• by Ari Rosenberg , Op-Ed Contributor, November 30, 2004

If media is the engine that drives the advertising industry, the relationship between sales reps and media buyers provides the grease.

When I was a media planner at Y&R in the late 80s, I admired the magazine reps I got to work with while spending money for the U.S. Postal Service. We used the newsweeklies and the business books predominantly, along with Golf Digest solely because the sales rep made a golf buddy out of one of the clients in Washington.

The reps I worked with were mostly men, they were a lot older than I was, and they always wore ties. The rep from Time, a wonderful gentlemen named Bill, once showed up at my office in a sport coat (and tie of course) and explained it was casual dress on Fridays over at Time Inc.

Like most media departments, we sat around and talked about "our reps" all of the time. Who we liked, who we did not like, who had better seats at the Garden, and who was hot were all part of a regular roundtable discussion.

It has been awhile since I was on that side of the desk, but I gather things have not changed all that much.

After four years of buying media, I made the switch to selling it, and soon after joined Newsweek as a junior account executive. I was literally the new kid working along side some of the very elder statesmen I admired as a buyer. They made me feel very welcome and I think I made them feel old.

I was so green. Like many buyers who have their eyes on sales, I thought selling media would be just like "selling a media plan to a client." Yeah, sure kid. Now here is your quota and your last good night's sleep. The differences between selling media and buying it, starts with having to make the phone calls instead of ducking them.

I watched and learned from the pros that surrounded me at Newsweek. They all took such pride in their jobs. They were consistent. They knew their client's business. They read every line of each week's magazine. And they were all regular. I mean every morning, they marched into the "library" with a newspaper cradled between there elbow and their side.

My office was in the library parking lot, so a few of the veterans would poke their head in to share some war stories. One of my favorites was Alan. He would share his tricks of the trade with me.

"Meet the media director, at least once" he explained, "so when you come in to meet with the assistant planner, you can say hi to their boss in front of them." Sure enough, Alan had done this to me, years prior.

The enigmatic relationship between media buyer and media seller is what I will be writing about in a regular column for MediaPost. My emphasis will be on "best practices" for media salespeople, online and traditional.

You are invited to help shape this column. If you are a buyer, send me a "Dear Ari." These can include any complaints, questions, and/or issues you encounter with "the other side." Please site actual examples but don't include names.

Your comments and the collective issues raised will be addressed in future columns with the hopes of shedding light on the dark side of media sales, so media buyers can better understand the needs of their professional counterparts.

Meeting needs are the key to any successful relationship. Even business relationships that make the wheel of advertising go round and round.