When the American Press Institute decided it wanted to begin to provide on-line training for salespeople through the Internet, they turned to McInnis & Associates to design it. We've been conducting seminars at API for newspaper advertising executives for years. API wanted to try to reach those members of the advertising department that traditionally didn't benefit from API's on-site training, namely, its advertising staff.
Instead of asking newspapers to fly their salespeople to Reston, Virginia, where API is located, they instead decided to reach them through the Internet. We were hired to develop a basic "Advertising 101" course which would last 5 weeks, where salespeople would log on each day and participate in discussions about topics such as consultative selling, asking questions, overcoming objections, and making presentations.
As the more traditional on-site courses at API, subjects are not taught as much as discussed as a group. Since discussions aren't live, but are instead in the form of a series of comments posted in an on-line area, salespeople can log on at any time during the day (or night), wherever their schedule allows.
In fairness to our over 400 clients worldwide who have hired us to teach our Response Oriented Selling System on-site at their newspapers, the API course doesn't include any of the Response Oriented Selling techniques. Instead, the API course is closer to what an ad manager would teach a new salesperson about the basics of ad sales.
The course premiered in September, 1997, with McInnis & Associates instructors teaching the online course, many times using a laptop and a digital cell phone modem from such remote areas as Aberdeen, Scotland, Nottingham, England, Barcelona, Spain, and Capri, Italy. Unfortunately, because of the time demands of McInnis & Associates' instructors, we won't be teaching the course in the future. However, other instructors will be conducting the course we designed, adding their own experiences and expertise.
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