NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> A Rant About Online Sales Reps
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> A Rant About Online Sales Reps
Jim Meskauskas (Jim_at_HAWKMEDIA.com)
Wed, 7 Oct 1998 14:03:25 -0500 (CDT)
First, On 10/2, Jennifer Ruffin ranted:
> Call it a bad day or bad week, but I just (and finally)
> finished making my media buys for October and I had the
> hardest time getting the sales reps from the sites where I
> wanted to advertise to call me back!
Then, Stefanie Nelson on 10/5 followed up with
>I hear you, girlfriend. It's hard to find good online reps,
>and after 4 years of online media planning and buying
>experience, I still only have a small handfull of favorites
>that do their job and do it well. I don't know if they are
>all overworked, under-payed, or just plain don't care, but
>you are not alone in your frustration. My list of peeves
>runs a bit longer than yours, however. In addition to not
>returning calls or emails, I find it hard to get many reps
>to get us timely tracking reports without constant nagging
>requests (I've even tried penalizing them with makegoods,
>but to no avail). It costs me time and, as a result, my
>client money. So, you say, advertise somewhere else? I'd
>love to, but these are sites that know we need to be there,
>and that's probably the problem.
Back in the day, when I was actually committing online buys
with extreme prejudice and the kind of regularity promised
by an overdose of Exlax, I experienced this problem
constantly. I see it hasn't changed much. My client was
often times online by the time I'd hear back from some reps.
This was something I encountered more frequently with the
big-name outfits, all of whom seemed to have adopted the
cavalier attitude of "I can always write better business
that what you have to offer." As most all of the buys I
placed were motivated by a direct response, data-driven
objective manifest through a testing strategy, a lot of the
big boys would ignore my inquiries for inventory and avails
and go out and hunt the exclusive-deal elephant, while their
inside sales forces could answer phones simply taking orders
from advertisers who had no concept of evaluation and just
wanted to be on the web for being on the web's sake. When
you have advertisers driving up to SEs and other portal
sites with truck-beds of cash with a "Just Spend It"
directive, most reps have no motivation for returning your
calls, emails, or RFPs. They just pick up the phone, listen,
and append "Do you want fries with that?"
Another factor at play with most of the online properties
out there is lack of experience. Though Stefanie is right
that many online reps are overworked, many are paid VERY
well (compared to media planners, anyway) in spite of their
having been out of college for all of 6 months and their
only prior work experience was collecting donations for
CalPIRG. There simply aren't enough experienced online ad
sales people to meet the needs of the industry. Though the
youth of the industry breeds an electric dynamism rarely
seen elsewhere in the business world, there are a few pages
from the more experienced traditional media sales person's
service book that interactive could benefit from (actually,
this pertains to all folks in sales). If nothing else, as a
planner/buyer, I have one HUGE dislike and one MAJOR
pleasure.
Dislike? Unsolicited sales calls. Can't stand 'em. It's
gonna take a long time for me to get back to you if you call
me cold. I know, I know: this isn't fair and how else am I
supposed to know about what's new, what you have to offer,
etc., etc., ad infinitum, unless you call me cold? Sorry,
that's just something that has to be fought through. Send
and email, a media kit, or something, and follow with your
one phone call. But incessant harassment just embitters me
to your efforts. Experienced ad sales folk know this and
find ways to work within (or around) this framework. If you
can add real knowledge about your product and the industry
you are working in, you've just scored yourself a Lucky
Strike extra.
Pleasure? Responsiveness. If I call or email with some
crazy request for something, whether it be highly desirable
inventory for a $1 CPM that's locked up until the next
coming of Christ, or whether or not a site can run an ad
unit that has a 100K file size and does everything but chew
your food, send me an email or call to tell me it ain't
possible. Don't leave me hanging, which in turn leaves my
client hanging, because the answer I'm looking for doesn't
exist. You're much more likely to make a friend than and
enemy if you tell me the truth. If I need to place a buy
now, I mean NOW. If it isn't possible to do now, don't
simply ignore me. Let me know that it isn't possible now.
Coping with reality may be difficult for many in this
industry, but ultimately it is all we have at our disposal.
I will grant that a lot of media people, and the
corresponding techno-gurus in this industry, have done a lot
to promote the unreal expectations on the part of clients
that result in the kinds of things that cause lapses of
responsiveness, e.g. the 24 hour turn-around RFP process of
which a lot of interactive ad agencies are guilty. At some
point vendor and agency are going to have to sit at the
table together, toke the peace pipe, and work out a way to
best manage these expectations and how to deliver on them.
Vendor needs to make it clear to agency that you can't pay a
$1 CPM for such a labor-intensive media and expect that to
buy the kinds of resources necessary to provide the level of
service needed to ensure that every RFP, email, and phone
call are responded to in a timely fashion. Agency needs to
make it clear to vendor that revenue originating with them,
the agency, is directly contingent upon their
responsiveness. But both sides need to make advances
towards the other if this, and many of the other problems
plaguing interactive advertising, are to ever be resolved.
~~~~~~~~~~
Jim Meskauskas
Media Supervisor
Interactive Media Specialist
Hawk Media
731 Sansome St., 5th Fl
San Francisco, CA 94111
PH: 415-777-4645
FX: 415-777-1062
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