Ad sales prospecting is the process of narrowing down a list of leads to determine which ones you can turn into paying customers. Selling media advertising can be challenging, but if you do your prospecting correctly, you’ll convert a higher percentage of leads and bring in more business.
Key Takeaways
- Prospecting is the process of turning raw leads into potential customers
- Before you make a sales call you should do your homework
- It’s important to research viable businesses and create an ideal customer profile
- Once you’ve created your prospects list, identify how best to contact those prospects, and prepare the perfect sales pitch
What is Ad Sales Prospecting
Prospecting is part of the sales process. Think of the process as a funnel. The top of the funnel— the widest part— is where you pour in all your leads. Those leads flow downward as the funnel narrows and you end up with a more qualified list of prospects. A percentage of those prospects then flows down to become paying customers.
Prospecting through your leads is a little like prospecting for gold. You need to sift through a lot of leads to “strike gold.” The prospecting process for ad sales involves a lot of up-front homework and preparation before you make the first contact.
How to Prospect for Ad Sales, Step by Step
Prospecting for ad sales is a multi-step process. Work through all the steps in order and you’ll end up with some highly qualified prospects – and, eventually, more ad sales.
Step 1: Do Your Research
The first step in ad sales prospecting is to do your research. Start by identifying industries and business segments that are most suitable to the ads you offer. Look for those industries whose customer base is exposed to your publications.
You also need to know how your publications differ from other media a business might use. You want to be able to show how your ads are more effective at reaching the business’ customers, either by reaching more customers or reaching customers at a lower cost.
Step 2: Define Your Ideal Customer
Research results in hand, the next thing to do is determine who the ideal customer is for what you offer. What types of businesses or industries best benefit from your ads? Which have customers that read your publications? Which operate in your geographic region?
The best way to do this is to create an ideal customer profile that contains all these defining qualities, like the one below. This is important because research shows that more than half of all initial prospects turn out to be a bad fit for what you’re selling. The more research you do and the better you can define your ideal customers, the more efficient you can be in your prospecting.
Step 3: Investigate Referrals
Amongst all the leads you have access to, the ones that are most likely to turn into prospects are those referrals you receive from other customers. Not surprisingly, 60% of marketers say referrals generate a high volume of leads – and 78% say that they’re of good or excellent quality. So, make sure you’re asking for referrals from your existing customers – and using those referrals.
Step 4: Calculate Your Call-to-Close Ratio
How many prospects do you need to develop to meet your sales goals? You can determine this by calculating your call-to-close ratio.
Start by setting your sales goal, in dollars. Next, identify the size of your average ad deal. Divide your sales goal by your average deal size and you get the number of deals you need to close to meet your goals. As an example, if you have a sales goal of $40,000 and your average deal is for $1,000 worth of ads, divide $20,000 by $2,000 and you get 10. That means you must close 10 deals to meet your goal.
Next, determine how many calls you have to make to close a single deal and divide the number of deals you need to close by that number. If you close 25% of calls you make, divide 10 by .25 to get 40. That means you must make 40 calls to meet your sales goal – so you need 40 good prospects.
Step 5: Build a List of Prospects
With all the previous information in hand, it’s time to start building a list of strong prospects. Your call-to-close ratio tells you how many prospects you need. Your ideal customer profile tells you what types of businesses to pursue. Your referral list also helps to identify the best prospects. Put it all together and you have your initial prospect list.
Step 6: Identify How to Reach Your Prospects
How should you contact those prospects? It all depends on how those businesses prefer to be contacted. In the old days, you might knock on their door or make a phone call, and that still might work for some types of businesses. In today’s high-tech environment, however, contacting a prospect via email might make more sense.
Step 7: Prepare the Perfect Pitch
Once you’ve chosen your method of communication, work on creating the perfect pitch. Your customer profile should help in this, as will additional research on each specific business you’ve identified. Browse the business website and their social media profiles and postings. Look up the company on LinkedIn. Identify not just who to talk to but what they’re looking for and what their potential pain points may be. Communicate just how ads in your publication can solve customer problems and bring them more customers.
The following video details some effective pitch techniques for selling media advertising.
Step 8: Make Contact
The final step of the prospecting process is to make the sales call. If you’ve done all your homework, it should go smoothly.
Let the Boom Communications Group Help with Your Ad Sales Prospecting
The Boom Communications Group provides a variety of marketing, advertising, and printing services to small businesses in southwest Florida and beyond. We can help you beef up your ad sales prospecting to attract more ad customers for your publications. Let’s work together to ignite your business growth. Contact Boom Communications today to learn more about ad sales prospecting!