Closing Ad Deals

Do Commission-based Ad Sales Reps Exist?

[rogerd]

I'm working with a site run by people with other job responsibilities. Traffic is getting to the point where selling CPM or CPC ads makes sense. They have an idea of the kind of advertisers that would be interested, but don't have the time to do all of the e-mail, telephone & follow-up work needed to close ad deals.

Are there ad reps who work on a commission basis for this sort of thing? A preliminary web search found a lot of in-house ad sales reps, but no independents.

[rcjordan]

I'd check with some of the small, independent media consultants (by category or geographic region, whichever fits the site better) but don't get your hopes too high.

Realistically, it always seems to come back to the site to do the selling. I'd recommend spending 4 or 5 days developing a detailed, step-by-step media kit. I'd also recommend that you force all inquiries to be handled by email -not phone. Save those emails! Within a few exchanges you'll soon find that the questions and answers of these sales emails will point out the deficiencies in your media kit. After a few tune-ups, the site will probably do the bulk of the ad sales without intervention and sales "staff" emails will just gently point them to the proper page.

[rogerd]

Good advice, RC. We've begun working on the media kit, and there will be ad sales info put on the site.

However, I'm thinking that e-mail only may not crack the "executive office" contacts the site needs, though. In some cases, the target firms may be online advertising neophytes and will no doubt need more handholding than web pros. ("Banner Ad? What kind of fabric do we make it out of?" ;) ) The higher you go in management in many organizations, the less technical the key players become.

Good point, too, about the early contacts providing good market research info.

[rcjordan]

I'd also recommend simplifying your available inventory to the basics in the media kit. You and I know that -if the price is right- most websites can be contorted to handle anything from text ads to full-blown infommercial pages, but they spook easily if you overload them with too many choices.

The savvy ones will cut to the chase anyway and you'll get a 2 sentence email from them (man, I love those).

[northener]

If you don't actively sell advertising, you will only realise a tiny proprtion of your potential sales. This is true in [printed] press ad sales.