• by Ari Rosenberg , Op-Ed Contributor, March 11, 2005

The mother of all budgets is the marketing budget. It is from which all major budget offsprings are sprung.

We live inside the offspring known as the media budget, which spawns slices neatly named by medium. In turn, media sellers talk with media buyers to discuss how well suited, or not, their property is for an allocation from the budget sliced for their medium.

Print publishers huddle into a scrum fighting for pages, online publishers get into the ring to fight for impressions, and broadcast sales people push and grab for airtime.

This is how our business is set up, but sellers: You are being set up to fail. Media sellers are judged today on how well they think outside the very budget box they have been placed in.

Requests for proposals (aka rfps), regardless of the medium, require publishers to submit a big idea. These big ideas often require multi-medium inventory to execute, and that is where the media sales rep is set up to struggle.

The underlying problem is that media sellers, conditioned by medium-defined buyers doling out medium defined budgets, think about solutions in terms of one medium. So as a print rep for example, you stare ahead at a print budget. When you receive an rfp, you turn and look inside your company for creative solutions and all you tend to see are pages.

The overlying problem is structural. Publishers are set up in a manner that makes it difficult for sales reps under one publishing roof to tap into inventory other than what they are assigned to represent. Trying to use inventory from another property inside your own building often leads to an unsightly internal revenue-wrestling match.

One industry active media buyer who handles a large online budget pointed out to me recently, "Publishers are missing out on a big chunk of change because their proposals lack innovative 'big' ideas."

She then went on to describe a recent media conference she attended in which "publishers were discussing this common request (for "big ideas"), but don't really understand what it means and are further frustrated when they do create something only to not have it bought."

So, how can publishers feel less frustrated and hit more big-idea home runs?

The biggest hurdle is, ironically, internal. Collecting, packaging, and pricing multi-medium inventory needed to support a big idea driven sale can make grown media salespeople kick their feet under their desk like 5-year-olds yearning to be understood.

Only the sales rep on the account truly understands why and how this multi-medium inventory needs to be packaged, priced, and delivered to sell it through. Unfortunately, this intuitive insight is deflated as more chefs come into the kitchen, which often leads to overcooking a big idea and serving it dry and tasteless to the client.

ESPN's recent sales reorganization is a big step towards creating an environment that will make it easier to sell big ideas using multiple mediums. They have set up their sales force so there is a manager responsible for the account, and then medium specialists surround the manager to help them orchestrate multi-medium deals (an even bigger step would be to blend commission plans so selling one medium over another has zero impact on sales behavior).

Publishers need to follow this lead. They can start by doing a better job of providing multi-medium ingredients needed to bake a big idea, directly to the salespeople in need of them.

To achieve this, publishers should be creating "standard" multi-medium ad products that can be lifted off the inventory shelf easily and quickly. Helping your sales force starts with understanding that proposals are often due back in 48 hours. Making salespeople wait for approved multi-medium inventory will prevent big idea sales from occurring.

Finally, to hit more home runs salespeople can help themselves by trying out this mental exercise. Ignore the label assigned to the budget you are competing for. It is no longer a print budget, an online budget, or a broadcast budget. It is a big idea budget.

Now turn inside your company and see what you can find to creatively enhance your proposals.

Can you see the difference?