Find the right sales team and the revenue will follow

Most advertising directors will tell you that their primary job focus is hitting revenue targets.  It’s hard to deny that is a very important element, but I might make a case that it is not the top priority.

Certainly, I’m not diminishing the importance of exceeding goals. The stress I have in my work life is largely centered on how my team and I are performing financially. But you cannot obtain revenue goals without having the right people on your team, and having them do the right thing.

“Of all the decisions an executive makes, none are as important as the decisions about people because they determine the performance capacity of the organization. Such decisions reveal how competent management is, what its values are, and whether it takes its job seriously.” That is a pretty famous quote from business guru Peter Drucker. While he wasn’t talking about media companies when he said that, it is very applicable to the situation we find ourselves in as an industry.

As times have gotten tougher, some people have lost their focus on trying to attract the best talent. Finding the right talent has been replaced by finding a warm body in some instances. That is why recruitment for sales people is such an important aspect of our job. It used to be easy to find high performing people, who were looking for a career at the local newspaper. Today, we have to make it a priority to be on the hunt.  And we need to know exactly what it is we are searching for in a quality sales person.

Developing a pool of sales prospects should be a regular part of every advertising manager’s job performance. Just like sales reps have a sales funnel, ad managers should have a prospect funnel for future ad reps. And just like a sales funnel, not every prospect makes it to the end of the funnel to complete the process, so you must continue to adding prospects into the process.

The Center for Sales Strategy offers in-depth training on finding the best media sales people. I was fortunate enough to get to complete their “Talent Focused Management” training program to help me recognize the necessary skills they have uncovered for high performing media sales people.  CSS developed eight targeted themes based on interviews and business performance analysis after reviewing 15,000 cases.

A part of the process is interviewing the candidates. To ensure a valuable interview, you ,must plan ahead insightful questions to learn the qualities of a prospective sales rep. Ask questions that will help you learn about the eight themes.

The eight primary themes of successful media sales reps are:

1.       Work Intensity

2.       Discipline

3.       Positivity

4.       Interpersonal Skills

5.       Command of Situations

6.       Problem Solver

7.       Enterpriser

8.       Ambition

Richard Branson wanted to be a magazine editor or a journalist. While he didn’t quite get that goal achieved, he’s achieved plenty as a leading entrepreneur. His philosophy on who comes first in an organization is a constant reminder to me on how to manage the team I’ve assembled.  "Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”

Spending the necessary time to find talent in your market is a vital part of your job every week. While it is tougher than in the past, there are still talented individuals in your market that can be successful for your organization. It is just harder to find them. Once you’ve found the prospects, determine which of the eight traits they have naturally and which ones you can nurture and teach. Don’t forget to match the prospective sales rep’s talents with the needs of the open position you have.

Finding the right people doing the right thing is the best way to put focus on a customer. The best employees know how to take care of your best customers. 

ESPN's Dan Le Batard places spotlight on the newspaper industry's problem

Newspapers continue to have an image problem. Many of the bad rumors being spread around are false, or as the old saying goes "The rumors of my death are greatly over exaggerated."

But as another old saying goes "Where there's smoke, there's fire." I think the radio in my car was fully engulfed in flames this past Tuesday listening to ESPN's Dan Le Batard.

Le Batard is a nationally syndicated talk show host and Miami Herald columnist who likes to stir the pot, to say the least. A few years ago, it was Le Batard that tried to take out full page ads in the Akron Beacon Journal and Cleveland Plain Dealer bashing LeBron James when James decided to return to Cleveland to play professional basketball. But this past Tuesday, the pointed stick he was jabbing at the newspaper industry pointed to a real issue newspapers face. Today! Now!

Le Batard told the story of a little kid who was visiting a friend at another house and saw the father reading a newspaper. The little kid asked what he was doing. He had never seen this activity before. Puzzled, he asked how it got to their house. Astonished by that answer, the little kid was in total  disbelief that such a thing as a daily newspaper could be produced and  then delivered in the middle of the night to the family's front porch full of the latest news and information.

Clearly the industry has lost out on the child in this story as a future reader. The concern is how many (millions) more are out there that would be just as lost, just as astonished at the basic concepts of an industry that has been around hundreds of years.

Websites continue to expand as the appetite for news continues to grow. But the print newspaper, still the main revenue generator  for many media companies, and still an extremely important franchise in hundreds of cities and towns remains on an unhealthy decline.

Reading programs and NIE projects are not creating awareness or habits to the youth. While there are some good examples of these types of initiatives, most across the country are weak and do nothing more than help provide hollow circulation numbers.

I'm not professing to have the answers to this problem. I wish I did! I also wish Le Batard wasn't laughing about this on his program. The problem is, I can't even call him out on it because he's right.

Creating a culture of learning and fun is key to long term sales success

As hard as I try, I just can’t avoid sports analogies when I talk about business. Since I’m such a big baseball fan, those metaphors tend to be based upon actions on the diamond.

Every spring I head to Florida to catch some sun, a few beers and as many spring training baseball games I can squeeze in over a few days off. This year I also had the opportunity to catch a practice session of my favorite team, the Boston Red Sox.

I watched multi-million dollar players working on their assigned drills. These highly developed, skilled professionals spent hours working on fundamentals. Their time was spent on details of their swing, how to run the bases and throw the baseball properly. High level, detailed strategy is no doubt also discussed but clearly the focus on their training was on the basics.

This is a lesson we can and put in place for our sales teams. It is a good investment to discuss high level marketing strategy with your sales team, but don’t forget to stress the basics. As much as you (and surely your staff) hate to do roll-plays of a sales call, those basics are necessary to your team’s success in the field. I would much prefer that the Red Sox make their mistakes in Florida at spring training than when they are back in Boston and playing games that count during the regular season.

Isn’t that also the case for your sales team? Better to make those mistakes in the sales meeting on Monday than in front of an account that you were hoping to gain $20,000 in new business.

Sales meetings are often overlooked parts of our lives. I’m just as guilty as the next person, but short of field time with your reps this might be the most important part of the work week. If you are walking into the meeting and “winging it” then perhaps it is time to reconsider things.

Have an agenda. I personally never shared the agenda with my team, but I created one for me to follow so that I didn’t forget things. And I didn’t work on it in the minutes leading up to the meeting or the night before. It was a document I kept on my desktop that I added to as the week went along. Some things stayed on the agenda, the additions I added throughout the week helped keep things fresh.  By adding things throughout the week, the items covered were more complete and didn’t really add additional time to prepare for the meeting.

Have a training element. It can be a product introduction if you’re launching something new. But I like the idea of including those role plays to keep people sharp. Make things fun as you’re training. People learn more and retain better if they are also entertained a little too. There are tons of books and countless websites that can help you in this area.

Creating a culture of learning and fun is very important. I’m currently reading a book that addresses this head on, and I highly recommend it for you if you’re working on building your team and culture. "You Win In The Locker Room First: The 7 C's To Build A Winning Team In Business, Sports And Life” is written by former NFL coach Mike Smith and Jon Gordon. They go in-depth on the importance of culture for successful teams.

They suggest that every successful team is built on these seven basic principles:

--Have fun, work hard, and enjoy the journey. 

--Show respect to all associated with your business 

--Put the team first

--Do your job but be prepared for it to change

--Be the same person every day. Do not get too high in victory or too low in defeat.

--Understand that all organizational decisions aim to make the team better

--Have a positive attitude

Developing your team and your culture is one of the keys for long term success. Getting the right people doing the right thing and the right time, and then making them feel good about who they are doing it for will help create a stable, winning sales team for your organization.