. Making a lot more sales presentations.

I'm certain that it will work. By successfully implementing a thoroughgoing program involving the above prescription, you will see advertising sales pick up again. The market may not improve. But your sales savvy will. And so will your advertising revenue!

You Can Do It!

What others have done to improve ad sales in a tight market is something you can do, too. The first positive step is to identify the real cause of the problem. All too often, a sales slump can be attributed to external causes: like the state of the market, the economy, etc. While these can be potent influencers of your sales, they need not dictate your fortunes.

Take a close, hard look at what you're doing. Is the approach that you may have used successfully for selling during more prosperous times no longer effective or appropriate?

--Are your sales people attempting to take orders rather than sell?

--Are you going after all the possible prospects who are out there?

--Is a sufficient number of sales presentations being made?

Here's how to find out...

Mentor Marketing Sales Techniques

Go along with a sales person on a sales call. If that's not possible, conduct a roleplay with the salesperson. Listen to how he or she makes the sales presentation. Does it start off with an "I'd like to tell you something about our publication" type of statement? Or, does the sales person first probe to determine the advertiser's needs, goals, and objectives?

The whole basis of Mentor Marketing selling is to find out what the advertiser wants to do and then to explain how it can be done through advertising in your publication.

Every sales call should have an essential structure: (a) probe and establish rapport, (b) formulate and deliver appropriate feature/benefit statements about your publication, (c) ask for the order, (d) handle resistance, and then go back to step (a) if necessary.

Prospecting

Check your prospect list. First of all, how big is it? If your aim is to have, say, 50 pages of advertising in an issue, your prospect list should number at least from 500 to 1000. If it's not nearly of that magnitude, you may be trying to squeeze too much advertising from too few advertisers.

Then look at how frequently the list is updated. There should be a constant stream of additions. Every time a new advertiser shows up in a competing publication, that advertiser should be added to your list. There also should be other ongoing research activities to locate new prospects, by industry, by location, by interests -- or whatever makes sense for your particular field.

Finally, take a look at how the prospect list is organized. Yes, it should be organized. All prospects don't deserve the same amount of attention. Be able to identify, in addition to present and past advertisers, those who advertise only in competitors' books, the trade show exhibitors, companies with a known interest in your field, etc.

Be sure that your prospect list is (a) big enough, (b) updated and added to regularly, and (c) organized or stratified so that the various types of prospects can be contacted according to an appropriate calling schedule.

Volume of Presentations

Are you making enough sales presentations? To a large extent, the number of sales you make is a function of the number of sales presentations made. Even the best of sales people do not bat a thousand. To get a lot of orders, you have to make a lot more sales presentations.

How many sales presentations is each sales person making? If it's only about 10 per week, consider increasing that number dramatically.

I know successful salespeople who make 100 presentations per week. How do they do it? Are they superheroes or something? No, but they do use one technique you should consider: they minimize their time on the road and maximize their effectiveness by using the telephone to make sales presentations, not just appointments.

A well-trained salesperson should be able to make about 50 phone calls a day. Of those, he or she should be able to make telephone sales presentations to nearly half the prospects. Working in this way, how many pages per month should one sales person be able to sell? Well, naturally, that depends a lot on the field you're in. But, look for a productivity range of 20 to 50 pages per month for someone working on a well established book.