It’s a challenge all legacy print, broadcast and radio companies face: How to accelerate sales to their digital products, while at the same time investing in their core products that still drive a bulk of revenue.
Todd Handy, an industry veteran who is chief revenue officer of SEBPO, has worked in this space a long time — and recently shared some advice on a LMA Digital Club call about compensation and sales structures.
Implement a digital-only sales team
While it may be slightly controversial to think about having a digital-only sales team in a company that still has a valuable legacy product like print or broadcast, in Handy’s experience those dedicated teams can typically overperform.
Why? Because digital-only sales teams are likely to go after entirely new advertisers for the company. So this is new business. They should be treated as a separate market with their own budget, leadership, resources etc.
“What we’re not looking at is if the market, if our advertisers, are asking for more digital than they’re asking for traditional, we may already have a disconnect between the budgets that we set for digital and traditional,” Handy said.
If you compare the Average Order Value (AOV) for digital-only sales teams to traditional or blended teams, the digital-only AOV will likely be higher.
Implement regional or remote digital sales specialists who can work across timezones and areas
Many companies have digital sales specialists, but they often underutilize the important role they can play to educate clients on digital advertising campaigns. Also, if they are upwardly mobile and talented, it can be hard to keep them in that role, Handy said.
If you’re looking to increase your digital sales and also the confidence your core sales staff has in selling digital, Handy recommends having a DSS support multiple people or teams. They can even be based anywhere in the country, which allows more flexibility when hiring.
“Folks who live in Tuscaloosa … can still Zoom in to Boston, or to Philly or to Salt Lake City, and can still be on the four-legged sales call,” Handy said.
Have digital quotas for sales staff, even traditional sellers
People do what pays them most, Handy said, and if digital goals aren’t tied to all aspects of the business, there is no incentive for change. A way to provide this incentive is to have a monthly digital number for everyone on the team that rolls up to a bigger digital number for the market. This helps create alignment on the goal.
What happens if digital sellers start bumping into traditional sellers as they all go after more digital dollars? Sometimes that’s OK, Handy said.
“If you don’t have sales channel conflict, you don’t have sales channel coverage,” he said. “If you don’t have sellers running into each other, you don’t cover all of the prospective advertisers that you need.”