Toxic Sales: The Unselling of Magazines

Circulation woes are besieging our industry. We are challenged on all sides by threats from other media. We have serious issues we must address if we are to even begin to compete effectively against other media – though the story that magazines have to tell has never been stronger.

If we are to avoid self-sabotage, we must clean up the way magazines are sold to ensure that we are not, however inadvertently, fostering sales efforts that threaten the long term viability of our industry. We also need to think long and hard about how the awesome persuasive powers of this industry's sales organizations can be repurposed from selling pages in issues to selling our medium more effectively against the others with which we compete.

Above All: Do No Harm
One of the reasons that advertisers are sometimes shockingly misinformed about circulation issues is not simply that we have failed to educate them, but that in some cases they have been purposefully misinformed by sales people anxious to exploit any potential advantage. While we all can cite examples of advertisers who are misusing circulation data to the detriment of our industry, we are less likely to acknowledge that they are sometimes being encouraged to do so by our own “emissaries”, some of whom are not above making assertions that are contrary to fact if they feel it will provide an exploitable advantage. It is up to publishers to put a halt to this behavior. It needs to be done now.

Negative selling is hardly limited to circulation. So what is the story being told when a typical sales rep is calling on a typical advertiser? All too often the call goes something like this: “My publication is - by far - the best in the category, because of a, b, & c. Competitive publication 1 is not good, because of d, e, & f. Competitive publication 2 is not good because of g, h, & i.” Sales reps generally sell the strengths of their own publication and the weaknesses of competitive titles. In a category comprised of three titles, this means that the negative sales messages heard by the advertiser outweigh the positive messages about the category by about 2:1. For larger categories, the implications are obvious. Clearly, sales people are supposed to sell the strengths of their publication. But it is also in their best interest (and yours!) for them to also sell the strengths of their categories.

Rethink Incentive Structures
It is no surprise that sales behavior follows the money. Because many incentive plans are based on share of category pages, sales people are incentivized to sell their magazine, but not to sell their genre – lest their competitors reap the gains. We should all wish to be in categories where even the least of our competitors is successful! Just as the prevalence of page-based incentive structures at the expense of revenue-based goals has been a contributor to the commoditization of print, so a focus on share of market within a category contributes to the on-going marginalization of what should be an increasingly vibrant medium. We need to think about what behaviors need to be rewarded to ensure that the magazine industry remains an important part of the broader media community. I don't pretend to have an easy solution, but for starters focusing on total magazine and title-specific revenues as a % of spending on traditional media (i.e. print, TV, radio, outdoor) would probably be a step in the right direction.

Conclusion
All too often, existing sales strategies are all about meeting this issue's quota – with little thought to the longer term implications. Now, don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with meeting quotas, except when meeting this issue's quota will make it harder to meet quota next month or next year. Many of our current strategies have the consequence of eroding our business over time. If we would like the option of remaining in this business for the long-term, it is clearly time to start changing the way in which magazines are sold.