The Ad Sales Cheat Sheet

👋 Today, doing quickfire rounds on the most important tip for every ad sales topic ever.

Global ad sales glossaries, let’s dive in! 🚀

🏆 Every Ad Sales Topic EVER 🏆

We’ve been busy hiring and training an ad sales team, which has forced us to break down ad sales into digestible, learnable chunks.

So here’s every topic and the 1 most important point for success. Some obvious, and some not so much.

🥅 Cold Outreach

Keep it concise, trigger-based, and talk about the BUYER as much as feasible, not yourself.

🎯 Sales Emails

Reply quickly, and make it easy for the prospect to progress to the next step. Act professionally, talk casually.

🤓 Deal Initiative

Always be thinking about the finish line. With every action you take, it must be nudging the deal along, contextually appropriate, of course.

🧳 Campaign Planning

When you’re conversing with prospects, you are NOT a salesperson. You are a campaign planner, asking questions and designing the best campaign for the brand possible.

🎯 Marketing Terms

Get your marketing lingo up to scratch, know your CPC from your CAC.

🎯 Pitching

The ideal pitch structure is:

• Chit chat

• Discovery questions

• Pitching/Campaign planning

• Answering questions/some back and forth

• Closing

But it won’t always follow the script. Cos humans.

📊 Pricing Strategy

Build value before talking about pricing. Value is matching your audience to the brand’s ICP and showcasing how awesome your content and campaigns are. But at the same time, don’t hide pricing like a weirdo.

🧠 Audience Knowledge

Deeply understand exactly who your audience is and why they love the content, the more data you have, the better you can sell & campaign plan.

🗣️ Discovery Questions

Ask questions to understand the brand’s target audience (ICP), goals, problems, current channels, KPIs, etc. The most important thing to understand is ICP and goals.

📈 Metrics That Matter

Only highlight performance metrics that the buyer cares about. You know what these are because you smashed your discovery questions.

💬 Objection Handling

Don’t tell someone that their concern or question is wrong, people don’t like that, even if you’re correct. Instead, probe an objection, ask ‘What’s your logic behind that?’, and really get to the crux of the issue before finding a solution together.

🧩 Media Planning

Make the ad fit into the client’s funnel and marketing calendar, not just your inventory.

🤝 Renewals

Retention is built in pre-sale, set expectations and overdeliver early. But ultimately, the biggest factor affecting renewals will be the performance, perceived or real.

🧾 Ad Formats

Learn about all the different varieties of ads. Sell what performs for the advertiser and generates the most revenue. Usually, that’s one and the same.

🛠️ Sales Automations

Yes, automations are great. But we need to do it a few times manually before figuring out how much we can hand over to our robot overlords.

🧍‍♂️ Personalisation (could also just call it RELEVANCE)

The more specific the pitch/cold email/proposal feels to them, the more likely you’ll close. Otherwise, you’re just stabbing in the dark

(Could also just call it RELEVANCE).

🧱 Pipeline Priorities

The closer to money a deal is, the higher it is on your priority list. And size matters.

📚 Learning from Losses

Treat every “no” as data; why they didn’t buy is often more valuable than why they did. Use this to improve lead quality, pitching, packaging and more.

🔎 Qualifying Leads

Don’t chase every brand, focus on who can buy and wants to. (a) Good audience fit, (b) can afford you, and (c) has a good sales trigger.

🕒 Timing

Great offer, wrong time = no deal. Understand buying cycles and general marketing timelines, then align your actions accordingly.

🧠 Problem Solving

Traditional/SaaS sales is mostly problem-solving selling. Media sales is more audience and goal aligning. It’s very similar, just slightly different, and if anything, a little bit easier.

📞 Follow-Up

Follow up at least 3 times with zero response before you even think about moving on. Contextually appropriate, of course.

📜 Case Studies

Know your key case studies across all main industries off by heart. Prep the 3 most similar ones in your notes before a pitch.

📅 Campaign Timing

Pitch around their calendar, not yours. Budgets, launches, events (etc.) all shape buying urgency. Plus, it will actually be something that the buyer cares about.

🔗 Multi-Channel Campaigns

If possible, use your various channels to propose a campaign that is best suited to their goals and budget. Ideally, you finish a pitch knowing exactly WHAT they want to buy (and WHY).

📥 Inbound Responses

Reply quickly. Type like your life depends on it. And get them on a call.

📓 CRM Hygiene

Update your CRM as you go. JUST DO IT!

📥 Lead Feedback

Regularly give your lead generators feedback on what deals are progressing, closing or a complete waste of time. Optimising lead quality will have a huge downstream benefit.

💡 Proposals

The best proposals are concise and to the point. Do your discovery questions and send them what they actually want to buy. Don’t give them analysis paralysis.

🧱 Showing Alignment

Show your audience aligns with their ICP, both in terms of demographics and psychographics.

🏓 Performance Marketing

Get a deep understanding of the different facets of performance marketing. Know what your policy is on each one. And learn how to overcome the dreaded ‘affiliate objection’.

P.S. Need help selling more sponsorships? My agency Ad Sales as a Service helps media companies do just that.