Support media sales managers with improved training, processes

RESTON, VA—The challenges facing sales managers at today's media companies—and companies in many other industries—require creative solutions if their teams are to best perform in a business where resources are often strained, training budgets are limited, competition is fierce and the need for new revenue streams makes product lists increasingly complex.

HR professionals, however, can support those managers by helping them adopt practices that can stretch the training dollar, better position staff for success and help their employers grow new business, presenters at a seminar hosted by the American Press Institute said at sessions held Sept. 20 and 22.

"The old process of deploying salespeople doesn't work in 2004, " said Gilbert E. Cargill, founder of sales training and consulting firm Cargill Consulting Group.

The key for managers, said presenter Mary DeNiro, vice president of advertising at Capital Newspapers, is concentrating energy on treating the internal challenges—such as strategy, structure and resource management—rather than competition and market-level product shifts, among other external issues. "That's where the game is really played, " DeNiro said. "Those are the things you can really make a difference on. "

Among the suggestions shared by presenters at the seminar:

• Encourage sales managers to craft a written sales process manual that details a sale from start to finish. This not only helps with training, Cargill said, it also provides a clear, fair way to track and evaluate performance—and helps prevent you from making subjective evaluations based on personality. "Let's start delivering standards, " said Cargill.

• Consider creative ways of arranging and compensating your staff that take advantage of their best attributes. Ideally, Cargill said, you might have three types of workers with three types of compensation plans: "scouts " working as lead generators and setting up qualified appointments for an hourly rate and small bonus; "hunters " looking to close deals and drive new business with an incentive-heavy compensation structure; and "caretakers " providing support for long-term accounts with an eye on retention and steadier reliable pay.
  
  You can do this even if your organization is strained financially, suggested Lexington County [S.C.] Chronicle editor and owner Jerry Bellune. If you have a sales representative position to fill, consider hiring an inside person to focus on customer service and billing issues instead. There's a good chance you might be able to save money on salary while freeing up your representatives to concentrate on new business.

• Don't give up on training. Even if your budget is small, you can still support new sales representatives with prospecting trips, ride-alongs with experienced sales staff and mentoring arrangements—provided that you choose your mentors carefully and, when possible, look for ways to train and support them as well. You might even have an unexpected resource in outgoing staff if, Bellune said, you're careful to rely only on individuals leaving for "good " reasons (such as relocation). If you don't, he said, "It's an invitation to sabotage. "
  
  And you aren't forced to limit your organization to internal training, DeNiro said. Instead, ask peers from within the industry, professionals from advertising agencies, or even people from other leading companies in your area to come in and speak to your team—you might be able to "barter, " rather than pay, for their time by making similar offers to them.

Several simple steps can be adopted to help ensure that you bring in quality people at the outset, presenters said, including requiring that applicants bring W-2 tax forms to the interview to support their claimed past earnings; behavioral interviewing and asking them to sell interviewers on their current (or latest) product or service; background checks; and telling serious candidates that you have concerns about their suitability for the position—and then sitting back to see how they handle objections.

Copyright © 2004 by the Society for Human Resource Management. All rights reserved. Used with permission.