In December 2022, INMA and Google News Initiative (GNI) awarded their third annual Elevate Scholarship to 50 news media professionals from 31 countries. This series features these impressive media professionals who are shaping our industry.

As retention manager journey at Charter Spectrum in the United States, Jonathan Gholston developed a new approach to selling and retaining customers. His method focused on active listening rather than selling for the sake of selling.

“I managed and trained teams of tenured agents and new employees, showing them how to overcome their self-imposed limitations and surpass the sales goals month over month,” Gholston said.

Spectrum, like other subscription-based companies, has been challenged with retention. A key performance indicator was monthly recurring revenue (MRR), and Gholston began observing customer interactions to identify key stop reasons and objections. Then he created scripts to improve the team’s ability to retain customers. In doing so, he stabilised a downward MRR trend.  

When he joined the Advance Local team in August 2022, Gholston was able to bring that same understanding of subscriptions and selling to the news media industry. As a manager, Gholston has made it his practice to stand up for the agents in meetings where they would’ve been overlooked, he said.

For example, when COVID-19 hit, Spectrum considered letting agents go due to productivity and attendance losses. Gholston redirected management to focus on addressing the customers’ needs:

“I advocated and successfully implemented a Flex Program. This new initiative allowed agents to complete their 40-hour workweek on a schedule that addressed both the company’s and the employees’ needs. This achieved a healthier work-life balance for our employees [and] this morale boost cascaded to our customers,” Gholston said.

Employees could better focus on customer needs because their personal needs were being addressed. As a result, attendance went up 70%, and customer satisfaction improved.

“This is one of my proudest achievements because I showed myself that I can organise my thoughts and actions around a goal and fiercely execute it while upholding values that are important to me and benefitting the employees and the company.”

In his career, Gholston aspires to bring the community’s diversity to the forefront: “I dream of our customers being able to see themselves in our products and interactions with our employees. I plan to accomplish this by introducing different voices to a platform to tell their stories authentically. By doing that, we all will be better able to see that we’re more the same than different.”

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