BEST OF THE SEASON TO ALL! Below: Tim Spong of the newsroom, far left, joins the advertising graphic art, retail, and classified sales teams around the Christmas tree in the lobby of the Delaware State News. (The tree is hidden, but it is there, in the center of the photo!) Left to right – Front row: Jillian Tracy, Sherry Luff, Diane Cahall, Barbara Jordan, Heather Cregar. Left to right – Back row: Tim, Dianna Sellers, Vicki Rosado, Janet Levy, Sharon Harvey, Cyndy Paquette, Lorraine Luongo, Jeff Carney, Angi Hicks, Cyndi Maki, Karla Akmentins, Jen Wright. Not shown: Debbie Devlin, Chris Engel, Olivia LittletonDirectories and sponsorship pages are driving local small business advertisers into the pages of the Delaware State News. The graphic arts, retail and classified ad staffs have been busy taking maximum advantage of local happenings with special advertising pages. Over the past four weeks, these teams have published, on average, 18 different clients every week in Friday’s Dining Guide, 29 in Saturday’s Call-A-Pro contractors, 10 in Sunday’s Home Improvement specialist ads, 20 in the weekend Worship Directory, 18 in the Health & Wellness pages, 26 in the Adopt-A-Pet section, 9 in Child Care services, and 25 in a special Santa’s Gift Bag Contest! The full page holiday contest appeared twice last week to award 26 readers over $2,500 in prizes from the advertisers! Then, when Delaware's high school football championship playoff games rolled into Dover, featuring for the first time ever downstate teams as the only contestants, the sales staff picked up 44 congratulatory ads for a double truck prior to the kickoffs and 34 more advertisers for a salute to the winners after the games. Add it up. That’s 233 small individual advertisers over 28 publishing days, a majority running every week, many just two column inches in size, some considerably larger, and several sold separate ROP campaigns, as well! In addition, the classified teams contributed linage to several group weekly newspaper directories, too.
I’m an optimist. Hoping to hear some good news about the economic outlook, I attended a World Presidents Organization seminar last week at the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale AZ.
Instead, all I heard was gloom and doom about the short-term outlook. The consensus seems to be that there is much more bad news to come, and that we are in for a very rough ride for at least the next year and possibly the next two or three years. In fact, one Thunderbird professor referred to 1929 as “the other Great Depression” --- clearly implying that he believes we are now entering a worldwide depression (not just a recession).
Another speaker noted that it isn’t just people with subprime mortgages who are in trouble. His studies indicate that many individuals with excellent credit ratings “are only three paychecks away from bankruptcy”. And with unemployment rising, this will create a ripple effect throughout the economy.
While I hope the professors are wrong, it is clearly in our best interest to manage our business as though they may be right.
This means we will have to be the best operators in our field. We have been moving in this direction in recent years, but we may have to step up the pace now if the economy continues to slide.
We are fortunate that we have invested in state-of-the-art systems and equipment that will give us an edge over most of our competitors in terms of both efficiency and quality. Combine that with our long-standing commitment to service, and we should be positioned to thrive even while some of our competitors are faltering. Even if there is a shrinking market out there, we must make sure we increase our market share. This means we will have to take it away from competitors.
Being great operators means that we will also have to have better control of our expenses than our competitors. In tough times, pricing becomes ever more important. It means we must use our competitive advantages (superior systems, equipment and people) to become --- and remain --- the low cost provider. In business, the low cost producers survive even in the toughest of economic conditions.
If the professors are correct, there will be many more bankruptcies. We can’t afford to get stuck with huge bad debts to write off, so we will also have to be extraordinarily careful about extending credit and staying on top of collections.
Since our systems and equipment are so efficient, we should always be able to produce acceptable profit margins if we master the arts of pricing and marketing. Especially when competitors are desperate and struggling to survive, they may engage in some wild pricing. Our attitude should be that if we price correctly and get underbid by a competitor, the competitor will end up losing money on the job (which will also benefit us in the long haul).
People are willing to pay for value and great service, as long as the value and service fill a real need. Great service requires that we have great people, and we’ve been blessed in that regard. In tough times, we’ll need to make sure that every individual is working hard and working smart.
If we want to keep great people, it will mean that we will have to continue to settle for fewer people than we would like. If advertising sales continue to be weak due to the weak overall economy, we will have to become even more creative about eliminating positions whenever practical.
We are already experimenting in some areas of the company with commission-only sales agents. This can be a wonderful way to generate new sales without the risk and overhead of a new hire, and it could give sales applicants an opportunity to prove themselves on special projects prior to being considered for regular employment. We will want to explore similarly creative solutions if it becomes necessary to undergo additional downsizing in other areas of the company as well.
We must also continue to proactively weed out our weaker performers. We simply can’t afford to keep any slackers around. Everybody must be a contributor, and nobody can be a drain. If we are convinced that staffing is already as tight as it can be, we can make exceptions to our hiring freeze when we have an opportunity to replace a weak performer with a strong performer. With unemployment rising, there will be plenty of opportunities to upgrade staffing.
We must also pay more attention than ever to our profit margins and productivity trends. We’ll want to monitor every significant measurement closely and fix those that aren’t improving fast enough. Great operators pay attention to every little detail.
Most of all, we must discard the notion that we can be successful with “business as usual”. We must be willing to reexamine everything we know, or think we knew. Economic conditions beyond our control may require that we proactively challenge every assumption and be willing to reinvent everything we do.
If we do these things well, we will survive and thrive even if those pessimistic professors are correct.
If you have ideas to strengthen our sales or better control our expenses, please let your team leader and me know. I can be reached at joesmyth@newszap.com, and I promise you’ll receive a prompt reply.
(Joe Smyth is the board chair and CEO of Independent Newspapers, Inc. He can be reached by email at JoeSmyth@newszap.com.)
The new Valley Newspapers press is coming together!
"Phase one of the install includes three new four-high towers, a two-high unit, and the new N-40 folder. We were fortunate to be able to position that much new press on the existing press pad while we continue to operate the front half of our older press," said GM Steve Steinke. "Ideally the installation will be almost seamless to our clients, but creates quite a challenge for us internally. By November, we hope to be on the fast track to learning the new press so we can finish phase 2 (the balance of the new press) by mid January."
The Arizona printing market has been tempered by the housing slump and economic doldrums, but Valley will be poised to capture some additional business and grow existing products with the addition of the new more efficient press line.
Arizona East Valley office received awards for best news photo and photo feature page layout from the Arizona Newspapers Association at an October banquet. Here are the award winners ...
Terrance Thornton, upper right, won best news photo that is shown above. Terrance is the editor for the Apache Junction/Gold Canyon Independent.
Mark Steinert and Jill Adair were recognized for best feature photo layout page. Mark is a graphic designer and Jill is a member of the news services team.
