A ‘Slice’ of Sales Advice

A special thanks to our guest contributor, Sharone Hadari, VP of West Coast Operations.

Working in Sales in the digital advertising industry can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming. There are thousands of publishers, hundreds of ad networks, and soon, if not already, hundreds of DSPs to compete with for agency brand dollars. This is where a person in online ad sales must really try to stand out and differentiate themselves from the competition. In doing so, you want to put a little creativity in the ways you maintain your current client relationships and in the ways you cultivate new client relationships. The following is one example of my own creative way in helping to maintain an existing client relationship.

I attended a ThinkLA Poker event on a Thursday night with a few co-workers. We wound up spending the last few hours of the night with one of our existing clients. We had a great time together and ended up coming home around 2am!

Waking up the next morning was a little tiresome, but it was Friday and we knew the weekend was right around the corner. Knowing how I was feeling at that moment, I immediately thought that our clients probably felt the same way. With that, I went ahead and called a local pizza place and had a few pizzas delivered to their offices at lunchtime…the perfect cure for the previous night’s festivities! We had the pizza place include a note on our behalf. Once the pizzas were delivered, our clients responded with the biggest Thank You email. They definitely appreciated our thoughtfulness and clearly enjoyed the pizza. Who wouldn’t?


In the days after that gesture we have received have over $150k in new business from that client. Now while I can’t say it had anything to do with my small (but thoughtful) gesture, I can say that it didn’t hurt ; )


Moral of the story…the little things you do go a long way!