The best phone system for media owners and ad sales teams

Selling space is won on the phone against hard deadlines: call more people, faster.

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Hundreds of companies use to make every call pay off

The situation

What holds you back today

01

Copy deadlines to close across a large advertiser base

02

Annual renewals to chase at volume

03

Account history scattered between salespeople

The answer

What Skipcall changes

Deadline campaigns run on parallel calls

The parallel dialer →

Dated callbacks on every renewal

Task management →

Shared history on the advertiser account

The parallel dialer →

Specific to your industry

A sales house calendar, from annual budget to copy deadline

An advertiser does not buy when you call, they buy when their budget is open. A sales house that follows its clients' calendars calls at the right moment. One that calls at a fixed cadence is calling while the decisions are already being signed off.

September to November: next year's budgets

This is when the advertiser and their media agency argue out the money and the channels. Annual deals are won here. A media owner who is absent at that point will not get the space back in the spring, when everything is already committed.

January: intentions turn into bookings

The autumn's handshakes either become insertion orders or evaporate. The call is short and aims at one thing: confirming volumes and dates. Follow it with something in writing the same day, or the conversation will have to be had again.

Copy deadline week

Every title, station and site has its own deadline for materials, and it is the week before it that turns the undecided. The rhythm stops being weekly and becomes daily, and you need to know at any moment who has already confirmed so you never chase somebody who has said yes.

Space still unsold

A slot going spare at forty eight hours only sells on the phone, to advertisers who already know you and can decide on their own. That means keeping a short list ready in advance, not searching the database the moment the space frees up.

Three months before renewal

A renewal is prepared before the advertiser has started comparing. Once the end date passes you are no longer renewing, you are taking part in a review. Every contract end date deserves to be visible on the account record, not sitting in a separate spreadsheet.

The hard part of ad sales is not making lots of calls, it is knowing what date to call each advertiser. One dated deadline on the account record beats a general chase sent to the whole file.

The script

An ad sales script, from budget season to copy deadline

You are calling an advertiser or their media agency, either in the autumn when next year's money is being split, or in the week before materials are due. These are two different calls: the first is looking for a place in an allocation, the second is looking for a decision today.

The autumn opener, on next year's budget

“Hello, [first name last name] from [media owner]. I'm calling before your [year] budget gets carved up rather than after. Two questions: when do you allocate it, and who signs it off with you?”

Asking for the date of the allocation rather than the amount nearly always gets an answer, and that date drives every call that follows.

If everything goes through their media agency

“Understood. Give me the name of the person who handles your budget there and I'll contact them on your behalf. I'll keep you posted on what I put to them: it's your brand, you should know what's being offered before the allocation is made.”

Going around the agency is paid for sooner or later. Going through it while keeping the advertiser informed preserves both relationships.

The deadline call, on a live proposal

“Hello, [first name last name] from [media owner]. Materials are due [day] at [time] and your slot is still open. I need a yes or a no today: after that I can't hold it for you.”

A real deadline, stated without drama, makes people decide. An invented urgency is exposed by the next issue.

If the budget is already committed

“Fine, I won't chase you this quarter. Just tell me when the next allocation happens and what period it covers, and I'll call you then. If anything frees up in the meantime, I'll bring you what's left.”

If they want a discount to decide

“The rate card is the same for everybody and I've no margin to give you. What I do have is flexibility on format, position and date: tell me which of the three matters most and I'll see what I can do.”

On space still free at forty eight hours

“[First name], I've got [format] coming free for [date]. I'm calling you first because you can decide on your own and we already hold your artwork. Do you want it?”

This call only works from a short list kept in advance, made of advertisers who know you and whose materials you already have.

At Skipcall, every call is recorded, transcribed and summarised, so the script gets corrected against what your reps actually say rather than what we imagine they say.

Avoid this

Three mistakes this industry makes on the phone

The mistake

Quoting an audience or circulation figure from memory during the call.

Do this instead

The advertiser will check, and their media agency will check faster. Say you are sending the audited figure with its source and its date, whether that is ABC, BARB, RAJAR or your own platform data, then send it the same day. One approximation on the phone puts everything else you say in doubt.

The mistake

Calling the advertiser over their media agency's head, or the reverse.

Do this instead

Tell whichever one you are not calling: it always gets back to them, and a sales house seen as bypassing the agency loses the following year's budgets. Note on the account who decides, who executes and who has to be kept informed.

The mistake

Pulling out a discount to unblock a deadline.

Do this instead

Move on format, position, date or added support, never on rate under time pressure. A discount given the night before becomes the starting point of the next negotiation, and advertisers in the same sector talk to each other.

A calendar full of meetings starts with a call.

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions, Media & ad sales

Between September and November, before the money is allocated. After that an advertiser can still buy opportunistically, but the annual deal has been settled and the broad lines are fixed. If you only had one call to make on an account all year, it would be that one.
Pull the list of live proposals and verbal agreements that have not been confirmed, and work it across the five days before the materials deadline. One pass a day through that list beats a single round of calls the night before, because it leaves the advertiser time to get sign off internally. Mark confirmations immediately: calling an advertiser who has already said yes costs you more than a missed call.
The sensitive part is not the client record, it is the date: copy deadline, contract end, agreed callback. Pick a tool that shows those dates on the account and shares them across the team. Skipcall includes a pre-CRM for accounts still in prospecting and syncs natively with HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce and Attio, with twenty nine further tools reachable through the API rather than as native integrations.
The risk sits in personal notes and in what people remember about calls. Recording, transcribing and summarising every call automatically, then attaching that summary to the account, turns the history into company data instead of individual knowledge. Tell the other party that the call is recorded and set a retention period.
Yes, business to business, provided you follow PECR: screen the list against the Corporate Telephone Preference Service and against your own do not call list, and stop calling anyone who asks. Sole traders and ordinary partnerships count as individual subscribers, so they can register with the TPS and must be screened as well. UK GDPR covers the data itself: a documented lawful basis, telling people where their details came from, and honouring objections at once. If you record calls, say so at the start.

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See what it does on your own lists

A demo runs on your own contacts, not on a sample data set.

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