Our Basic Newspaper Advertising Sales Course

Ad sales training to help you to start selling fast in your new territory
This is a sample showing just the first four chapters of this course. Buy the full course here starting at $59 
© 2015 Robert McInnis Consulting

Ad Layout: Managing Proofs

If you have an account who wants to see the ad before he will agree to buy, then that would not be considered a proof. Instead it would be considered a spec ad, which, again, means an ad built on speculation.

A spec ad is usually created by the designers and requires no space reservation because you're using it to convince the advertiser to actually buy the ad. It's an important distinction.

Some of your advertisers might ask you for a proof for every ad they run. There's nothing wrong with bringing a proof out to your advertisers to make sure they're happy with the ad, but unless you're emailing it, it does become time consuming and can cut into your selling time.

You could easily spend a full day on the road dropping off (and in some cases, later picking up corrected) proofs. It might have been something that a previous rep in your territory encouraged and now your advertisers are in the habit of requesting them every time.

The best thing to do is to train your advertisers to only request proofs occasionally. I used to say to my accounts, "Look, since we haven't really gotten to know each other all that well yet, how about I send this layout through to production, bring a proof back to you, and we'll see if I communicated what you wanted properly. I'll keep bringing you proofs until we reach a point where you can trust me, hopefully after two or three ad runs. At that point, once I know how you like your ad, I'll check them out myself without bringing you a proof. If they come out wrong from that point on, I'll take responsibility."

By approaching it this way, you'll be able to train your accounts to trust you and you won't be spending all your time dealing with proofs.

It really is a matter of training them. Whether they are constantly requesting proofs or requesting that you drop off a copy of a newspaper each time their ad runs (which could also easily eat up another day if you did it for all your clients), your advertisers will take their cue from you. If you let them take advantage of you, they'll fill up your days doing things that don't really help either of you. Be firm with them. After all, you're much more than simply an order-taker or messenger.

The one exception to this is if there have been previous problems. And the problems I'm talking about are not limited to incorrect ads constantly appearing in the newspaper. I'm also talking about an account who nitpicks, or refuses to pay for an ad for a very slight error, for example a spelling error or something not aligned properly.

Unfortunately, there are a few advertisers out there who try to find anything wrong just to get a discount off their ad. If an advertiser has a history of being difficult in this way, you might want to bring a proof out to him before each ad runs and get him to sign it.

Next: Credits and Adjustments