Most print organizations I talk to are frustrated on one level or another by sales force issues; in particular how to inspire service-oriented sales representatives to get interested in their customer's digital needs and sell customized solutions. I was reminded again last week of the importance of starting out by keeping it simple: BangorDailyNews.com launched a sales effort that "sold out" its first 20 packages in two weeks - starting from scratch with print-only sales representatives who had never sold online advertising before. more

I go to a lot of conferences. What I follow-up upon as reports for this site are ideas that are immediately usable. But often there is a concept or a theory that I find quietly nagging at the back of my mind. In the last few weeks, I've found myself pondering many of the ideas that were raised by Gatehouse Media president and COO, Kirk Davis, (featured in this week's two reports) at the SNA/Blinder Revenue Summit. As usual, I've summarized his "step-by-step" plans to be passed along as executive briefs (one of my members who couldn't find her password last week, needed the set of hiring questions for telemarketers before an interview she was conducting in ten minutes...that sort of thing). But some issues are difficult to address meaningfully in a "how to" or a snapshot because they emerge from amorphous areas and moving targets; no one pays for a site that warrants only that the subject is confusing and unresolved. One of these areas is the human infrastructure within our companies. more

Quick, create a list of all the accounts who are spending $5000 a month in your market. If this doesn't phase you, now try figuring out the last time they had a real needs analysis with a sales representative. No problem? Ok, lets move on... was that sales representative equipped to create a competitive multi-media plan? How are we doing? more

For people in the media business, word choices are our stock in trade. Being fully immersed in digital media, however, means that our very language is moving around. I still need to change the word "online" to "digital" in my site's slogan. And then there is the issue, when writing about vendors and technology partners, which is which? The word "vendor" or "supplier" implies a kind of hierarchical relationship that is no longer applicable. "Technology partners" is too long to fit in a headline (or a nav bar in the case of this site). So for this week's report, I used "Twelve recommended vendors" from JRC, though the word vendors is "code" for the companies you want to partner with. more

After slogging through the management-intensive world of telemarketing last week, it's about time for a pizza contest. There's nothing like the staid, uber-dignified Washington Post Company trading pizza for e-mail names and, well, having fun doing it. This week's report is not only free of personnel issues (at least on the media side) but we have to report things like "prepare your merchant for too much success" under "lessons learned." Capital Deal's pizza contest report was only held up by a day due to "customer service" issues that happen when, like, more than 100,000 people are asked to use a promo code. more

The daily deal is hottest new product in advertising history; Groupon alone has sped to $500 million in sales in just 17 months. But local media have a clear advantage in competing, not just because of their existing promotional traffic, but because of how it ties into the business formula: Deal Quality times Reach equals cash. more

This week LocalMediaInsider site is publishing four reports that explore tactics and strategies for running a large telesales department, including models for recruitment ads, sales-to-goal spreadsheets, compensation systems, products and pitches. We first ran across Deseret Digital Media's telesales department at SNA's Innovation Mission, and the harder we looked at how much they sell, the more convinced we became that telesales is an critical business model. So first, a shout out to Todd Handy, director of New Media Sales, for sharing so much of his expertise and best practices. We all are deeply indebted. It takes a lot of time out to help us put these reports together; thank you. Why focus so much telesales? A critical market remains in the vast unexplored wilderness of your DMA: Thousands of Mom-and-Pop businesses who were priced out of traditional media years ago, and are just now starting to buy and experiment. Other merchants simply dropped out of traditional advertising when the economy tanked... but still experiment with "internet marketing" under the guise of "investing in their web site"... or partnering with Google. more

This week we've posted a dirt simple tracking document you can use to collect - and share - measurable results from banner ad campaigns (such as the ones you see on this site under the "Winning Ads" navigation bar). Just about every ad director we talk to complains that the sales staff is not selling measurable results. But if the only thing we track in the CRM system is leads, objections and sales... the whole culture is actually designed to ignore campaign results. more

A new trade association for city.com sites, GeoPublishers, is rising from the effective ashes of the Associated Cities. Affiliated with Borrell & Associates, the new group looks like it has a bright future. Some context here: Domain collectors in the early days of the web occasionally wound up as owners of city.com sites. The power of the city.com URL to lift content to the top of search results fueled a variety of new business models, though most fell short of what would be considered “media." Exceptions include Richmond.com, ultimately acquired by its daily newspaper competitor, along with a few others. Today, these entrepreneurs are laughing all the way to the bank. City.com sites in good markets can rack up exceptional revenues with very small staffs using a "city guide" model based on transactional revenues from travel products like hotel rooms and golf courses. The scrappy entrepreneurs building new companies first banded together as Associated Cities in the early days of the industry. more

I was surprised to learn that McClatchy has partnered with ReachLocal to resell SEM in one of its markets. It turns out that the pesky competitor is also an inspiration. They do two things really well: SEM and campaign reporting. McClatchy gets the chance to offer these services while learning from a competitor. But what's even more interesting than the strange bedfellows is the future of the dashboard, where ReachLocal is leading the race to build a customer facing dashboard that merchants like to use, and McClatchy has jumped into the race with it's new dashboard developed in conjunction with TruMeasure. That future is mobile and it's coming soon. Here's sneak peek at the newest mobile dashboard for advertisers: more