​In the decade of grunge music and Titanic, accessing the internet meant waiting for someone to get off the landline so you could dial up AOL through your 2400 baud rate modem. Your sales team was on the phone, making cold calls, and driving around to attract clients in person. Print media, like newspapers, direct mail and trade magazines, were the advertising options available to reach audiences.

Today, consumers wouldn’t have the patience for the screeching sounds and slow speed of dial up. Advertisers want to be where their audiences are. Print isn’t dead but your sales team needs to offer more opportunities to keep their clients coming back for more.

Bring your sales team up to speed with a modern approach to sales, building trust and earning love for your brand.

Demonstrate Thought Leadership
To earn the trust of your clients, they rely on you to think outside the box while solving their biggest challenges. If your sales team can demonstrate a clear understanding of how to reach an audience through existing and updated avenues, your client’s interest will be peaked. If your sales team can offer success stories and can replicate those successes for your clients, your clients will want to work with you. Thought leadership improves your brand affinity through sharing ideas, educating, and engaging with clients who want to trust their media partners.

Attract through Inbound Approach
An inbound approach to sales differs from the old approach of cold calls or elevator pitches. Inbound attracts clients who are already interested in what your publishing team is selling. Clients learn about your business through channels such as internet searches or social media. Once they find your business online, they learn more about your brand, how you solve their challenges, and the benefits of working with you. They move from being interested to wanting to learn more to ready to talk to someone. An inbound approach certainly isn’t going to replace the value of cold calls but it will definitely amplify your sales opportunities. 

​​Keep Them Interested
Demonstrating thought leadership through your online presence and social media channels will get clients interested in what you have to offer. Once they’ve signed up to learn more, the next step is to keep them interested. If your website has a blog or if you’re using social media, update it regularly with articles, case studies or information - especially if you’re hoping to attract clients from a certain vertical. Another resource to consider is a newsletter that goes out to your clients on a regular basis such as monthly. Clients reading your newsletter will begin to trust in your knowledge as you educate them on industry challenges or opportunities.

Partner through Consulting
Advertisers want to trust where they’re spending their dollars. No longer can your sales team just “sell” and expect their clients to stick around. Publishers need to be able to work with advertisers as a credible partner and resource, guiding them through growth and new opportunities to reach a wider audience. Your sales team’s approach to selling must meet this new demand and your company must have the resources and tools to make it easier. 

LaunchPad Media Management’s portal offers a user-friendly and always-available system for your modern sales team to stay connected with their publishing clients. With order creation, easy changes and helpful templates, LaunchPad was developed exclusively for the publishing industry sales professional. Contact management and reporting are build right into the system so your sales team has instant access to records, invoices, sales history and more. 

To learn more about the modern sales abilities of LaunchPad Media Management, request a demo.

As you may have noticed recently Conde Nast has been in the news more than I can remember.  Recently it was about their commitment to grow print revenue in 2017 not only with their existing titles but with the launch of new titles.  This week they announced a fairly large organizational shake-up that is dropping the traditional "Publisher" title and replacing it with a more encompassing title for todays media landscape.  If this is something you are interested in doing let us not only give you some ideas on structures we see working well but let us help you in re-organizing LaunchPad to mimic the new structure.  READ ON (AdWeek)

This past weekend we had the honor of sponsoring another successful CRMA event.  In attendance for LaunchPad was Mark Migilore, Senior Vice President, and below are some of his highlights and recaps from the weekend.

1.  Building Brand Value
Bruce Turkel illustrated his seven rules with memorable, entertaining anecdotes and exceptionally clear and simple real world examples. Emphasis on creating a brand that makes your business more valuable regardless of who your customer is, why your brand identity is more important to your continued success than the function of the product or service your sell.

2.  Reinvigorating the Spirit of Your Organization
Keynote Guest Speaker: Bob Danzig, former CEO of Hearst Newspapers, grew up in foster care, joined the Navy and was awarded a Journalism Fellowship to Stanford University, ultimately rising to the rank of CEO of Hearst at the age of 44. Bob served on the board of Hearst for 21 years, served as the Dean of the Hearst Leadership Program for 15 years, has authored 11 books and has delivered inspirational keynotes to over 1 million people, designated as a “Hall of Fame Speaker” by the National Speakers Association. Bob donates 100% of his speaking proceeds to foster care.
 
Bob Danzig discussed how to reinvigorate the spirit of your organization and “invite excellence” through the leadership and celebration of success

3.  Maximizing Revenue & Minimizing Drama
 
This session dug into the evolution of employee toxicity that can cause a rise in drama and a decline in revenue.

4.  Forecasting & Planning
 
This group discussion focused on the critical task of properly forecasting sales, budgeting expenses, planning new initiatives, creating branding opportunities, launching new events and expanding or contracting staff accordingly.

Thank you Mark for the recap and if you have further questions about the content of a session please reach out to Mark to further discuss.  Mark can be reached at 214-969-7300 ext 150.

We will see all CRMA members in Houston May 20-22.

Over the past several years we have seen an increase in the digital offerings from our customers.  Everyone is trying to figure out the right formula to keep their advertisers engaged and increase their dollar spend.  For many years it was a lack of reporting back to the customer that was stymying re-purchases.  Then once a publisher was able to get back reports to the agency or advertiser there was a disagreement between the numbers reflected by publisher versus what the agency/advertiser was showing.  Today it seems that some of the offerings provided by publishers are somewhat complicated and require more creative work by the agency/advertiser.  This article published today by the Wall Street Journal does a good job of breaking down Programmatic Native Ads and why technology may be the limiting factor in the quick adoption.

Link to Wall Street Journal Article

City Regional Magazine publishers and staff completed a very successful 2 day conference in Denver, CO (May 22-23 2016). 

Industry leaders held various seminars addressing the needs of all departments.  Especially interesting was the emphasis on enhanced editorial content and tailoring eNewsletters to individual audience member's interests.

Needless to say, 2017 will see a greater outreach of local events and audience driven initiatives.

Sonoma Magazine, D Magazine and Washingtonian won the coveted general excellence awards in their circulation categories in the 31st Annual National City and Regional Magazine Awards competition.  For a complete list of award recipients, click the button below:

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Effective December 1, 2016, the minimum salary requirement for the administrative, professional (including the salaried computer professional), and executive exemptions will increase from $455 per week to $913 per week (or from $23,660 per year to $47,476 per year). This means that employees who meet the administrative, professional, and executive exemptions must be paid a minimum weekly salary of $913 in order to be exempt from the FLSA's minimum wage and overtime requirements. Exempt computer employees may also be paid hourly, if it is at least $27.63 per hour, which doesn't change under the new rule.

Is there a disconnect today between traditional methods of prospecting and current technology?  I think so.

Often we get to sit down with sales reps and ask them about their days and weeks.  More importantly we get to figure how they are spending their time.  I am always intrigued by what the successful account executives are doing to drum up new business and maintain relationships with their existing clients.  In my prior life as a Commercial Real Estate broker we were trained from day 1 to smile and dial.  We were given a pretty predictable formula and those that stuck with the formula were pretty successful.  As one of the older brokers told me early on, "The only thing between you and financial freedom is your telephone," and believe it or not he was correct.

Does this concept still hold true today?  To a certain extent.  With newer technology the game of sales prospecting has changed.  However I feel like some of the basics have been abandoned to take the past of least resistance.  Today,reps feel most comfortable sending emails because it allows them to avoid awkward conversations and face to face rejection.  I am still a firm believer that people do business with people and if you have not spoken to a person then most email correspondence will only go so far.

Why are people scared of the phones?  My guess would be there is typically little thought process or strategy put into their calls.  When charged with making calls they typically just randomly call contacts in the database.  However if the Sales Rep would leverage the data from a CRM like LaunchPad they can make more calculated sales calls.  If you select a small subgroup of people to pitch and do so at one time, not only will your pitch get better but you will get better at overcoming the objections of that specific target group.  If you layer this phone call approach with your existing emails you will stand out from the rest of the Account Executives simply hiding behind their keyboards.  When your email hits the inbox of a prospects they will remember your short introduction call or even your name from a voicemail.  Email is not always the best way to introduce yourself if you are asking someone to spend $10K+ with you a year.  You must build trust and rapport.

If you are more interested in learning how to leverage the tools within LaunchPad to create this two pronged sales approach please reach out to your LaunchPad representative or request a demo.