What are your prospects looking for? They’re looking for solutions to their business and marketing challenges; they are not looking for advertising. They want to work with someone who can make suggestions and offer new ideas, preferably an expert in their industry and they’ll gladly pay a premium to anyone who can increase their probability of success and reduce their risk of failure. They want to work with a specialist who understands their industry’s unique problems.

So instead of randomly calling on everyone who would benefit from advertising in your publication, focus your selling activity by calling on one industry at a time.

By calling on prospects in the same industry you will quickly become familiar with common industry trends and challenges, you’ll learn to speak the industry jargon, and you’ll uncover their specialized advertising and marketing needs. In short, by talking their language, you’ll be perceived as the industry expert your prospects are looking for.