As an entrepreneur, you often find yourself wearing many hats. You’re everything, at least first starting out. Prospecting for buyers and selling your product is the most important part of your job cycle, trust me. Buyers aren’t going to come to you in droves, with cash in hand.

However, you have a huge advantage over big company salesmen in that you know your product intimately. If you’re selling web design, you know the exact impact your product has, how it affects your customers, and how it will affect potential buyers and prospects alike. Not only that, but you are undoubtedly the biggest believer in what you do for a living.

Every once in a while you have probably ran in to an advertising agency in your area. When you attempt to cold call on these establishments, you’re likely to get one of a few responses. You’ll be asked to fax information to them, e-mail them, or they’ll request some other form of non-confrontational exchange. Don’t do this. It isn’t going to sell your service. In this series I’m going to explain how an advertising agency is constructed, how it works, and who plays the essential role in making decisions. I’ll suggest some tips for approach, and welcome any ideas you have on the subject.

First In Series: Behind The Doors Of The Agency

Inside the doors, you need to realize an advertising agency is generally comprised of 3 departments.

The Creative Department
These are the folks who make the ads. You have copywriters who create things like sales letters and other… copy, and then you have the graphic designers and those who make the “art” type stuff. The copywriter and art director generally report to a superior, or “creative director”. The Creative Director is generally a senior of the firm who has either been a copywriter or art director in the past. Sometimes the creative department will go outside of the firm to other studios for the design/copy, but in most smaller firms this isn’t the case.

Creative Services
These employees generally have contacts with the creative media. Broadcast media, outdoor, press, etc. Sometimes this is done in-house and sometimes it’s outsourced to a bigger firm who can negotiate the prices down even further.

Account Services
This is probably the most important arm of the firm to you. These are the account executives and representatives of the firm. They are the folks who directly negotiate with the clients you want to buy your product. Their responsibilities include meeting with business owners, recommending advertising packages based on budget, and reviewing the performance of programs that they’re currently using.

Almost every firm I’ve worked with works similarly. There is usually a superior who secures the clients, an account executive who meets with the clients on a regular basis for recommendations, and a team who designs whatever advertising they’re going to implement for the client.

The superior or firm owner generally has a foot in the community, and likely a bit of money and power. Their connections help secure the firm’s business.

The account executive is just another consultant or sales person like the rest of us. They are in it to make the firm money and help the business they’re consulting with at the same time. Sometimes one of these two has to be sacrificed, and we’ll go over that later.

The creative department is sometimes non-existant in smaller firms and really doesn’t pertain to us as salespeople. A lot of times smaller firms will outsource this work to a bigger firm, or one that specializes in this type of work.