Description
Advertising sales agents sell advertising space and media time to businesses and individuals. They make sales pitches to potential clients and follow up on after-sales.
Duties
Advertising sales agents typically do the following duties:
- Locate and contact potential clients to offer their firm’s advertising services
- Explain to clients how specific types of advertising will help promote their products or services in the most effective way
- Provide clients with estimates of the costs of advertising products or services
- Process all correspondence and paperwork related to accounts
- Prepare and deliver sales presentations to new and existing clients
- Inform clients of available options for advertising art, formats, or features and provide samples of previous work for other clients
- Deliver advertising or illustration proofs to clients for approval
- Prepare promotional plans, sales literature, media kits, and sales contracts
- Recommend appropriate sizes and formats for advertising
Other titles
The following job titles also refer to advertising sales agent:
ad sales representative
ad sales agent
media saleswoman
media salesperson
advertising sales rep
media salesman
Working conditions
Selling can be stressful because income and job security depend directly on agents’ ability to keep and expand their client base. Companies generally set monthly sales quotas and place considerable pressure on advertising sales agents to meet those quotas.
Getting new accounts is an essential part of the job, and agents may spend much of their time traveling to and visiting prospective advertisers and maintaining relationships with current clients. Advertising sales agents also may work in their employer’s offices and handle sales for walk-in clients or for those who call or email the firm to ask about advertising.
Work Schedules
Most advertising sales agents work full time. Some advertising sales agents work more than 40 hours a week. Some work irregular hours and on weekends and holidays.
Minimum qualifications
Although a high school diploma is typically the minimum education requirement for an entry-level advertising sales agent, some employers prefer applicants with a college degree. Publishing companies with large circulations and broadcasting stations with a large audience typically prefer workers with a college degree. Courses in marketing, communications, business, and advertising are helpful. For those who have a proven record of successfully selling other products, educational requirements are not likely to be strict.
Most training takes place on the job and can be either formal or informal. In most cases, an experienced sales manager instructs a newly hired advertising sales agent who lacks sales experience. In this one-on-one environment, supervisors typically coach new hires and observe them as they make sales calls and contact clients. Supervisors then advise the new hires on ways to improve their interaction with clients. Employers may bring in consultants to lead formal training sessions when agents sell to a specialized market segment, such as automotive dealers or real estate professionals.
ISCO skill level
ISCO skill level is defined as a function of the complexity and range of tasks and duties to be performed in an occupation. It is measured on a scale from 1 to 4, with 1 the lowest level and 4 the highest, by considering:
- the nature of the work performed in an occupation in relation to the characteristic tasks and duties
- the level of formal education required for competent performance of the tasks and duties involved and
- the amount of informal on-the-job training and/or previous experience in a related occupation required for competent performance of these tasks and duties.
Advertising sales agent is a Skill level 3 occupation.
Advertising sales agent career path
Similar occupations
These occupations, although different, require a lot of knowledge and skills similar to advertising sales agent.
commercial sales representative
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domestic energy assessor
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Long term prospects
These occupations require some skills and knowledge of advertising sales agent. They also require other skills and knowledge, but at a higher ISCO skill level, meaning these occupations are accessible from a position of advertising sales agent with a significant experience and/or extensive training.
technical sales representative in agricultural machinery and equipment
technical sales representative in chemical products
technical sales representative in electronic and telecommunications equipment
technical sales representative in hardware, plumbing and heating equipment
technical sales representative in mining and construction machinery
Essential knowledge and skills
Essential knowledge
This knowledge should be acquired through learning to fulfill the role of advertising sales agent.
- Characteristics of products: The tangible characteristics of a product such as its materials, properties and functions, as well as its different applications, features, use and support requirements.
- Sales promotion techniques: The techniques used to persuade customers to purchase a product or a service.
- Types of media: The means of mass communication, such as internet, television, journals, and radio, that reach and influence the majority of the public.
- Advertising techniques: The communication strategies intended to persuade or encourage an audience, and the different media which are used to achieve this goal.
- Customer relationship management: The customer-oriented management approach and basic principles of successful customer relations that focus on interactions with customers such as technical support, customer services, after-sales support and direct communication with the customer.
- Sales strategies: The principles concerning customer behaviour and target markets with the aim of promotion and sales of a product or a service.
- Characteristics of services: The characteristics of a service that might include having acquired information about its application, function, features, use and support requirements.
Essential skills and competences
These skills are necessary for the role of advertising sales agent.
- Guarantee customer satisfaction: Handle customer expectations in a professional manner, anticipating and addressing their needs and desires. Provide flexible customer service to ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Communicate with customers: Respond to and communicate with customers in the most efficient and appropriate manner to enable them to access the desired products or services, or any other help they may require.
- Ensure customer focus: Attitude that puts customers at the centre of the business in all cases.
- Ensure compliance with legal requirements: Guarantee compliance with established and applicable standards and legal requirements such as specifications, policies, standards or law for the goal that organisations aspire to achieve in their efforts.
- Answer requests for quotation: Make up prices and documents for the products that customers may purchase.
- Deliver a sales pitch: Prepare and deliver an understandably constructed sales talk for a product or a service, identifying and using persuasive argumentation.
- Implement customer follow-up: Implement strategies that ensures post-sale follow up of customer satisfaction or loyalty regarding one’s product or service.
- Prospect new customers: Initiate activities in order to attract new and interesting customers. Ask for recommendations and references, find places where potential customers can be located.
- Record customers’ personal data: Gather and record customers’ personal data into the system; obtain all signatures and documents required for rental.
- Contact customers: Contact customers by telephone in order to respond to inquiries or to notify them of claim investigation results or any planned adjustments.
- Keep records of customer interaction: Recording details of inquiries, comments and complaints received from customers, as well as actions to be taken.
- Demonstrate motivation for sales: Show incentives that drive someone to reach sales goals and business targets.
- Use customer relationship management software: Use specialised software to manage company’s interactions with current and future customers. Organise, automate and synchronise sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support, to increase targeted sales.
- Ensure compliance with purchasing and contracting regulations: Implement and monitor company activities in compliance with legal contracting and purchasing legislations.
- Produce sales reports: Maintain records of calls made and products sold over a given time frame, including data regarding sales volumes, number of new accounts contacted and the costs involved.
- Implement sales strategies: Carry out the plan to gain competitive advantage on the market by positioning the company’s brand or product and by targeting the right audience to sell this brand or product to.
- Respond to customers’ inquiries: Answer customers’ questions about itineraries, rates and reservations in person, by mail, by e-mail and on the phone.
- Advise on merchandise features: Provide counsel on the buying of merchandise such as goods, vehicles or other objects, as well as providing information on their features and attributes to clients or customers.
- Keep records on sales: Keep records of the activities of the sales of products and services, tracking which products and services were sold when and maintaining customer records, in order to facilitate improvements in the sales department.
Optional knowledge and skills
Optional knowledge
This knowledge is sometimes, but not always, required for the role of advertising sales agent. However, mastering this knowledge allows you to have more opportunities for career development.
- Media formats: The various formats in which media can be made available to the audience, such as paper books, e-books, tapes, and analogue signal.
- Outdoor advertising: Types and characteristics of advertising performed in the public domain such as on street furniture, public transportation vehicles, stations and airports and on billboards.
- Media planning: The process of selecting the best media to reach marketing and advertising strategy objectives in order to promote a client’s product or service. This process encompasses research on target audiences, frequency of advertisements, budgets and media platforms.
Optional skills and competences
These skills and competences are sometimes, but not always, required for the role of advertising sales agent. However, mastering these skills and competences allows you to have more opportunities for career development.
- Carry out sales analysis: Examine sales reports to see what goods and services have and have not sold well.
- Monitor media industry research figures: Keep up to date with distribution figures of the various printed media outlets such as newspapers and journals; with the audience figures of radio and television or of specific broadcast programs; and of those of online outlets such as search engine optimisation and pay-per-click results.
- Work with advertising professionals: Cooperate with professionals in the advertising field as to ensure a smooth development of the advertising projects. Work together with researchers, creative teams, publishers, and copywriters.
- Apply social media marketing: Employ website traffic of social media such as Facebook and Twitter to generate attention and participation of existing and potential customers through discussion forums, web logs, microblogging and social communities for gaining a quick overview or insight into topics and opinions in the social web and handle inbound leads or inquiries.
- Develop promotional tools: Generate promotional material and collaborate in the production of promotional text, videos, photos, etc. Keep previous promotional material organised.
- Stay up to date with social media: Keep up with the trends and people on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
- Perform media outlets research: Research what will be the best and most effective way to reach the majority of consumers by defining the target audience and the type of media outlet that better fit with the purpose.
- Provide advertisement samples: Show clients a preview of the advertising format and features.
- Develop media strategy: Create the strategy on the type of content to be delivered to the target groups and which media to be used, taking into account the characteristics of the target audience and the media that will be used for content delivery.
- Apply technical communication skills: Explain technical details to non-technical customers, stakeholders, or any other interested parties in a clear and concise manner.
- Monitor after sales records: Keep an eye on the after sales feedback and monitor customer satisfaction or complaints; record after sales calls for thorough data analysis.
ISCO group and title
3339 – Business services agents not elsewhere classified
References
- Advertising sales agent – ESCO
- Advertising Sales Agents : Occupational Outlook Handbook – U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
- Featured image: Photo by LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash