Title closures, job losses, restructuring and much-reduced advertiser budgets have done little to boost the fortunes or the morale of the country’s magazine sales teams, but there is hope for those prepared to keep at it and brush up their skills.
Industry consultant and trainer Debbie Bowman says it’s difficult; staff that are leaving aren’t being replaced, leaving fewer people to do the work of more. There’s pressure from management to keep up the level of calls being made to prospective advertisers, but clients don’t want to talk.
The bright side might be that they’ve got a job at all. PricewaterhouseCoopers figures show that, for the consumer and business-to-business magazine market, total ad sales in 2009 were down almost 19%.
IPC, publisher of Marie Claire, Look and What’s On TV, has announced a restructuring of its magazine portfolio, trimming its management structure from five to three divisions, in a move that it said would affect “a small number” of its 2,100 full-time staff. BBC Magazines reduced their sales team by 10% a year ago, to 88 people.
Even for those publishers that have been holding up reasonably well, there is pressure from parts of the business that are not. Future, for instance, has reported a “remarkably resilient” performance in 2009 in its UK business, where pre-tax earnings have been up 5% and margins improved. The US operation has had revenue fall 22% and has been trading at a loss.
Debra Sharron, manager of the Media Sales Training Consultancy, says the vulnerability to the harsh economic conditions are actually no greater in sales than any other part of the publishing business.
“Bonuses are a happy memory of the past and probably not really relevant to the way business is being done now ... but there are some places doing very well,” she says.
“Where I see the greatest need is on the strongest brands, because the very niche titles or brands that have always had to fight for every ad pound are not really seeing the difference. The big ones are now having to scrabble around. But probably the biggest challenge, is you’ve got a generation of people at the forefront of media sales who’ve not had to trade through a recession before.”
Harsh trading conditions sort out the best from the rest. “When the going is good, you can cut corners; you can get away with not doing things properly because people ring up anyway,” says Bowman. “When the going isn’t good... people will try and avoid speaking to you and try to reduce the rates.”
The art of conversation
At BBC Magazines, sales director Matt Teeman has tried to limit the fear factor by announcing staff cuts early in the recession, in the hope of doing it once rather than losing a few people repeatedly, “but people aren’t stupid; you can tell if the money isn’t coming in,” he says. “I don’t think there’s the security that there was, people are a lot more conscious of it than they’ve ever been and are a lot more focused on delivering their money.”
What he’s focused on is communication with his team to keep them focused and feeling part of a team. “Sales people are quite resilient folk providing you communicate regularly to them,” Teeman says. “I top and tail the week - we do a lot more short-term comms than we ever did, with more focus on what we’re going to achieve today rather than what we’re going to achieve this month, so it feels more deliverable. People have been in this market for a while and they’re kind of used to it.”
Redwood group ad director Rebecca Grey says she too has been upfront with sales people about how much is in the pot, and has sought their input on where they’d like it spent, when it came to training, ad budgets, recruitment and rewarding good work. “They felt part of the solution from the offset; they had some control over decisions that were being made. After that it became very much about recognition and autonomy.”
Those advertisers that are still spending know that it’s a buyer’s market, and know that many sales people have an air of desperation about them, which they’re ready to exploit. Sharron says buyers know the value of spending on advertising through a recession, and recognise that they can buy media cheap if they talk tough. A sharp intake of breath at the right time can knock 10% off a price straight away.
“In just the same way as we as consumers are seeing prices going down and are thinking carefully about getting the best deal, advertisers are behaving in the same way,” says Sharron. “This requires a change in negotiation skills, and the recognition that buyers are using their muscle and they don’t always tell the truth about what they’ve got to spend.”
Don’t send a lengthy proposal that smacks of desperation and takes a long time to wade through, she advises. Clients are risk-averse and time-poor, so keep it concise, demonstrate that you’re not a risky bet, and provide testimonials and supporting material to make the decision a safe one.
Teeman is among the sales directors to have been offering training sessions on negotiating and adapting a sales pitch to a tough market.
Sharron says salespeople have to be encouraged not to risk long-term damage to magazine brands by discounting too far to pick up a bit of cheap business. Despite the short-term pressures, they need to have a more lateral, long-term approach to winning deals. “It’s about recognising that selling is a process,” she says. “No media owner has a god-given right to carry advertising for any given buyer. You have to earn that.”
Pounding pavements
Earning that right means returning to some old-fashioned techniques. “Now, the biggest skill is the ability to cold call and keep someone on the phone; people are scared rigid by that,” Sharron says. “You walk through a sales floor to talk to the ad director and that used to be a very noisy place; they used to annoy editorial with all their noise. Now you can hear a pin drop. There’s a generation of people who’ve only dealt with people by email.”
The friendly fob-off that’s so easily done by email is more difficult to do on the phone and squirm-inducing in person over coffee. “Sales people have to go back to the basic skills, and then they have a much better chance,” says Bowman. “The winners are those who are going out and meeting. Some people will say ‘You don’t understand - it’s not like that anymore,’ but people buy from people they know and trust.”
Teeman says emails are a double-edged sword, and tend to be overused. “Obviously it’s an efficient way to communicate, but we do encourage people to get out there. Usually, twice a year we have a call-rate competition.” There are also mornings where the whole sales team is banned from using email, which doesn’t go down terribly well. “They hate me and they hate it,” Teeman says, “but because everybody does it at once, it becomes quite a giggle.”
Grey says the downside of email ubiquity is that at times you feel like you’re working in a library. The benefit is that the nuts and bolts of negotiations are in writing. She encourages staff to make first contact by phone and to get out and meet people.
Beyond talking to people, there’s value in creativity. Teeman is using events and stunts to get away from price and promote the unique value of some of his products. The BBC’s invited agency planners to go around the Top Gear track in the reasonably priced cars used on the TV show, and has held Strictly Come Dancing and Masterchef activities linked not just to its titles but TV programming.
Team spirit
Motivating people in tough times is, along with cold-calling, something of a lost art. “I think sales managers and directors have allowed their bonus schemes to do their motivating for them,” Bowman says. “What motivates a human being is the same as it’s always been. If you bother to do it properly, you can motivate.” Something as simple – and free – as a salesperson of the month award can have an impact.
Celebrate success, says Sharron, and whenever possible get people out of the office, “rather than keeping them chained to a desk where if they get nine ‘nos’ for every ‘yes’, they can really lose the will to live.”
Teeman has revised the financial motivation system for staff to a far more fluid structure than there’s been before, and one that’s being reviewed on a quarter-by-quarter basis, with ad hoc payments and gift vouchers to reward people for new business wins and outstanding pieces of work.
At Redwood, the commission system has also changed, so it’s now applied to the team rather than individuals, something that encourages co-operation rather than rivalry.
“Motivating people within the sales fraternity usually comes down to giving people commission or taking them out for a drink – basically spending money on them,” Grey says. With less money to spend, the focus is now on recognition and little, but meaningful, thank-yous. The unofficial policy of giving staff their birthday off work has continued, even when they’ve been short-staffed.
The Redwood end-of-year sales team wrap included the company CEO, so that achievements were recognised higher up the hierarchy. “On a week-by-week basis, we’re rewarding people with an occasional bottle of wine, or saying ‘don’t worry about coming back from lunch til 3pm’, that kind of thing that doesn’t cost a lot of money.”
It doesn’t cost a lot, but does it work? “It really does,” Grey says. For the time being. “It’s about being recognised ... it might be only £5.99 from Waitrose but someone’s done it for them, or put a note on their desk for when they get back from lunch saying thanks for a fantastic job ... but you can only hold it for so long. If we go through another year like this, people will become disenfranchised with the industry.”
PwC figures show we probably are in for another year like this: advertising expenditure on UK magazines is forecast to fall again in 2010 for consumer and B2B titles and again slightly in 2011 before there’s a turnaround.
Sharron says those who can can survive until they reach the light at the end of the tunnel will be stronger for the experience. “What happens is people who stay in it and battle their way through will come out as brilliant, brilliant sales people who are highly marketable,” she says. “We’ve seen that in the past two recessions ... People are extraordinarily skilled, and if you can carry on through, you come out far better and closer to your clients.”
