Newspaper Sales Representatives

The first in a series of recollections from my career in the regional press, starting with a look a a truly elusive beast:

The newspaper sales Representative

The Rep – champion tea drinkers

I was never entirely sure what Newspaper Sales representatives were for – not in the context of the noughties and onwards  in any case. There must have been a time, decades ago, when having people to call on shop keepers and discuss your titles and how to improve their sale would have been useful. But by the time email had been invented along with computerised systems that logged how many copies a shop had received and how many they had sold – and could therefore adjust supply accordingly, it became increasingly hard to justify the existence of the Rep. At the Western Mail and Echo (based in Cardiff and publishing papers throughout Wales) there were loads of them. And I mean loads – 30, 40. I don’t think any,ne really new how many there were. If you were a newsagent you would have your own rep for the Western Mail, one for the South Wales Echo. One for Wales on Sunday and one for the Celtic Weeklies group. So theoretically the poor shop keeper could have 4 people trooping in, at the same time, to talk about their respective titles, but about none of the others, because that ‘just wasn’t done boy’.  In my first week at WM&E. as part of my induction programme, I was taken out by a Rep, so that I understood what it was all about. We started at 9am in Abervagenny and had a cup of tea with a newsagent. Then we went to Monmouth and had another cup of tea. Then we went to Risca, for another cuppa. At 2pm it was all over. I learned nothing that day other than newsagents, by and large, make rubbish tea. The rep who had taken me around said to say that we had finished at 5pm. I asked him what he would be doing for the rest of the day and he said, ‘taking the dogs for a walk’.

The Rep and mobile phones

The invention of mobile phones created a great deal of anxiety amongst the Rep team. They could now be contacted during the day. Up to that point – which must have been 1990/1, they used to just come into the office in the morning, pick up some papers – in case any of the newsagent agents they visited that day needed any more and then vanish without trace. A mobile phone meant that theoretically you could get hold of them and ask them to do something. But they soon managed a work-around to get over that little problem. Between them they discussed and committed to memory all of the places throughout South Wales where there was no mobile signal – lots of hills you see boy – which is where they would take their naps. On a day off once I was heading into Cardiff to do some shopping and came across one of our company cars in a lay-by. I pulled over to see what was up – I thought it had broken down, but there was nothing to worry about – the Rep was just lying on some cushions on the grass next to the car having a snooze. Must have been all that tea.

The Rep and the Beach

Getting hold of a Rep during the summer could be particularly difficult because, for those close enough to the coast, there was nowhere better for a nap or lolly than one of South Wales’s lovely beaches – with the added bonus they were likely to be out of mobile range on the beach as well. For this reason the Rep team was known to some as ‘the Beach boys – a name that stuck right up to the end.

The Regional Rep

An even lesser seen group of Reps were the regional ones who served West, Mid and North Wales. A truly elusive beast these might only be seen once a year, at the Christmas do usually. Christ knows what they did for the rest of the year. They were the crème de la crème. Working from home, well paid, not a mobile mast within 50 miles and in West Wales at least, golden sands as far as the eye could see. Newspaper Sales heaven. They reminded me of Japanese soldiers stuck on deserted islands who didn’t know the war was over. For all we know the odd regional rep may still be out there, hiding from the mobile signal at a rural news agency somewhere near Aberystwyth.

The newspaper Sales Representative attitude to sickness in conjunction with the growth of potatoes

We all used to get 5-weeks paid holiday each year. One newspaper sales Representative used to take the 5 but also liked to add to that the three additional weeks he knew he could take ;’on the sick’ before he got into trouble. He did this every year – usually when his spuds needed harvesting on his allotment, which he would then bring into the office for everyone when he was over his sickness and came back to work. You couldn’t make it up. Fair play though, they were nice spuds.

The Newspaper Sales Representative and the computer age

Do you remember that a few pars back we agreed that the reason the entire newsagent network (about 4000 outlets in total) received a regular Rep visit, was to continually adjust the supply of papers they received each day depending on how many they had sold yesterday, last week, or at the same time last year. This is an absolutely sensible thing to do. Supply management is crucial. You can’t afford to lose sale if something important has happened and shops are selling out and equally you can’t supply too many papers if nothing much is happening and reams of papers are coming back and going straight in the bin.  Ok, well then it may come as a surprise that once all of this information and data had been computerised it was found out that regardless how many they had sold and however many Rep visits they had received, the majority of agents had been receiving the same number of copies 'for ever'. Diana dies – ‘you get 10 copies. Wales win the Six Nations – 10 copies.  Nothing of any interest at all is happening anywhere in Wales – 10 copies. We likes things regular you see boy.

You may think that I’ve been particularly harsh in my treatment of the Newspaper Sales rep team as a whole. You’re right I have. Largely, but not entirely, they were a team of lazy gits, out to do as little as humanly possible. It wasn’t completely their fault. They had been overtaken by events – the mobile telephone, emails, computerised supply management systems and the biggest killer of all – rapidly diminishing sales which no amount of tea drinking could reverse. It didn’t matter what they did, it didn’t make any difference to the sale of the paper. They became dinosaurs and are now largely extinct. You have to admire their tenacity though; they managed to hang on for at least 20 years longer than they should have.