October 24, 2014 / Marketing

Talk the talk with your yearbook business ad sales

Written by Elizabeth Braden, CJE

Teenagers talk a lot, so let’s train them to use their gift of gab to sell business ads. If your staff sells business ads, you face the challenge of giving your students the confidence and poise they need to approach the owners and managers of your local business community.

You can assign students scripts to write, and then pair them up to practice sales calls. But if they haven’t made a sales call before, how are they supposed to know what to write?

The link below contains three scripts for cold calling to businesses, a plan for meeting with business owners and managers once the appointment is set, and then three scripts for the actual meeting, including objections to overcome.

Your students can demonstrate the buying power of the student body by using the Marketing Survey that is also provided. Data from such a survey will bolster your reasons that businesses should buy advertising in your yearbook.

Links are also provided to previous stories on selling business ads.

Whether you have been training your staff every year to sell business ads, or you are thinking about starting such sales, these scripts should prove useful in helping students understand the points that need to be made during the pitch. Practice also will help students remember what to say when sitting opposite that gruff and harried restaurant manager.

It helps to have a marketing manager in place to oversee yearbook and ad sales. And remember to check out all of the marketing help Walsworth provides, including Do-it-yourself letter templates to businesses.

These items were either written or compiled by Mark Chapline while he was an intern this summer at Walsworth Yearbooks in Overland Park, Kan. Mark is a senior at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Mo., and is expected to graduate in May 2015 with a major in journalism and a minor in business. Already his work experience is diversified, assisting businesses, philanthropic organizations and political campaigns with presentations and media needs. He also was a website designer and photography editor for the Northern Light yearbook at Blue Valley North High School in Overland Park, Kan.

Yearbook Business Ad Sales Scripts

More information on this topic can be found in these articles:

Tactics and timelines

Five Simple Ideas for ad sales preparation

Ad sales preparation lesson plan

Best practices for selling yearbook business ads

 

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Elizabeth Braden, CJE

Elizabeth Braden, CJE, is the former editor of Idea File magazine. Before retiring, she was a copywriter for Walsworth Yearbooks for more than 15 years, writing articles for various marketing materials, and proofreading copy for the Yearbook and Commercial divisions. Her career included reporting and editing for United Press International and editing for Knight-Ridder Financial News. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mass Media News from the University of Tulsa.