KLJB-TV18 Davenport Iowa
On my first day at my new job in television ad sales, the station manager called me in to his office and told me to go home, watch all the cartoons I could find on TV and write down the advertisers in them. For the next three days I compiled huge list on a legal pad and when I brought it to him he started flipping through the pages nodding his head, murmuring “this is good, this is good”, while I stood waiting for my next assignment, which didn’t seem to be coming, so I got up the nerve and said, “Are these my accounts?”
My boss just chuckled and slid the Quad City Yellow Pages across his desk and said” Any account you find in here that someone else doesn’t have is yours.” He went back to his list and I left.
My livelihood was now based on selling TV advertising, which I’d never done before, to people who I’ve never met and had never advertised on TV before. I spent a lot of time driving around to strip malls and small towns trying to sell TV time and being told no, over and over again.
The General Manager saw that I was trying and called me in to his office again. This time he told me to go to the airport and pick up a kid from New York City he wanted to hire. He gave me a call in lead that was way out of town and told me to take the kid with me. I picked him up at the airport and drove for an hour to a farm that had rows and rows of old railroad company trucks, cranes and cars. The owner refurbished them and sold them used.
We greeted then I told him we had a package; We would produce a 30 second commercial and run it 100 times all over the schedule for $1,800. He said, deal. I thought my jaw was going to drop on the floor, my first sale. After we all shook hands and made nice, He told us that he was in Rock Island Prison for many years and now he wanted to show his old mates that he was making it big. When we were driving away the kid turned to me and said, “That was easy and you just made $360 commission, where do I sign?”
That sale taught me two things, one, people want to get on to TV for all kinds of weird reasons, don’t judge, and two, always “close” the call-in leads that your boss gives you. That way they ‘ll keep giving them to you.