Twelve best practices for increasing daily deal sales

Second Street Media's Deadline Deal has dozens of media partners. Here's a checklist from a webinar by  top-selling deal partners in print, television and radio.

1. All these top seller have at least one dedicated sales representative. While some offline sales teams also sell deals, these sales typically peter out after a while. In every case, a great sales effort involves a dedicated rep.

2. If general sales team is is also selling, include net deal revenues in their monthly goal numbers. This provides sufficient incentive for them to create higher revenue deals.

3. Training on the anatomy of a perfect deal. In addition to knowing the top deal categories, sellers should also create better deals by looking for the following attributes:


a. Quality Brand. Better known, high value brands do best. "I look for a company I would want to share with my best friends."

b. Broad target. Look for something almost anyone can buy, once a month.

c. Deal quality. The price should be at least a dollar more than 50% off

d. Allow multiple quantities of sales. Negotiate with the merchant to remove restrictions on quantities.

e. Have an expiration date a minimum six months out. Customers are scared off by expiration dates that are too aggressive.

f. Take advantage of seasonal opportunities such as Mothers and Father’s Day. Group deals are gift certificates. Unlike a coupon, they are perfect to transfer and use as gifts.

These factors, in addition to training on the top deal categories - High profile dining, tours and entertainment, travel, beauty and massage - will ensure bigger pay-offs.

4 A formal system of approving deals. This includes a deal scheduler, or committee, and set of guidelines such as a minimum dollar amount of the deal.

5. Quality control. Companies who manage deals well wind up turning down one or two deals in ten. "When you get so few call in's it's hard to turn them down," but neccesray to protect the program. Smart companies, especialy those whose tradiitonal teams sell deals, prepare sales reps to answer "why not?" for potential partners who are turned down.

6. Overcome the number one objection - the discount. Help merchants understand the value of the extreme discount is long term customers, using an ROI calculator.

7. Position against Groupon and Living Social by articulating the full dollar value of additional promotions for each deal ($40,000 is the example in one market).

8. Re-run top deals more than once. They typically do just as well or better the second time around. Restrict re-runs to once every four months, however. 

9. Train merchants to "roll-out the red carpet" for new customers and sign them up to customer loyalty programs, such as e-mail and SMS. If they treat customers like "discounters," they will not get the long term result of added repeat business.

10. Put a "Recommend a business" on the site to get more leads.

11. Create side deals such as weekend getaways, out-of-area or high end niches like golf. 

12. Focus continually on building the e-mail list via numerous contests and opt-in programs.

Many thanks to Second Street Media and its partners for sharing how they succeeded in the deal space. The full set of three case studies on partners  of Deadline Deals is here.

The author, Alisa Cromer is publisher of a variety of online media, including LocalMediaInsider and  MediaExecsTech,  developed while on a fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute and which has evolved into a leading marketing company for media technology start-ups. In 2017 she founded Worldstir.com, an online magazine,  to showcases perspectives from around the  world on new topic each month, translated from and to the top five languages in the world.

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