The media industry is a fast-moving and ever-changing sector that relies on the ability of its sales people to sell a given medium as the solution that will connect them with their target audiences. This could mean selling into a single medium such as a local newspaper or magazine for a few hundred pounds or selling high-value packages worth tens of thousands across a portfolio of media, such as ambient media (e.g. supermarket receipts, floor signs), radio, internet, billboards, cinema, trade publications, taxis, trains, tube stations or digital media.
It is your job to develop new leads, cold call potential clients, manage existing customer relationships and close the deal, either over the telephone or in person, with the aim of maximising sales revenues, increasing your client portfolio and hitting targets.
The role of a media salesperson is a challenging, one especially in light of the plethora of media options that advertisers can choose from. But as Maurice Saatchi, the man heralded as the guru of the advertising industry, said: “People do not know what they want until a brilliant person shows them.”
Can you be that ‘brilliant’ person?
Hours and environment
The hours worked will largely depend on your specific role. For instance, if you are working in an office-based role as a telesales executive, you could be expected to work anytime between 8am and 6pm Monday to Friday. In some sectors, such as directory sales, you could find yourself working until 8pm.
Advertising field sales representatives are often perceived as being more senior than their office-based colleagues, and as such, this incurs an additional workload. Being based in the ‘field’, representatives are client facing and responsible for making appointments with clients within their designated territory or ‘patch’. This could involve long hours and frequent travel with the return journey and occasional overnight stay potentially encroaching on your personal life.
Irrespective of which role you perform you may be expected to work late or do overtime in order to hit targets or meet deadlines. However, employers recognise the stresses and strains that can arise from the job and most provide flexi-time or the option to work from home.
Skills and interests
Whereas it is commonplace to see many sales people in other sectors flirt between one industry and another, media sales people tend to stay within the same sector for much of their career, largely as result of a passion for the field in which they work and, in many cases, the prestige of working for a high-profile organisation.
Employers look for a core set of skills in a potential employee, including:
- Passion for the media
- Personable character
- Strong negotiator
- Confident communication and presenter
- Ambition and determination to succeed
- Dedication and commitment to achieve results
- Proactive approach to work
- Team player
- Persuasive and articulate
- Technical ability
Industry
The media industry has developed at a faster pace over the last 15 years than at any time since the first ever advertisements were aired on US TV in 1941. From satellite and digital media to perhaps the most explosive development of all time, the internet, the methods used by advertisers to communicate with their audiences has changed ... forever.
The dot com era of the nineties saw a plethora of entrepreneurs emerge as tech heroes with innovative ways of doing what we have always done previously. While the bubble soon burst, those early pioneers sparked the development of the likes of Google, Napster, Facebook, iPhone, Spotify, Bebo, MSN, iPlayer – the list goes on.
Although free to the end user, these new mediums have worked out that they can sustain themselves by asking advertisers to pay for it – at the expense of traditional broadcast and print media who have long held total control over the market and are now experiencing a decline in advertising revenues. Indeed, online advertising revenues overtook TV in 2009 for the first time, with display and classified income suffering further losses with the trend expected to continue throughout 2010.
The challenge now remains for media owners to learn how to embrace the web and take advantage of its ability to complement rather than conflict with traditional advertising formats, while being able to be more targeted, cost-effective and creative in communicating with their key audiences.
Entry
The media sales industry is open to anyone who can demonstrate an aptitude for sales and a genuine passion for the media in which you are selling. Most employers will look for a basic standard of education, such as five GCSEs grades A-C, including English and Maths. While others will require A-levels or equivalent, and some will even stipulate a university degree.
But more important than any qualification is your understanding of the media and how to sell the features and benefits of the product to a potential client. Get this right and your career will take care of itself.
Training, other qualifications and advancement
New entrants typically go through an induction course with their employer which arms them with the needed essential tools to effectively sell the product you are offering. From here, the rest is down to how well you translate that training into sales performance.
As a salesperson it is your job to sell the features and benefits of your product: “If you buy ‘X’, Mr Customer, you will ‘Y’ in return”. The same principle applies when it comes to making your next career move. What is your unique selling point (USP)? What makes you stand out from the crowd? What have you done in your current role that has won accolades from your peers and, more importantly, could you do it again?
Employers are looking for people who have gone beyond their job description and have made a real difference to the way things are done. For instance, perhaps you improved client retention rates by 20% year-on-year? Or you increased new business sales by an additional £30k each quarter? Maybe you won the salesperson of the year award?
This is a results-orientated industry, so you need to highlight your achievements in your current role and use them to help you climb the proverbial career ladder from telephone advertising sales executive to field sales executive, to senior account manager, to sales manager, before eventually taking your place at the top of the tree as a director. And with each new role you take, you will need to equip yourself with a new set of skills needed for that position.
Top employers
The UK has one of the biggest media industries in the world, with more national and regional newspapers than any other country in Europe. This means there will continue to be opportunities for those looking to carve out a new career as a media salesperson, whether it be with a small, independent media owner or one of the powerhouses of the industry such as:
- Trinity Mirror
- Baeur Media
- News International
- Sky TV
- ITV
- Viacom Outdoor Media
- Clear Channel Outdoor
- Guardian Media
- Yell Publishing
- NatMags
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Professional organisations
There are a handful of professional organisations that are represented in the media industry, all of which can be a good point of contact for information on the latest trends affecting your sector: