Ryan Dohrn argues that publishers undervalue their online readers and waste sales pitches on print when they should be selling multimedia opportunities. He points out that sales teams repeat the same failing tactics instead of varying their approach to reach audiences where they actually are.
That means what? That means you're an optimist or a realist. So what's an optimist? Anybody? If you're talking about a glass being half full, an optimist is— says it's— Half full. Yeah, it's half full. And a pessimist would say it's— Half empty. Okay, but we're all realists, so we say somebody's gonna have to wash the glass. Right? We have so many things to embrace. Now one of the things I always promise when I give talks like this Well, first of all, you're not going to agree with everything that I say. I'm okay with that. I'm going on almost 16 years of being married. I'm getting really good at that after all this time. And what I firmly believe is you don't place enough value on your online reader and your audiences, period. I have the opportunity to work with publishers every single day, and most just don't fully understand, don't fully grasp who their online readers are. It's not being sold correctly. It's not being talked about correctly. You don't know the number of times that I'm working with a sales group and you go out on a 4-legged sales call, you're on the phone with somebody, and the first thing they do is what? Start talking about their magazines. The first thing that they do every single time. Instead of walking in with the multimedia opportunities that are available through their multimedia company. If you keep doing the same thing, and expect a different result is the definition of— Sensitive. Then why do you keep doing it? I have people that— publishers that call and they say, my sales team has not made budget for the last 3 months. They're really great people. They do a really good job. They haven't made budget for the last 3 months. It's the advertisers' fault. The advertisers. It's the advertisers. They're not responding to what we're saying. One of the best things that I learned from a woman that's in this room is that you have to change your approach, we're going to talk about it in a little bit, often you never leave the same voicemail, you never send the same emails, if it's not working you've got to change what you're doing.
