Are You a Natural Media Sales Pro? Beyond factual knowledge and research findings, successful media sales professionals must be natural salespersons. What are the drivers of success? Enthusiasm and passion.

Here is a qualitative perspective on success offered by Spencer Longshore III, CEO of Time & Space, Inc.

It is an interesting phenomenon that so many planners and buyers take up the role of selling later in their careers. And why not? The entire planning and buying process appears to be extremely complex and, on a large national account with multiple targets and strategies, it is.

But a talented alpha sales person knows exactly how to use all that buying inertia and turn it into exactly what a particular medium offers AND THEN SOME….

All these various media have sales staff….from the local city magazine to Sports Illustrated and from the local sports newspaper to ESPN. Do you love fishing? How about Bassmaster Magazine? If you are into health, then how about all those magazines, web sites, and cable TV shows you consume on the subject? Somebody has to sell their ads.

A salesperson always has the opportunity to outthink and outsell the competition. It’s why they call them sales people. Some of the richest and most highly paid people in the world are sales people. I know a lot of advertising sales people that earn 6-figure commissions every year…year after year. These are not glass half empty kinds of people.

So what does a career of selling advertising require of you? First and foremost, it requires a passion for the process. What’s not to love about a career on the selling side? You're not stuck in an office cubicle; you get to interact with some of the smartest people on the buying side. You are inexorably linked to the flow of products and services.

You see ads all around you all the time. Somebody is buying those ads and somebody is selling them. Somebody on the selling side is earning serious commission on those sales. Why shouldn’t that person be you?

You don’t have to spend 10 years learning how to sell advertising; it’s actually very straightforward. This is what you have to master in short order:

A simple mindset that demands YOU SELL More Advertising Than You Ever Dreamed Possible and more than your competition can imagine !

This is your goal.

It’s never been more important or more critical to understand fully the intellectual processes and disciplines that separate mere order-takers from “killer” sales people.

What if you took the art form of selling/marketing/advertising to the absolute outer edge of performance?

What if your competition met that challenge?

The only secrets that truly count are your work ethic, passion, enthusiasm, knowledge, and total adherence to the selling process of media development.

Go for a sales career! You’ll be glad you did.

A media planner is like a writer who creates the screen play for a film. A media buyer is like the actor who brings the film to life. A politician with a good message who fails to get out the vote loses the election. And a good media idea, poorly executed, might as well have been a bad idea. Sometimes execution is everything.


A media plan might be brilliant, but will it be executed with equal zeal? Will the plan be executed on budget with the right media vehicles, in the right place, at the right time and with maximum communications impact? If not, the plan might not look so brilliant any more. Media planning, media buying, and media selling are all equal communications partners in driving ROI.

Why is Buying Underestimated?

Since all of the disciplines (planning, buying, selling) are all of roughly equal in importance, I have always wondered why media textbooks dedicate only a few pages to the art and science of media buying and no pages to media selling. Clients probably place the highest importance on the cost effectiveness of the buys negotiated on their behalf. Agencies can lose clients on the basis of poor media buying performance, bu I don't think I can ever remember an agency losing an account because of a media simulation model.

Perhaps some academics believe that media planning is more conceptual, more creative, more research oriented, and provides better mettle for the mind. But these assumptions aren't necessarily so. Media buying at its best requires honed negotiation skills which could be a course in psychology. Buying also it requires an understanding of the communications process that rivals media planning. And media buyers need a knowledge of the research documenting how different media variables, such as commercial affect performance and advertising effectiveness.

It is ironic that so many clients have the opposite belief where buying is more important than planning. After all, that is where the rubber hits the road and the dollars are spent.

In the 21st century, media buyers won't just be responsible for buying TRPS or clicks at the lowest possible price, but must learn how to "buy communication, not TRPS, according to many experts. Beyond CPM, how can a buy's communications effectiveness be maximized? Program involvement, attention levels, contextual considerations, commercial positioning and a host of other factors have a greater impact on communications effectiveness than media weight and CPMs. TRPS are not TRPS.

Where the Jobs Are

Students interested in a career in advertising need to study the art and science of media buying because it is an important part of th business and because jobs in buying are more plentiful than jobs in planning.n the 21st century, students also need a point of difference to help them land a job in every competitive arena. Unless they go to work for a mega agency, where are students going to learn about media buying including negotiating strategy, the role of program involvement, commercial positioning, and context --if not in the classroom?

Everyone in the marketing communications business needs to develop a good understanding of the convergence of planning and buying and selling. Media is transitioning to Integrated Marketing.


Everyone in the marketing communications business needs to develop a good understanding of the convergence of planning and buying and selling. Media is transitioning to Integrated Marketing.

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