Quick Take: Highlights from The 5th Annual Media Sales Report

In this Quick Take episode, we’re kicking off our season-long exploration of The Center for Sales Strategy’s 5th Annual Media Sales Report by highlighting some of this year’s most eye-catching findings.  

In other words, by the end of this short episode, you’ll have a good idea of how salespeople and sales managers are currently feeling about their own organizations as well as the entire media sales industry.

Links:

The 5th Annual Media Sales Report

Matt Sunshine

The Center for Sales Strategy

Transcript

Matt Sunshine: 0:15

Welcome to Improving Sales Performance, a podcast highlighting tips and insights aimed at helping sales organizations realize, and maybe even exceed, their goals.

Matt Sunshine: 0:25

Here we chat with thought leaders, experts and gurus who have years of sales experience from a wide range of industries. I'm your host, Matt Sunshine, CEO at The Center for Sales Strategy, a sales performance consulting company. In this Quick Take episode, we're kicking off our season-long exploration of the Center for Sales Strategy's fifth annual media sales report by highlighting some of this year's most eye-catching findings. In other words, by the end of this short episode, you'll have a good idea of how sales people and sales managers are currently feeling about their own organizations, as well as the entire media industry. With that, let's dive in. So I'm excited for this sort of framework of a podcast to just kind of show my thoughts on what I saw in the media sales report this year. This is the fifth year doing the media sales report and, having had the opportunity to really study all the years, I have some perspective and I have some maybe some additional insight that I can share. So what I did is I pulled out some things I wanted to reference. So the first thing that I want to share with everybody is achieving organizational goals. Achieving organizational goals is 81% harder than last year, according to the sales managers. So media sales managers answered the question 81% said achieving organizational goals is harder than last year. I think that says something right. I mean, I think that we all kind of know that, but when four out of five sales managers say, oh yeah, it is harder, what it says is not very many people are looking at 2024 and saying you know what? This is going to be an easy year for us. We have tailwinds behind us, and this is going to be easy Doesn't mean that the goals are not achievable. It just means that our work is cut out for us, and I think that's good. I think a good, healthy dose of understanding what's ahead and what you're going to have to do to be successful is super important. So knowing that, knowing that the year ahead is going to be going to be more achieving organization, is going to be harder than last year. Let's dig in a little bit deeper.

Matt Sunshine: 3:10

90% of salespeople and 74% of sales managers want some sort of a hybrid work schedule. This is going to become a bigger and bigger topic. I know that the CSS consultants are talking to their clients regularly, weekly about this. There is a little bit of a chasm right. Corporates, the C-suite, the executives want people in the office daily, every day, or four out of five days a week. A lot, a lot. And salespeople and really I mean 90% of salespeople and 74% of sales managers so three out of four sales managers and nine out of 10 salespeople want some sort of a hybrid work environment. Notice that. Nobody our data would support that. Really nobody wants to be in the office full time every single day and, on the flip side, nobody wants to be 100% remote at all. Nobody is saying they want to be 100% remote, nobody at least of the salespeople and sales managers in the media sales report. Nobody is saying they want to work 100% from home or 100% of the office, but some sort of hybrid. And what I've seen the most successful organizations do is to be very transparent and say well, here at this company, these are our ground rules, this is how we do it, we do two days a week, we do three days a week, we do four days week. They don't leave it loosey goosey. They actually say this is how we do it and we're sticking to it, and I think that sort of guidance from leadership is really important goes a long, long way.

Matt Sunshine: 5:04

Let me hit another. Another stat kind of jumped out to me and I've been talking about this one for years and years and years, and those of you watching or listening to this that know me will know that I've been saying this. Seventy five percent of sales managers say that less than forty percent of their team, less than forty percent of their sales people, are superstars. In my opinion, all your people should be superstars. You should have a hundred percent of your people should be superstars. The fact that that Six out of ten or not, the fact that less than four out of ten are superstars, I think is the problem. I mean, let's face it, a talent beats out C talent. Every day, you want the most talented, most skilled, best sales people. You want superstars. And, and when you have a conversation and you look at your team and you think you know what, I got a bunch of players, b players, c players. The question has to be why are you tolerating that A's don't want to be surrounded by B's and C's? A's want to be surrounded by A's?

Matt Sunshine: 6:21

Now, don't confuse Someone who's in a slump with not being a superstar. Sometimes your superstars go through slumps and that's okay. It's your job as a leader to coach and develop them, so to pull them out of the slump. And also, new people Are future superstars, their future superstars. So don't confuse and go. Well, this person's not a superstar because they've only been here a month, or less than two or three months. Well, they are superstars, for. Are they the very best person that you've ever seen? With just two months experience, the answers yes, and they are a superstar At what they're, at the level that they're at. So it's discouraging in one sense that most seventy five percent of sales managers are saying that forty percent Less than forty percent of their team are superstars. But it's also a huge opportunity. It's a huge opportunity to say you know what, in two thousand twenty four, my goal is to have all superstars, or I want at least seventy five percent of my team to be what I would consider a superstar, if that's, if you were there, you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna blow your budgets away and you're gonna crush it. All right, just a few more.

Matt Sunshine: 7:37

And for me to hit on today, virtually all say I love this one. This one just makes you feel good. I think everyone listening, everyone watching, should, should, like this statistic. Virtually all sales people ninety three percent, nine out, better than nine out of ten feel supported by their manager. That's awesome. I love that, love that. Love that, love that because, as a sales leader, it is our job to to grow and develop and to support the people that we work with. So great job, sales leaders. Ninety three percent feel supported by their manager.

Matt Sunshine: 8:16

Next, next one that I wanted to touch on is the vast majority of sales managers and sales people. So ninety percent, nine out of ten sales managers and eighty seven percent, almost nine out of ten sales people agree that getting appointments with prospects is harder today than it was five years ago. And boy it was never easy. Five years ago it was not easy, but today it is harder, and that's a trend that we have seen year after year after year, getting harder and harder and harder. It is truly, I believe, one of the hardest things that salespeople have to do. To that end, having sales enablement tools, having lead generation resources, having marketing to assist sales, is something that I think is critical. Full disclosure we have an inbound marketing agency, leadg2, that helps companies, helps media companies, to drive revenue through lead generation and sales enablement. I think that every media company ought to be investing time and money and resources into having a world-class lead generation and sales enablement a resource for their teams. And the data would support it when 90% of sales managers and 87% of salespeople say getting appointments is harder and harder and harder.

Matt Sunshine: 9:45

And then, last one, less than half of salespeople 44% are given feedback around their sales talents on a regular basis, and that's an opportunity. I think One thing that we know is people love to hear feedback on what they're good at, and all salespeople are good at something, but not all salespeople are good at the same thing, so generic feedback is wasted, is lost. Specific feedback on talents that people actually have goes a long, long way, and so, to the extent that your salespeople are feeling supported by their manager, that's awesome. I would say there's an opportunity there for sales leaders to lean in a little bit more and really provide feedback on sales talent. You know, if you're working with a company like the Center for Sales Strategy, you know we have talent analysts that will get on a call with your salespeople or capable to get on a call with a sales leader or salesperson and provide that information, so feedback can be given. If you're not working with the Center for Sales Strategy. Hopefully you're using some sort of talent assessment or talent instrument that allows you the opportunity to provide feedback to the people that you are responsible for growing and developing, because I will tell you, that goes a long, long way.

Matt Sunshine: 11:11

So those are some of my highlights. There's some of the things I pulled out of the media sales report. I would love it if you took some time and reviewed the media sales report and maybe share with me some of your key observations. I'd love to hear what, what you're thinking and some of your analysis, and I'll leave. I'll leave it there. Thanks, everyone. This has been improving sales performance. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, join us every week by clicking the subscribe button For more on the topics covered in the show. Visit our website, the Center for Sales Strategycom. There you can find helpful resources and content aimed at improving your sales performance.