Media Sales Mastery

Our Guest is Nick Efstathiou, CEO of Central Media Group South Africa.

In this episode we cover off a range of listener questions and provide some real time examples of how to respond / communicate through.

Adam Cadwallader, CEO of Motio joins to unpack the vital difference between a media product and a media proposition.

Janelle Shinners – head of client engagement at VML is our returning guest.

This is a follow up to one of the first podcast episodes we ever did – titled “data tells, insight sells”.

We rebroadcast an interview from 2019 where Jamie was interviewed ahead of the launch of Media Sales Mastery.

Jamie does a quick solo episode to wrap up the year and set the intention for 2024.

We cover off the 4 things you need to do in 2024 to simplify your sales approach and beat the competition.

Adam Lang joins to unpack the world of pricing.

Tim Murphy joins to unpack the most common ethical dilemmas faced by media sales professionals and provide some strategies for working through them.

Jamie covers off 4 principles to help you survive and thrive in a downturn.

Kylie Merritt, Founder and MD of ausbiz joins.

Whether you’re selling trade media, business media, alternative media or a new emerging platform ….. niche audiences are a surprisingly challenging proposition to commercialise.

Fortunately, if you can get it right, it can be very lucrative and very effective.

In this episode we cover off the principles of crafting a sales strategy.

Nick Randall of Impact & Ranieri & Co joins to unpack the topic of “moving the market”. 

We cover off the principles of taking media innovation to market, overcoming inertia and future-proofing your media revenues. 

David Fish author of “The art of strategic storytelling; what it takes to create winning presentations” joins to unpack the content of his book.

Ramon Rodriguez, General Manager at News Corp Australia joins to deep-dive into selling media to Small / Medium business

Another Linkedin Live recording – this time Jamie covers off the difference between “Objective” and “Subjective” value in a media sales transaction and provides 4 different methods for de-commoditising the sale.

Caleb Watson of Initiative ASIA joins to unpack the world of Media Agencies.

In our first ever LinkedIn live event, Jamie covers off 4 questions that every media sales manager should be asking on a weekly basis.

Clare Whiteman joins to unpack the very specific subject of selling a multi-product / multi-dimensional media offering.

Our first ever live listener coaching session!

Ben joins from New Zealand for a one on one coaching session with Jamie.

We cover off different approaches to prospecting in a post-covid world & how to fill your calendar with high return and high leverage activity

Our returning guest is Nisar Malik – Sales Director of Effect at Viacom CBS.

Richard Wentworth-Ping of Wentworth People joins to unpack the 4 facts of Sales E.Q.

Alex Whitlock of Momentum Media joins to unpack the world of forecasting!

Relationship management is something of a catch-all expression and can mean many things to many people.  In the context of media sales we often think of relationships as simply having a great rapport.  Relationship management extends well beyond just getting along with a client, It’s actually all-encompassing and is about being the connective tissue between your media publisher and the client’s business.

John Dawson, Advertising Trainer from Seven West Media joins to unpack this one.

Whether you work in legacy media like print, tv, radio;

or digital, trade or event based media ….it’s very likely that you sell more than just a single medium or product.

Selling multi-platform media solutions is an increasing challenge and opportunity for the industry.

Get it wrong and you can quickly find yourself missing revenue opportunities, burning client relationships, spending a lot of time on unfocused and low-return activities.

If you can get it right, the opportunity to future-proof your career and offer a richer and more robust media solution for your clients is immense.

Our guest today is Helen Coston of Inktop, a specialist media sales training and consultancy agency that helps publishers and media sales teams achieve their commercial ambitions.

Roy Hawker of Hawker Media joins to discuss refining your sales process.

Whether you’re selling media direct to SME’s or via an agency to a big multi-national corporation, having a clean and consistent sales process is non-negotiable.

If you want to grow your customer base, if you want to improve the quality of your work (and in turn, your win rate), if you want to build campaigns that really generate a return on investment for your advertisers, if you want to minimise your anxiety when workloads get higher; You need a repeatable sales process.

Special episode:  Covering 4 listener questions submitted via Linkedin

The best media sales professionals understand that their primary objective isn’t to sell advertising, it’s to create engaging advertising campaigns that speak to an audience and deliver a return for their advertisers.  The ability to balance the needs of an advertiser and an audience in equal measure is critical to this. Our guest is Andy Procopis, national head of campaign design and delivery for ARN.  Andy is a former colleague of mine, one of my favourite people to collaborate with and an expert in connecting the commercial and content sides of a media business. 

Virtual selling is here to stay. Dave Roddick of Kinzler joins to unpack the new world of hybrid work and hybrid selling. 

Whether it’s a piece of artwork, a video, a piece of audio, a logo or a full suite of creative assets for a client campaign, getting really good at writing creative briefs is a skill that will pay dividends. Julian Cole returns to the podcast to break this down. 

One of the great contradictions of Media Sales is the idea that people who are good talkers naturally make great salespeople; The “gift of the gab” is a popular Australian expression we use to describe this.

Being a great talker is helpful, but it’s actually the complete opposite that really matters; the ability to not talk too much, and instead ask questions and listen.

Our guest is Stephen Pead. Stephen is a media industry veteran of 30 years with significant experience in direct sales, sales management and general management.

The 10 Commandments of Direct Media Sales

Direct Media Sales can be one of the most rewarding and exciting areas to work in media,  fail to follow a clear playbook however, and it can quite quickly become hell!

Tony Prentice COO/CRO of Mamamia joins to unpack this unique take on the Direct Sales discipline

Whether it’s a client who dislikes your channel, audience, brand, content or personalities; Client media bias can make an already difficult job even more challenging.

Nat Harvey, National Sales Director of Seven West Media and Chair of ThinkTV Australia joins to unpack this often unspoken facet of media sales.

Adam Hickey returns for this very special episode. We do a live workshop and shake-down a media brief.

Jump to a specific topic by using chapters (on some apps) or with the times below:

5:25 Campaign

7:35 Proof point

11:50 Objectives

17:13 Background

33:21 Challenge

43:07 Audience

52:21 Strategy

58:08 Tagline

1:00:10 Brand feel

1:08:15 Product overview

1:19:44 Budget and timings

1:27:04 Love to see

“Sell the dish, not the ingredients” is a phrase coined by today’s guest David Fish.

At its core, this expression is really about how we develop, package and sell Media Solutions to clients in a way that is easy to understand.

Selling the “dish” is an approach to make disparate pieces of inventory feel like a cohesive single idea.

Whether you’re selling media direct or within an agency environment, you’re “competing” in a broader marketplace.

In most media markets around the world, regardless of their size, there is a finite amount of revenue opportunity which all publishers and media sales professionals are vying for.

Your ability to conduct a thorough competitive analysis of your market, identify the deficiencies and strengths in your own proposition and then formulate a cogent plan to exploit your competitive advantage; is absolutely critical to success in today’s marketplace

Sarah Williams joins to unpack this topic, based in New York Sarah is Sales Trainer for Spotify across the Americas.

A very special episode. We’re joined by Tim Burrowes author of the book “Media Unmade: Australian Media’s Most Disruptive Decade”.

We unpack some of the key events and themes in the book through the lens of the Media Sales Professionals working on the frontlines. We discuss whether the past 10 years can be a predictor for the next 10, and ultimately why an understanding of the structural foundations of the Media are essential for people working in the profession.

We’re tackling 3 unique listener questions this week!

Make no mistake, Media sales is about mindset.

As we enter another year of uncertainty, disruption, frustration and challenging trading conditions; We need to fortify and calibrate our mindset.

Rob Ranieri Joins to unpack this topic; Rob is the Founder and CEO of Ranieri and Co, in Australia and New Zealand, Ranieri & Co. exclusively represents the world’s largest independent podcast publisher: Wondery. Ranieri & Co. also makes custom branded podcasts that hit the sweet spot between what brands want to talk about and what audiences are genuinely interested in: stories that inspire, inform, and entertain.

Nisar Malik of Effect at ViacomCBS joins to tackle this important (but rarely addressed) issue.

Nisar provides a definition of what constitutes poor client behaviour, key contributing factors and ultimately why a focus on tackling these issues early is key.

No matter how successful you are, an inevitability of media sales is that nobody has 100% client retention.

George Buschman, Executive Chairman of Boost Media joins to unpack this topic.

Wade Kingsley of The Ideas Business joins once again to unpack a topic he referenced in his previous episode. The next 10 questions is about uncovering unique pieces of information that your competitors won’t be privy to in order to craft a more relevant and compelling solution.

David Roddick of Kinzler joins to discuss the topic of “understanding how clients buy”. We discuss emotion forming the basis for all decisions, the importance of having a deep knowledge in this area and the challenges associated with remote selling and video conference technology.

Gary Stroebel CEO of Namibia Future Media Holdings joins as our expert guest on the topic of generating quick revenue.

Maybe you’re trailing behind budget and need a sugar hit of revenue to get you into an acceptable range, perhaps you’re getting some pressure from your sales manager to build out your pipeline, did you lose a big deal and have a big hole to fill? Or maybe it’s the best of these scenarios…. There’s a team incentive or stretch goal that you’re striving to hit, and time is running out.

Big disclaimer here is that this short-term tactical approach to selling is not a sustainable long-term sales approach. It’s to be used sparingly and selectively during times where it’s appropriate.

On any given week there are a few million dollars of advertising revenue briefed out to market. The winning suppliers are often the ones who are “built for pitch”. At it’s core being built for pitch is about quality thinking, turned around quickly and packaged to be easily on-presented.

Andrew “Bag” Sidwell is the pioneer of this particular methodology and joins to unpack not only the concept, but also what it means in a changing context.

In this final episode of the season we hear from you, the listening audience!

We cover 3 different questions from Media Salespeople around the world and provide some advice to help them tackle those issues.

In Media Sales we invest a lot of time in learning our products. We pour through sales collateral and product training sessions, learn the processes and systems to get a campaign live, have a deep knowledge of the different pieces of inventory at our disposal, review the rate cards, seek out the differentiators that make our products superior to our competitors and so on.

Whilst a deep product knowledge is extremely advantageous in our profession, a common trap that we can fall into is over-estimating just how important this information is to our clients.

Whilst there are always exceptions to the rule, Media Sales at its core is about connecting an advertiser’s brand with your audience in a way that makes perfect sense; mostly in the pursuit of growing the client’s brand & business.

Our returning guest today is Adam Hickey; a career agency leader, most recently Adam was the Agency Director of Ikon Brisbane.

Adam’s experience working agency side offers an interesting perspective – not only by sharing insight into what brands and marketers are seeking; but also from dealing first hand with Media Sales Professionals across multiple publishers.