Most of your sales staff should be composed of generalists but having a couple of key specialists in advertiser categories can be very profitable. Newspapers have practiced this for years. Muscle-build your sales team with 1 to 3 key specialized sales reps. Strategically identify and target your top five advertiser categories (plus ad agencies) for sales candidates. Specialist rep prospects with sufficient experience within a specific category need to have worked at 3 to 5 different companies in varying capacities.
It would be too disruptive to your team to reassign existing accounts. The new reps would specialize in their category but won’t handle all of your branch’s business in that segment, their role is to bring in incremental business.
Too many OOH companies fail to set up specialized reps to succeed. Provide a compensation structure that affords the industry specialist a living wage and a sufficient carrot to sell faster. It is vital to have an on-boarding, training, and mentoring process that provides the lead time and guidance necessary to learn the OOH business as well as direct media sales.
Leverage the specialist’s experience: Experience is a great teacher, but the tuition is too high. Leverage years of valuable experience with a couple targeted hires. Consider: A mediocre track athlete could move to a football team and be a superstar for that team/sport. They will likely be the fastest person on the football field and win big.
Get immediate incremental sales: I observed a veteran of the beer business become a very successful sports radio sales rep. His success was due to his ability to leverage his contacts and industry knowledge into strong client relationships. Ad agency media buyers that make the transition to OOH sellers can also be formidable. The washout rate of this type of hire is about two-thirds because they are used to saying “no” not hearing “no”. But the one-third that succeed, do so extremely well. Make them a category specialist in the agency realm and an agency resource for your staff.
Specialist can be a category resource for your entire staff: Call on the category specialists to do workshops/trainings to teach your sales staff the dynamics of their former industry up to four times per year. Whenever your reps (for any reason) conduct a workshop/training session in a group setting (more on that in next Monday’s column) always record it and keep it on file. The training library will be invaluable in the months/years to come as you train other reps.
Specialists can open doors for management: Your industry specialist can also be a great door-opener and relationship-builder for management into their former specialty. The specialist rep can offer introductions/interactions with key players in the targeted category that will pay dividends for a long time.
Next week: Maximizing sales meetings
Send me your questions/comment at: KevinJGephart@gmail.com
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