"Are You Sure?" Means Just That

We just had another ad sales rep call to tell us that an ad package we had planned to recommend to a client was no longer on the table due to competitive issues. This happened to us with another client last year. The publisher in question had decided to take down our ads after the contract was signed and the ads had been running for three weeks.

It never bothers me when potential partners decline to pitch a piece of business. It bothers me when they claim they can pitch it, put inventory in front of us and then later pull out.

In today's case, we had asked the vendor THREE TIMES to confirm they could run our client's advertising. We asked them three times because we knew they had a service that was directly competitive to that of our client. Three times we asked and three times they insisted they could run the advertising. As our recommendation is going out the door, they call to pull out.

So, yeah...When we ask "Are you sure?" we're not asking just to hear ourselves talk.