It’s a good question to try to answer now and then, especially if you like your zzzzzs but you’re heaving too many late-night ohhhhs.

Here’s a shot at what might be troubling you if you’re responsible for sales executives calling on agencies and advertisers for ad dollars. Brood on these for a bit and we’ll deliver some insomnia relief later.

1. Unsold and undersold inventory.

It’s 3:00am and you’re reliving yesterday’s heart-pounding snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory. There you are, proudly presenting your record-breaking performance at the quarterly review. You know things are heading the wrong way when the CEO and CFO glance knowingly at each other. It falls to the finance guy to call you out:

“Why the hell are we paying ad serving fees higher than the revenue we earned on more than half a billion ad deliveries?”

2. Sales productivity.

Toss, turn … Maybe assigning one full-time rep to sell excess inventory to ad networks wasn’t such a great move. The CFO wouldn’t have cared as much if we weren’t also paying sales commissions on those deals. But he has no idea how hard it is to keep salespeople.

They all want to sell the same easy deals on the home page and section fronts. They all sell the same targeting parameters, sponsorships and rich media slots. And they leave me with tons of available inventory they say only the networks will buy.

How can I keep all my salespeople focused on selling the value of my site and audience when I have all this leftover inventory to get rid of?

3. Operational inefficiency.

Toss, turn … Then the CEO wants to know why, with all this unsold inventory, we turned away a great new advertiser and underdelivered others. He asks what we’re doing wrong? The marketing guy was a big help, telling the CEO that he delivered the users and new inventory I asked for, so he’s clear of blame. I start telling them about high-frequency impressions nobody wants, but they tune out and move on.

I ask my ad ops group for recommendations. “How about firing any sales exec who sells inventory that’s already sold?” gets the most high-fives.

Toss, turn … 3:45am … Might as well get up and start working on the problem. But where to begin? We’re making the calls, winning awards, expanding the audience, creating new products.

We need better sales training in the basics, that’s for sure. This is advertising, people. Do we understand our prospects’ marketing objectives and what they want to accomplish with their online advertising? Are we making the match between that and the value of the audience we deliver?

As for the leftover inventory, is its value really different from what we are already selling successfully? Are there tools that can help us uncover the value, bring more potential buyers to the table, and get them on board easily?

What about these ad exchanges I keep hearing about? Maybe there’s something there. Can a couple hours sleep and a couple of phone calls fix what’s ailing me?

This entry was posted on Friday, April 20th, 2007 at 2:28 pm and is filed under About Right Media, Publishers, Publisher Media Exchange. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.