Classified Workshop a Winner

On Dec. 7, classified advertising personnel from member newspapers met at The Washington Times to participate in The Classified Challenge Workshop.The morning was given over to three speakers and the afternoon was devoted to roundtable discussions. Participants indicated they left with many solid and useful ideas on ways to become more successful as a manager or account executive, provide superior service to advertisers and ultimately to make their respective newspapers more successful. Much of the information by the speakers is relevant to all advertising personnel, I am passing along some "pearls of wisdom" from each speaker.

Michelle Beaubien Ball, director of corporate advertising & development for The Long & Foster Companies presented the results of a survey conducted specifically for the workshop entitled, "Newspaper Performance & The Real Estate Industry".

Created from the responses of top-producing sales associates and sales managers of her company, the survey covers many crucial issues for newspapers. The last page of the report provides 19 suggestions for how newspapers can meet the changing needs of the real estate industry and is a must-read for all advertising personnel. The classified representative at your paper who attended the workshop will have a copy, or you may contact me if one is not available to you.

Chuck Cornelius, director of classified advertising at Gannett, Inc., reported that sales people spend 75% - 95% of their time on non-sales activity. It is crucial to create more sales time by concentrating on things to make yourself more successful, he said.

He also suggested three key items newspapers should address in the area of real estate advertising:

1. Negotiate revenue contracts with the number 2, 3 and 4 advertisers to encourage the number one advertiser to increase spending.

2. Develop agent programs and rate packages.

3. Develop niche publications for this real estate advertising.

"The Changing Face of Classified" was the topic of the presentation by Charles Diederich, director of recruitment advertising and telesales at the Newspaper Association of America.

Newspaper help wanted ad revenues continue to grow steadily in spite of fierce competition, according to Diedrich. He spoke at length on factors that impact newspaper help wanted sales volume, such as the aging baby-boomer population and the rise in the utilization of outsourcing, temporary workers and contract workers.

He also addressed the challenge to newspapers by the Internet. His prediction is that newspapers will meet this challenge as they have every other challenge in the past and will survive well into the 21st century.

After lunch time was devoted to roundtable discussions of hot topics of concern to classified departments. There were lively discussions of issues such as the rising cost of recruitment ads for the small business, real estate and standards of recruitment, fraudulent advertising, and employee retention.

The keys to the successful selling of newspaper advertising have not changed much over the years. Just ask Michelle Ball about customer service and creative thinking, Chuck Corneluis about time management skills and strategic planning and Charles Diederich about product knowledge and suggestive selling. I think they will all agree that today’s successful account executive shares all of these attributes with their counterparts of yesterday.