For news publishers, now is the time to understand and focus on who their best customers are and reduce the time and resource on the rest.

Maybe self-serve is the answer for those smaller accounts?

Cross-channel partnerships naturally take longer to build, are resource and time intensive, and use different skills. More solutions-based sales teams need client and agency relationships, from planning managers to trading directors to deal with a lot of people for the bigger deals.

Technical competency on details, at a transactional level, across different platforms is also needed. Campaigns across multiple channels with different creative, objectives, and performance metrics are more complex and rely on clients also having the same operational infrastructure and understanding, maybe with our guidance.

And with that guidance, advertisers and agencies will see this as an opportunity for an extended pre-sales process. Even if ideas aren’t accepted or sold immediately, it plants the seed that the media company is creative, trustworthy, adaptable, present, and has the pulse of the targeted audiences. 

An extended pre-sales period means news publishers are getting more prospective clients and more case studies as the inbound leads are looking more like requests for ideas rather than pitches.

With this in mind, it could be argued that publishers should see the need to really beef up the client team, and what they know about their top say 50 clients. Do you immerse your sales process into that level of detail?

Tightening up those sales roles to really develop those relationships on a different level is going to be important. As a consequence, how sales teams are going to be shaped will change. Most publishers won’t have 100% of staff in the office ever again, for instance. What are the pros and cons and impact of that?

Media companies that have a true focus on trying to solve client challenges will be able to proactively approach said clients with unique solutions for unique times. The simple truth is most publishers — however premium, unique, or valued — are not differentiated enough to do so.

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