Prospecting Special Sections
Some salespeople who are hired are given a territory are told "Welcome on board, we've got a special section that's due next week, see if you can sell some of your accounts into it". This is actually fairly common, since, as we mentioned earlier, many newspapers have a special section almost every week, whether it be a bridal, health and fitness, fashion, home improvement, or another. You may recall that these sections are usually stand alone products that come with the regular paper. Each topic might be covered once or twice a year and is a big revenue source for a newspaper.

When confronted with selling a special section, again, go where the money is. In this case, in addition to looking in the competition for ads that sell a particular product or service that the people reading the special section might be interested in, also see if someone can dig up the past couple of special sections of the same theme-- probably one six months old and one a year old--and find the ads in your territory that appeared in these sections. Sometimes it's just a matter of stopping in to these accounts with the old ad and informing them there's a new special section coming up. Others might take some selling. We'll be going over a formal sales call in a few minutes.

But first, let's talk about the best way to manage your time and territory.