Sales in the afternoon

Q: Carrier Sales.

Ours went South when we went morning. We have tried everything to get the kids back out in the afternoon to sell. It was easy when we were an afternoon paper. Now it is like pulling teeth.

Does anyone have an idea that REALLY works?

A: I understand your dilemma having worked for both a.m. and p.m. newspapers. I can't give you a single idea that will sure-fire really work, but I am willing to give you some opinionated thoughts on the matter.

Afternoon-to-morning. conversions are often done with lots of planning to ready the publication for all the technical and logistical challenges. Other than hoping for a spike due to the time change for the customer, sales are often ignored in the planning except for stop-saver programs and updating the telemarketing pitch text. I urge anyone in a conversion, new product launch or any similar very large-scale change to advocate for sales study and planning as a part of the launch and implementation of the change.

My experience is that a.m. delivery generally tends to develop a different type of carrier force that will not be interested in doing sales. It's like working a split shift: Only a few can do it successfully or want to do it. Therefore, developing a separate sales crew is really the best way to get door-to-door sales that used to be carrier driven.

There can be some real benefits to launching a separate crew. Without sales responsibility, you can perhaps focus more on service expectations from you're a.m. delivery force and that sets up a good foundation for sales work. A separate p.m. crew specifically selected and trained for sales can render very good results. You can even combine assets and use the a,m, force to deliver sample subscriptions that the p.m. crew follows up on.

I do think that having some low-level, low-maintenance sales contest or ongoing reward system for a.m. carriers is advisable, but reliance on an a.m. carrier force for any significant amount of sales will not be a reality that you can depend on. A separate crew (or crews) may have some supervision, transportation and independent contractor hurdles to overcome, but this crew has potential to become your prime field producer of sales.

You may need to examine and justify setting up separate crewing. However, if your cost per order is reasonable, you can convert those funds to supporting a productive crew. If your former carrier force produced very low cost-per-order sales, you may need to familiarize your budget resources provider with another reality of the cost of conversion in a logical, fact-based way. Be sure to look at retention, too; you may be surprised. Some carrier-produced sales can be very churn intensive while a crew could be less so in the long run. Of course, some of this harkens back to my initial thoughts about planning for sales in conversions.

I wish I could give you a sure-fire solution, but I do think an overall different approach would be the eventual outcome. I would see this as an opportunity to plan and control your own destiny to meet needed sales goals through the strategic repositioning of sales work. Everyone else ought to chime in with his or her thoughts, ideas and opinions. One thing I do know is that no one has the magical right answer to any challenge; there are lots of variables in markets to consider as well.