First Sales Call
So let's go over the steps first. On the first sales call, you have a few things to do.

First, you need to introduce yourself, second you need to stop the potential advertiser from thinking about how to get rid of you, which they're almost surely going to be thinking about when they first realize who you are. Third, you might want to give them a quick summary of what newspaper you're from. Fourth, you've got to ask questions about their business, competition, and target customers. And lastly, you want to get them to agree to another meeting where you can present your recommendations.

The next step is to return to the newspaper, come up with a strategy, and return and present it on the second sales call. This would involve not only reviewing the information the account gave you previously, but also explaining why the newspaper and the ad you're recommending is effective. The account would then give you objections and you'd overcome them and hopefully get them to run the ad or ads.

I know that's a lot of things to have to do, but if you do it correctly, it will seem to both of you like you're just discussing a way for the advertiser to increase their business and the stress of selling will be nonexistent or at least kept to a minimum. Even better, although you can't sell everyone, you should make the sale most of the time.

So let's go through these steps slowly and I'll explain everything you need to do. Let's assume this is not an account that's already running and happy but instead an account that you found using the traditional methods of prospecting as we discussed earlier.