The follow up on making money

Faithful readers may recall last month we wrote about a column by E&P's Steve Outing. In that column he outlined 11 pieces of advice to newspaper company CEOs. We pointed out that most all of his proposals made sense, but didn't address the issue of how to make money to keep an enterprise going.

Outing responded and promised more on that sticky money problem. This month he did just that.

Here is the link to his full Stop the Presses column. He even added a 12th tip this time: to run your newspaper ad staff like an advertising agency. This isn't exactly new advice, but one that has only seen a lot of lip service through the years.

The industry's own incentive plans through the years haven't exactly encouraged this strategy. If a sales person wanted to make as much money as possible with as little work as possible, they knew that the real money had been selling the print ads in the main product. Other products provided smaller returns, both for the newspaper and the sales person. I've seen many a good product die because the return on the time invested by sales persons was minimal.

Turning an advertising sales department into an advertising agency will take more than an edict to accomplish. It really is a cultural shift. And one of the primary steps in any cultural shift is getting the rewards system in line with the behavior wanted. As Brian Tracy says, what gets rewarded gets done.

Anyone in North Carolina papers having success with a transition to an advertising agency mentality? Let us know about it.