2007 Februaury

A salesperson’s biggest enemy

by John Foust
Raleigh, NC

What is a salesperson's number one enemy? It's not pressure from the competition. It's not the objection that prospects keep mentioning. It's not even a customer who signs a contract and then backs out of the commitment.

The number one enemy is fear.

If you don't believe me, take a close look at yourself. Have you ever waited until the end of the day to talk to a challenging customer? Have you ever walked – or driven – around the block, to work up the nerve to call on a big prospect? Have you ever hesitated to ask a closing question during a presentation? Yep, every salesperson in the world has felt that knot in the stomach. If people tell you they haven't, they're dodging the truth.

Of course, fear doesn't always paralyze people to the point where they can't function at all. Fear comes in degrees. Sometimes it takes the form of "anxiety" or "worry" or even "procrastination." But it's still fear.

Obviously, we'll leave the phobia-like situations to the medical experts. Our concern here is to examine how to fight the garden-variety fears that create problems for salespeople. At the risk of oversimplification, I believe a simple, three-part formula can help. Just remember the letters CPA – Confront, Prepare and Act:

1. Confront. The first step is to face the fact that you are afraid. It might be as simple as admitting, "I don't like to make cold calls"… or "I feel uneasy when a prospect nitpicks our rate card"…or "I don’t like to deliver bad news to an advertiser" The more specific you can be, the better.

By acknowledging the fear, you bring it out of hiding. You put it right there in the open where you can look it straight in the eye and say, "Listen up, Fear, I'm tired of taking orders from you. I'm putting you out of business."

2. Prepare. Long ago, one of my training mentors said, "When you are not prepared, you will never travel alone. Fear will be your constant companion." Even so, he believed that a little nervousness can be helpful, because it sharpens the senses. "It's okay to have butterflies," he explained, "just make them fly in formation."

Preparation builds competence. And confidence. That's why the best musicians still take lessons. That's why football teams review game film, develop game plans, and practice the same plays over and over. And that's why my friend H.K. says, "I don't pick up my briefcase and walk out the door until I'm ready."

3. Act. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain." In other words, there comes a time to stop thinking and start doing. Take action.

When you make that difficult call at 8:01 am instead of 4:59 in the afternoon, you're seizing control of the situation. You're putting fear on notice that it might pay a visit every now and then, but you're not going to let it become your sales manager.

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(c) Copyright 2007 by John Foust. All rights reserved.

John Foust conducts on-site and video training for newspaper advertising departments. His three new video programs are designed to help ad managers conduct in-house training for their sales teams. For information, contact: John Foust, PO Box 97606, Raleigh, NC 27624 USA, E-mail: jfoust@mindspring.com, Phone 919-848-2401.

Give any page time—and it will talk to you

by Ed Henninger

IT’S JUST NOT LIKE pages you’ve done before.

This one is different somehow. You’re not sure if it’s different—good” or it it’s “different—bad.”

You took some risks while you were designing it and you’re kinda thinkin’ it works well. But you’re not ready to send it off to any contests—not until you’re more sure of it.

You like the page—but you’re not sure others will. You’re not even sure your readers like it, though you haven’t heard any complaints.

How can you tell you have a winner on your hands?

Try this: Let the page talk to you.

Huh? How does that happen?

Very slowly.

I’m willing to bet that—if you give it time—your page will talk to you. Well, OK, the page won’t literally talk. And I am not doing drugs. But the page eventually will tell you why it succeeds—or doesn’t.

Here’s how it works: Take the page and hang it where you’ll see it occasionally. Place it, perhaps, on a wall of your office or cubicle. Or maybe hang it in the hallway just outside the break room. Or bring a tearsheet home and place on the garage wall, where you’ll pass it every day just before climbing into your car.

Then leave it alone.

The idea is to let the Zen of the page work itself on you. All it requires of you is time.

As that time goes by, you may pass the page hundreds of times. And for those hundreds of times, the page will be silent.

But—if you just let the page be—that one bright moment of enlightenment will eventually occur and you will see the page as you have never seen it before.

Perhaps it was the 2-point rule that made the difference in the lead package. Perhaps it was (as you suspected all along) a weak secondary photo that kept the page from being a winner. Perhaps that drop shadow behind the lead illustration is just the right shade with just the right offset to give the page the depth it needed to succeed.

Is this just so much silliness? Go ahead and think so, if you wish. But it has worked for me countless times (SEE: FOR A LOOK…BELOW). And I am convinced it can work for you. It may take weeks. Even months. But each time you glance (only a glance, mind you—staring defeats the purpose) at the page, you are inviting the intuitive part of your brain to play with the page. At a time when you may least suspect it, that intuition will give you the answer you’re looking for—but only because you didn’t try too hard.

Whatever the critical element, you’ve finally got the answer you needed.

How? Well…you let the page speak. And you took the time to listen.

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FOR A LOOK at another page that may take time to talk to you—and what you might want to discover—visit Ed Henninger’s web site at www.henningerconsulting.com and leave a request with an e-mail address. A pdf file will go out to you right away.

ED HENNINGER is an independent newspaper consultant and the Director of Henninger Consulting. Offering comprehensive newspaper design services including redesigns, workshops, training and evaluations. E-mail: edh@henningerconsulting.com. On the web: www.henningerconsulting.com. Phone: 803-327-3322.

Objectivity Is Unattainable Ideal – Book

by Randy Hines

Faculty, just like journalists, get tons of unsolicited materials. One booklet that I received early in 2007 is intriguing for both of the above professions. Titled “How to Detect Media Bias & Propaganda in National and World News,” the publication provides much food for thought. “The Thinker’s Guide for Conscientious Citizens on …” is its subtitle kicker.

Published by the Foundation for Critical Thinking, the 50-page treatise is aimed at helping readers detect bias in national and international coverage.

The journalism school debate about the impractical nature of total objectivity is explored.

“If objectivity or fairness in the construction of news stories is thought of as equivalent to presenting all the facts and only the facts, objectivity and fairness is an illusion. No human knows more than a small percentage of the facts and it is not possible to present all the facts” (Page 4).

Since the media tell readers what’s important to them, then the public is also irrational when it comes to objectivity, according to the book. So the issue of human objectivity is considered an unattainable ideal.

Utah journalists should know how the public is urged to achieve objectivity by the booklet’s four suggestions.

1.Identify the point of view from which a news story is constructed;
2.Identify the audience it is written to;
3.Recognize what points of view it is negating or ignoring; and
4.Distinguish the raw facts behind the story from the journalist’s interpretation and spin.

We all know that other countries’ viewpoint on international stories is much different from our own. Their citizens see things from a unique point of view and read different stories than we do. The global approval rating of the U.S. is almost as bad as Bush’s in this country. Even World War II allies Germany and France, among others, are quite critical of U.S. foreign policy concerning Iraq. They read and hear news from an entirely dissimilar perspective.

Rather than U.S. citizens condemning the biased foreign press coverage, the booklet urges them to consider that their own media could be biased.

“Every nation’s press coverage of the ‘news’ appears to the mass public of that culture as expressing self-evident truth – because the news is routinely presented within the world view of the mass public that ‘consumes’ that news” (Page 10). So all media present a biased world view, based on their own cultures and audiences. Citizens who are naturally inclined to have a national bias develop a prejudice toward other viewpoints.

The publication lists 20 under-reported or ignored stories that U.S. readers will not see in the mainstream media here. These include:

1.Do respected countries in the word consider the U.S. a danger to world peace?
2.Does the U.S. have a responsibility to live in accordance with the international treaties it signs?
3.To what extent has America been involved in crimes against humanity?
4.Did the United States try to block a U.N. anti-torture vote?
5.Did the U.S. try to defeat the World Health Organization-sponsored treaty to ban cigarette ads worldwide?

Offered as alternative news sources, beyond the mainstream, are Counter Punch, Common Dreams, The Guardian, Harpers, Mother Jones, The Nation and The Village Voice.

“Every citizen in the world needs access to news sources and commentary that question the self-image maintained by the home culture through its own mass media. … For most U.S. consumers of the news, the self-image of the U.S. as a defender of human rights, individual freedom, democratic values, and social justice is unquestionably justified. …Most consumers of the news media do not know how to bring forward ‘buried’ information. They do not know how to read the news critically. Most have never seriously questioned their country’s image. Therefore, they see no reason to seek out dissenting stories or to question highly nationalistic self-portraits” (Page 37).
The booklet reminds readers that all news should be read critically as vehicles containing part of the truth, rather than “the truth.” Written by Dr. Linda Elder and Dr. Richard Paul, both staff members of the Center for Critical Thinking, journalists may want to see what their readers are being told. The Web is www.criticalthinking.org.

Aside from a few typos and a messed-up table of contents, the manual should provide plenty of good discussions around quite a few Utah newsrooms.

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Dr. Randy Hines teaches in the Department of Communications at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa. 17870. He can be reached at (570) 372-4079 or randyhinesapr@yahoo.com.

Two Alternatives for Editing Photos for Newspapers

by Kevin Slimp

Quite often, when I’m speaking about new technology at a newspaper conference, someone will ask how I feel about some of the open source software available in OS X. I decided to take a look at one of the most popular open source applications, GIMP.

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program for Mac OS X. Freely distributed, GIMP is also available for Windows-based machines. First released by two Berkeley students in 1996, GIMP has since grown into a powerful image editor since that time.

While not as feature-filled as Adobe Photoshop, GIMP includes many of the tools newspapers and photographers use in their daily work. GIMP offers the ability to adjust levels, hue & saturation, color mode, size and many other features used to edit photos for newspapers.

I’ve spent some time editing photos in GIMP, and the process is very similar to the method I use in Photoshop. I did run into a couple of issues. One, while attempting to save a file as EPS with a preview, I continually received an error message and no file was created. I was able to create EPS files without previews, however. I was also unable to open Camera Raw images. GIMP saves files in most formats including eps, tiff, jpeg and even PSD (Photoshop format).

Because GIMP is an open source application, it is designed to be reinforced with plug-ins and scripts to increase its capabilities. Some of its built-in features include: editable text layers, alpha channel support, layers and channels, text layers, several transformation tools, a full suite of painting tools and more.

While not a replacement for Photoshop, GIMP is worthwhile for designers who wouldn’t normally have Photoshop available on their computers.

To download GIMP or learn more about the various versions of the application, visit www.gimp.org.

Adobe Offers Christmas Present to Photoshop Users

Adobe played Santa over the holidays by offering users of Photoshop CS2 a free copy of the beta version of Photoshop CS3. A beta is a version of software used by software companies before it actually makes its way to the marketplace.

This release is especially valuable to Mac users who have recently purchased Intel-based computers, only to watch Photoshop suffer, compared to applications created to run on Intel-based Macs. Many Mac users, myself included, have held off purchasing a Macbook (Mac laptop) until the new version of Photoshop became available.

I’m guessing that Adobe took a nod from the very popular public release of its new Lightroom software beta in 2006.
I plan to write a detailed review of Photoshop CS3 when it makes its way to the shelves sometime in mid 2007. Till then, let me tell you what impressed me most about the beta. The first thing I noticed was how much faster Photoshop and the Bridge run, compared to the CS2 versions. Raw images, which used to crawl to the screen in earlier versions of the Bridge and Browser, now pop up quickly on my screen. This increase in speed makes it realistic to shoot most of my photos in RAW format rather than in JPEG. In addition, many functions happen much faster.

A new tool, the Quick Selection Brush, is very impressive. With it, I can make a very quick selection. For instance, I used the new tool to click and drag on an area of my son’s face in a photo. Immediately, his entire face was selected. I dragged the brush over a red plate with food, and Photoshop created a perfect selection of the plate and the food. Users will love this one.

Adobe further improved the program by adding a couple of Lightroom features to Photoshop’s RAW image editor. Combine this with several non-destructive filters and interface changes, and Photoshop users are sure to flock to the new version.

And for my Christmas present to myself, I purchased a 15” MacBook Pro. It works great with the Photoshop beta.

Anyone with a valid copy of Photoshop CS2 can download and install the new beta from http://labs.adobe.com.

Job Opportunity

The Mississippi Press Association, a nonprofit organization with 110 daily and weekly newspaper members, seeks an Executive Director to fill position being vacated by retiring executive. The Director works closely with the board of directors; manages operations of MPA and its for-profit ad sales subsidiary, as well as its education foundation; prepares and implements financial plans, including annual budget; facilitates the work of MPA committees; coordinates and participates in lobbying activities; oversees conventions, contests, workshops, newsletters and other communications; facilitates strategic planning; and hires and develops staff. Applicants should have: proven leadership and management skills; 5 yrs experience in newspapers, association mgmt or related fields; excellent written/oral communication and interpersonal skills; and ability to achieve business-plan objectives. Detailed knowledge of newspaper industry preferred. Competitive salary and benefits. Send resume by Feb. 28, 2007, to MPA President Marcus Bowers, P. O. Box 107, Brandon, MS 39043, or email to: mbowers@mspress.org.

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