Hi. I'm Doug Lessells. On behalf of everyone at SalesFuel, we welcome you to this month's featured Sell Smarter Award — where we honor excellence in media sales.

Closing a sale is not like closing a book; the story and in this case, the sales relationship, goes on. Michelle Rutledge, a Multimedia Sales Executive at the Journal Star in Peoria, Illinois, knows well that in order to keep the narrative going, sometimes you have to pick up your pen and write the next chapter. 

Rutledge won a Sell Smarter Award in April for utilizing AdMall’s co-​op reports to work with an HVAC dealer. So how did she follow up? 

“I currently have an extremely successful SEM campaign running with them, Rutledge said. So in one of our last reporting meetings I asked if there was a division of the company they would like to see grow in 2019, and right away they said geothermal.” 

After doing her research in AdMall, Rutledge found out that there were co-​op dollars available from ClimateMaster, a manufacturer that was offering to pay for search advertising. 

“If I know they offer products with co-​op, I [make sure to] have that info printed out to discuss in the meeting,” said Rutledge. 

“We put together a paid search campaign for the client, being very specific to geothermal. ClimateMaster agreed to pay half of the monthly fee, which made it a slam dunk for the VP of operations to sign the contract.”

With the second co-​op sale, Rutledge earned her company an additional $38,400. And that’s in addition to the $82,000 SEM campaign she sold to the same client last September. It just goes to show that doing one’s homework can lead to more than one happy ending.

Congratulations to Michelle, along with the other Sell Smarter Award recipients: Crystal Bass of Comcast Spotlight and Jess Rackley of the Record Courier.

To read more about these winners, and find out how to submit your own story for a chance at a Sell Smarter Award, please visit SalesFuel​.com/​SSA.