Newspaper Advertising Sales Training and Newspaper Association Speaker Bob McInnis and Associates Response Oriented Selling

The company behind this site is McInnis & Associates, a training firm specializing in newspaper advertising sales founded by Bob McInnis.You can read the story of how his experiences in the newspaper industry influenced the creation of his training program here.

McInnis has extensive experience in selling all types of newspaper advertising. Before starting his training firm, he sold, managed, and trained for small weeklies and large dailies alike. His last position before starting his own training firm was training manager for Newsday's advertising department. McInnis, a Dartmouth College graduate, conducts seminars for the American Press Institute and speaks at state, national, and international newspaper conferences.

For the past ten years, we've been teaching our flagship program, Response Oriented Selling, throughout the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. This unique training program is one of the most popular in these countries--currently more than 400 newspapers use the techniques.

Our clients include many of the top 100 US daily newspapers such as the Boston Herald, Cincinnati Enquirer, Honolulu Advertiser, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Hartford Courant, and the Spokesman-Review. However, our program is just as applicable to smaller dailies, weeklies, and shoppers and we work with many of them each year. If your training budget allows for bringing in outside trainers or even conducting online meetings, then you might want to contact us for more information.

A few years ago we decided to create another program designed to take on a completely different challenge facing most advertising managers. "Everything You Need To Know To Start Selling Newspaper Advertising Tomorrow" is a course available online, as a downloadable PDF, or an editable document. It takes a completely inexperienced new hire and, as the title suggests, teaches him everything he needs to know to assume a territory and make it productive fast. Since we've made it available online, 100's of newspapers from all over the world have used it, including many of the larger newspaper groups.

Newspaper Advertising Sales Training

Two courses that will get your newspaper advertising sales staff increase sales quickly and dramatically

Course 1: Response Oriented Selling ad sales course

A complete sales course for newspaper retail and classified display advertising salespeople, also involves artists, managers, and area businesses

Conducted live on-site at your newspaper or now live over the Internet

Over 400 newspaper-clients worldwide

Separate sessions for creative services department on how to support sales effort

Separate sessions for managers with attention to maximizing revenues and coaching

Separate sessions for the advertising community to roll out new strategic skills

Teaches advertising consultants a number of skills including:

Overcoming initial stalls and objections

Increasing the amount of time a prospective advertiser will give

Securing more and better information from the prospective advertiser

Creating ad strategies that result in a dramatic response the first time they're run

Closing without compromising ad size, frequency, or content.

Quickly eliminating other typical objections before they arise including:

Your newspaper doesn't work

Your newspaper's rates are too high

I have no money to run an ad in your newspaper

I have no time to run an ad in your newspaper

Your newspaper has too much/too little circulation

I'm happy with the other daily/weekly newspaper or other publication

I can't afford that spec ad's size

I can't run the spec ad at that frequency

I have no money

I don't believe the ad will work

Course 2: "Everything You Need to Know to Start Selling Newspaper Advertising Tomorrow"

Nearly 100 pages of training in all areas of newspaper advertising sales

Designed to help a brand new hire to take over a territory without revenue loss

Available in three formats:

Online course

Downloadable, customizable document

6-audiotape series

Used by leading newspaper groups in the US and abroad including:

Knight-Ridder

Community Newspaper Holding Inc. (CNHI)

Landmark Communications

Leading newspaper advertising sales training firm specializing in basic and advanced training for retail and classified display advertising departments, conducted both on-site and now live over the Internet