Media

Industry Situation

Media outlets for advertising continue to evolve and become more competitive. Changing consumer buying practices and advances in technology make target audiences difficult to reach. Industry players must continually adapt their approaches to remain relevant and maximize captured market share opportunities. 
 

Client Situation

Driven by the entrance of new competitors in the marketplace, the majority of revenue associated with traditional ad sales rapidly shifted to interactive and on-demand marketing. The client appropriately developed new products to match market demands; however, Account Executives were expected to sell core and new products, to both first-time and existing customers. The Management team introduced support staff to assist the Account Executives with fulfillment and non-sales related activities. Despite this, the productivity and sales of Account Executives failed to increase.
 

Key Issues

The company asked AGI to assist in the following areas:

	Expand their presence in new product areas and underpenetrated markets.
	Develop a coverage model and rules of engagement to optimize sales force productivity.

AGI Solutions

AGI assessed the “productivity sinks” of the current model by conducting a thorough job responsibility analysis, cross-channel activity mapping, time allocation study and account level revenue analysis. AGI and the client team developed a new go-to-market model focused on high-growth products and areas, and redefined the working relationship between Account Executives and Account Coordinators.

Our recommendations focused on three unique roles and their responsibilities:

	Account Executives: Differentiated retention (farmer) and new business (hunter) customers.
	Product Specialist: Created overlay job roles for interactive and on-demand products.
	Account Coordinator: Redefined as an inside position, added prospecting and client research activities to duties.

Outcomes

The new coverage model and job roles reduced the responsibilities of sellers, enabling greater focus on critical tasks. The realignment allowed Account Executives to focus on the retention and penetration of existing accounts, Product Specialists to promote and improve the cross-selling of new products and tasked Account Coordinators with fulfillment requirements. 

As a result of these key changes, the client reversed declining sales by outperforming growth projections for new products. This top-line success was directly linked to the AE’s ability to offload 40% of non-sales activities, increasing high value selling time by 10%.