The local advertising department is often the largest of the advertising departments. It's sometimes also known as the retail advertising department but this department is rarely limited to handling just retailers.

Local advertising salespeople work with the area's local small- and mid-sized business. They usually work outside, only returning to the office for meetings and processing the ads they've sold.

Personally, these are my favorite kinds of advertisers to go after. They're the most challenging and rewarding. And there are great things about them. Unlike the larger chain stores, for example, you're usually able to talk directly to the owner. This is a huge advantage for two reasons. First, they're able to make a decision. Second, unlike some of their lower-level managers, they almost always motivated by one thing—response.

Our Response Oriented Selling program taps into this and provides ad reps with the unique ability to actually prove to these businesses, upfront, that response will occur.

There are some local businesses that you won't be calling on, though. Of course, if the business is a car dealership, a realtor, or running a help wanted ad, they're probably handled by the classified ad department.

And if they're spending huge amounts of money with your newspaper—such as grocery stores, department stores, or banks often do—a more experienced advertising representative or a whole separate department might be put in charge of these major accounts. I used to sell major accounts for Newsday. Compared to local ad sales, it was relatively simple since the top people at these companies and ad agencies don't have the same amount of incorrect theories that throw off the sale like local ad reps have to overcome.

Your publication might also have one or more advertising representatives selling to national advertisers. These are advertisers who typically don't run any local addresses in their ads, perhaps only a toll-free number or Web address.

At some publications, there are local inside ad reps, too, where advertisers who should run in ROP are sold over the phone. Walk-in's and smaller advertisers are also handled by these people.

As mentioned before, there may be separate departments that sell free standing inserts and ads on your Web site, but you may want to check with your manager, since many newspapers allow all their salespeople to sell these products.

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