Speaker 1: Hi, Claude Whittaker here. I'm an author. I'm a speaker. I talk to groups of business owners and groups of salespeople. So if you're selling something and your income is determined by how much you sell, you might want to listen to this because you might get something out of it. I wrote a book recently called Selling Local Advertising. This is for people that sell coupon books or they sell magazines or they sell something where local businesses are advertising. It could be radio. It could be TV, local cable TV advertising. It could be any of those things. Well, there's a few things out of this book that I thought I would share with you. The most important part, if you want to know one secret that every ad rep should know to absolutely guarantee their sales, it's this. And I almost never see this when I see people training salespeople selling advertising locally. And it's this. Know how to write and create profitable advertising. And what I mean by this is make sure that when you are creating an advertisement for your client, learn how to make that advertisement pay. Learn what makes advertising work, what draws people in the door, what causes them to want to buy. I recently talked to an advertising sales rep and I was speaking to a group of reps and I was meeting with a small group at a table. And one of the first things this guy told me was, he said, Claude, I was talking to this guy that was, he had a mattress store, and he was complaining that people weren't coming in to buy mattresses. He said they would come in, they'd look around, and they would leave. And he says, I told him my job is just to get him to call you. After that, it's up to you. It has nothing to do with how much you sell. It has nothing to do with what I do. And he said, what do you think of that, Claude? And I said, well, I guess you could think of it that way. I said, but I don't think the client thinks of it that way. Okay. And he looked at me like I was from Mars. He said, well, I don't know what you're talking about. And he just walked away. The amazing thing is this, that is not a unique reaction. Think of it this way. If you are a sales rep, and you're selling advertising to a client, and you create an ad for them, and the next month you go back, because you're going back for the next monthly issue, or the next, you know, the next series of ads, and they say, oh, I'm so excited. We made a fortune off of that ad. For every dollar we put in the ad, we got back six or seven or eight or ten or twenty dollars. Okay. The question I have for you is this. How hard would it be for you to sell that next ad? It wouldn't be hard at all. In fact, you wouldn't have to sell it at all. They would be calling you. Okay. You know, I had, I know I had a half a page. How well do you think a full page would work, is what they'd be asking you. How about two pages? Do you think that this, I can tie this in with radio? Do you think that'd be a good idea? Why? Because they're making money. You're not selling advertising. You're selling new customers. So, you need to figure out how to make your advertising pay. Now, I'm not talking about putting the owner of the, of the business, putting his poodle in the ad, you know, or putting him in the ad, just because it'll make him feel better, and then it'll take six months for him to realize that his advertising isn't paying. I'm not talking about that at all. What I'm talking about is studying copywriting. Study advertising. There are key factors in advertising that cause advertisements to pay, that cause people to actually come in to buy. And you need to learn what those things are. And then when you're selling advertising, you're not selling advertising. What you're doing is you're selling new customers. And for every time, and you'll never run into somebody that says, well, I can't afford, you know, I can't afford these new customers. You know, what they're basically saying then is, I can't afford 30 cents to make a dollar, is really what they're saying. Well, that doesn't make any sense. So, what you need to do is figure out a way to make your advertising pay, so that you're creating a profit for that vendor, or a profit for that business owner. Okay, now I explained that, and I explained an awful lot more in my book, Selling Local Advertising. It's on Amazon. Hope you read it.