The two principal shareholders of magazine stared back at me in disbelief as I calmly explained simple rescue plan we would use to save ailing monthly business magazine. Exhaustion and desperation were written all over their faces and in a way I felt pity for them. The pair had already lost a small fortune in just one year of operation. The only reason why they had not shut down damned thing was that they were hoping for some miracle that would recover at least half their life savings. But then theirs is story of hundreds of thousands of would-be-entrepreneurs world over who continue to launch thousands of new magazines every year without very special skills that are required to run this complex and yet extremely potential business. All they had left at this bankrupt magazine now was a small demoralized sales team ready to quit moment they found jobs elsewhere. No reporters, no writers, no budget to get good writers on board.
I quickly called a meeting and tried to inspire shabby remnant, assuring them that magazine was now in good hands and that things would improve. Luckily they did not sense cold fear creeping up my spine nor did they seem to realize that I had already broken into a cold sweat. In business there are no guarantees - you win some and you lose others. What right did I have to make all these promises? What if I failed in this assignment?
I proceeded to swiftly train handful of sales people and changed them from advertising sales persons into "reporters". They were to go out and gather information.
Gather information!? When you need revenue so badly?
Hold your horses and read on.
We developed a simple system consisting of following steps,
1) "Reporter" calls up a potential client and books an appointment for an interview.
2) I accompany them to interview and I do both a thorough and professional job of it.
3) After interview, we make an editorial decision whether material merited a feature article in magazine or not. And if it did whether story will end up being positive or negative. (Any publisher will tell you that bad news sells much better than good news.)
If it merited a positive story, we would go ahead and write story and then later approach same client to book an advertisement so as to get a double maximum impact in same issue. Alternatively they would have their advertisement appear in a future issue.