The Media Professional

Is there anything in media sales for which to aspire anymore?

In olden times, a person joined the sales staff of a company and looked forward to a long and fruitful association. Older sales professionals, also known as those who had made the cut time after time, were generally paid more than folks entering the workforce. Young people working with seasoned veterans would learn about the business and see the rewards of working hard and remaining loyal to the company.

That was then. This is now.

Today it’s fashionable for management to design compensation schemes that ‘level the playing field’ or ‘are performance driven’. The problem is that the level playing field is on the lowest level and the performance measured is usually short term.

Hence, a youngster entering the workplace often earns more money than seasoned professionals. Worse than that, the compensation plans actually punish experience and productivity.

For example, goal trending is currently a popular compensation feature. However, it punishes success with higher goals both in the near future and again at the anniversary of the success.

Longevity, client building and strategic planning are clearly not rewarded under many modern sales compensation plans.

Instead, short-sighted management (SSM) will look for schemes that will boost revenue, usually with no consideration of the strategic ramifications.

Many of the ‘new concepts’ in newspaper and television advertising are nothing more than elaborate rate concessions. SSM is seduced by consultants who promise great increases in revenue if only SSM will,

1.Give the consultants control of their sales force for a period of time;
2.Follow the consultants’ instructions to the letter;
3.Give the consultants extensive client contact information;
4.Agree to take responsibility if the plan fails to produce as promised, and, finally,
5.Give the consultants dramatically lower rates than are otherwise available.

The plans often seem to work. Contracts are signed. Revenue projections are made.

Project completed, the consultants high five the SSM and leave for home with pockets stuffed with money. SSM report to their superiors that they have managed yet another successful revenue generating program.

What is overlooked is that for the time that the sales people were working the consultants’ plan, they were not serving their clients and some of those clients became clients of competitors.

Sales people, told to follow the consultants’ instructions to the letter, were often forced to work counter intuitively and against their clients’ interests.

The extraordinarily low rates sold under such plans become the basis for all future negotiations with clients who hear about them.

And it is very hard indeed to show clients such plans without their buying them with money they would have spent anyway.

These unmeasured costs can be huge.

In short, when management chooses to implement a special program offered by outside consultants, the program should be analyzed very carefully to prevent its being misused.

Look at your last project. Can you honestly measure how much revenue was switched from other products and plans? Can you say that you got more business from a consultants’ plan than you would have generated by simply lowering your rates? Can you prove that your clients were truly well-served by the plan? Or that salespeople didn’t learn bad practices from their time on the project?

There are costs to making decisions in business.

The costs that aren’t readily apparent can be the highest costs of all.

For a view of this matter from an executive’s perspective see the article Consultants Hidden Costs.

J.David Knepper
Audio version

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