Welcome, today we’re getting down and dirty with the nitty gritty of ad sales.

💰 We’re looking at how to close more deals by making it easy for them to buy.

Obvious-sounding but nuanced topics aside, let’s dive in! 🚀

1. Newsletter News

2. How to make it EASY for them to BUY

3. When people start outbound

4. Inbox Banter

^{Make it EASY for them to BUY}

Traditional sales ethos, perhaps unsurprisingly, states that you should make it easy for your prospect to buy. Here’s one and two good articles on the topic

This entails removing friction or extra steps in the sales process, communicating clearly and concisely and so on.

How does this relate to newsletter ad sales?

Well, that is what we're looking at today. I've broken down some key topics of how you can close more deals by making it easier for people to snap up your unsold inventory!

🥇 Outreach

The first customer-facing step in any sales process. Make your outreach easy to say YES to.

Concise

People are lazy and people are busy, so you want your email to convey the relevant information in as few words as possible. Too much fluff and they will get bored and not realise the value. Too little information and they may not see the value at all. You're ultimately making it harder for them to learn more.

When you strip it down to the bare bones, the key info you need to include is:

• Why you reached out/why they’re a good fit

• Who your audience is

• Newsletter stats

• Case studies

Relevant

Because you’re a genius, and you’ve been reading Revenews, you’re reaching out to the right people, at the right companies, at the right time and with the right messaging. Congratulations, you're making it easier for them to say YES.

The information is going to be more relevant to them or their customer, their target customer.

Let’s say you’re not doing all of the above, let’s say you’re reaching out to the right companies/people, but your messaging isn’t personalised to their company or industry. You’re making it harder for the sale to happen. Shame on you.

Formatting

Email formatting is important.

It needs to be aesthetically pleasing.

It needs to have spacing between lines.

It needs to be written in simple language.

It needs to have 2 or less lines per paragraph.

It needs to be appropriate for desktop and mobile.

It doesn’t need to have an ascending line length though…

If your email is a visual mess, the prospect’s attention, and desire to progress to the next step, will disappear before you get started.

Follow Lavender or Will Allred on Linkedin, their content has cold emailing structure down to a tea (☕️).

🎁 Dropping a Proposal

Another approach that has proved effective for me is dropping a proposal in front of the prospect when they haven’t expressly asked for one. You may be thinking: “But Dan, that’s so rude! Won’t they get annoyed?”

Your scepticism is well-placed, but it can be done appropriately. For example:

You’ve got an interested reply, asking for more info/pricing. You could drop a proposal in this manner…

You're not being pushy, but you are presenting them an option they can say YES to. Plus, you’re not leaving the deal at a dead end if they don’t say YES immediately.

You can suggest a bigger or smaller package depending on who you’re talking to. If Elon did actually respond to you, for example, you’d probably wanna go bigger, I think he’s got the budget.

I’ve had plenty of quick turnaround sales that happen like this. I’ve also had dead conversations come back to life and the prospect asks if that package is still valid.

You can also drop a proposal if the deal has gone quiet after a few interested emails, which could look something like this…

I hope this (super realistic) hypothetical email illustrates my point. Dropping an uninvited, but contextually relevant proposal, can steer a conversation in the right direction, or even close the deal ahead of schedule.

🫣 Tech

Use a decent tech stack to remove the friction from your sales process.

📑 Signing software - Make signing great again. PandaDoc is the best in my opinion, whilst XodoSign has the best free version (5 contracts per month).

🗣️ Follow-ups - Don’t rely on your memory for follow-ups, Some good options are; features in Hubspot, project management tools like Monday.com/Trello, Apollo nudges, Streak or tasks in Google Calendar. Following up will clearly make it easier for them to buy, it keeps the information at the forefront of their inbox and mind.

🧾 Invoicing - Make it easy for clients to pay, with the obvious option here being Stripe. Having easy-to-use payment options will leave a good impression, with increased perceived value and likelihood of renewal. Plus you’ll get paid quicker of course.

🎁 Buying - Use Passionfruit or another easy-to-use self-serve page to capture inbound demand and make it easy for them to buy.

🙌 Ad ops - Make your ad ops systems and processes smooth for the brand, Sponsy is great. This will not only increase the likelihood of renewal, but you can use your smooth campaign processes as a selling point.