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Advertising Account Executive, Porterville, CA

CA - Porterville

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Opportunity Snapshot

This position offers you the opportunity to join a dynamic and energetic sales program and channel your initiative, innovation, and competitive spirit to make an impact on our customers, our organization, and your own career. While we are a leading community newspaper, you'll sell much more than print advertising. You'll leverage your creativity in partnering with customers to create custom multi-media solutions, and we have an exciting and ever-growing portfolio of advertising products for you to work with. Your success in this role could set you up to pursue a variety of career paths in our organization or throughout our parent company, Freedom Communications, Inc (FCI).

To be a good fit for this opportunity you will have a high performance background in sales, whether you have one year of experience or five. Don't have sales experience? Don't rule yourself out! We're looking for passionate, high energy, and proactive people who thrive in a fast-paced environment in which change is a constant. You will need a proven ability to learn quickly, solid follow through skills, attention to detail, and a customer service approach to interacting with both clients and internal contacts. Media background, particularly with Internet products, is a plus.

In spite of what you may have heard about the industry, our newspapers are the dominant advertising medium in our markets -- we have strong reach and measurable impact that, simply put, kicks butt compared to radio and TV. The Community Newspaper Division of FCI is taking an innovative approach to "riding the wave" of change in our industry and we're in high growth mode, propelled in part by a diverse and market-responsive portfolio of products and services.

What Else You'll Bring to the Table

In addition to the qualifications detailed above, you'll need:

A degree in Advertising, Marketing or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
A proven ability to be flexible and adaptable, including learning and applying new information quickly.
Excellent organization and planning skills, including demonstrated success in managing deadlines and schedules through multiple projects.
Outstanding people skills and the ability to work with all position levels within sales and marketing.
A professional demeanor and the ability to make effective, polished presentations to clients.
Computer savvy and familiarity with MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
A reliable, insured car and a current driver's license.

Preferred but not required:

A demonstrated ability to meet and exceed established sales goals.
A background in consultative sales, ideally in advertising, including selling a portfolio of products and solutions.
Experience with new business development.
Familiarity with database applications.

What's in It for You

Creativity + drive = rewards-- if you are satisfied with hoping and waiting, this is not the position for you. On the other hand, if you have the drive to go get what you want, and you relish the challenge of creating just the right combination of products to help customers achieve their goals, you have what it takes to succeed here. And we'll recognize your successes; for example, we sponsor incentive programs at the local and corporate level; in fact, one of our top performers recently earned an all-expense paid trip to Jamaica.

Comprehensive training -- from the start you'll see that our environment is supportive. You'll start with extensive training and receive ongoing skills development through formal sales training programs.

High profile, innovative products -- we have outstanding brands where it counts: in local communities where businesses can truly reach the audiences that matter. You will be able to offer tailored solutions from our robust portfolio of media products, which includes not only our flagship newspaper, but also weekly and specialty papers, inserts and direct mail campaigns, interactive products, and much more. In fact, if a customer asks for something we don't have in our portfolio, we'll do our best to create it or find out where we can get it.

Autonomy -- you'll be working closely with your supervisor to meet your established sales targets at the end of each month, but as long as you are achieving your goals, we'll give you support when you need it and "elbow room" when you don't.

Excellent compensation -- in addition to a competitive salary and incentive program, we offer a comprehensive benefits package that includes medical and dental insurance, a 401(k) plan, a generous allotment of paid time off, and more.

More About Your Role

There is a great deal of variety among the business units of the Community Newspaper Group, as each business reflects the unique character of the area it serves. We are providing a generalized picture to help you understand the position, but you should understand that some of the details will vary from location to location.

In most situations you will report to an Advertising or Sales Manager. We'll start by training you so that you have a solid grasp of our products, the strategies behind our sales programs, our markets, and more. You may take on a geographic territory, focus on a category (retail, Internet, Real Estate, special sections, classified, or others), or work in a different organizational scheme. One way or another, your mission will be to sell customized advertising packages that maximize the benefits of advertising for our customers while maximizing revenues for our company.

You will work with existing clients and also prospect and develop new accounts. While we'll require you to check in at the office at least once a day (often you'll attend a team meeting or get some face time with your Manager), you can expect to spend most of your time in the field, cold-calling on new customers, warming up former customers, developing relationships with existing customers who have new management, and checking in with your active accounts.

In a typical sales cycle you will call on a potential customer, having already developed questions to help you assess the customer's needs and understand their goals and challenges. Once you have those specs, you'll assemble a strategic proposal that takes advantage of our diverse portfolio.

To assemble that proposal you'll conduct market research and analysis, and develop a clear and specific plan for achieving short and long term goals; the plan will include metrics for monitoring effectiveness. In this effort you'll collaborate with a variety of internal departments, such as Graphics, Interactive, Accounting, Production, and more.

You'll present your proposal, leverage your closing skills to get a commitment, and work with the customer to finalize the plan. While you'll hand off the execution to our Production people, you will check in with the customer regularly to monitor performance and make appropriate adjustments. A sales cycle may last three days or it may take three months, depending on the size and scope of the advertising solution.

Just as important to in the process is the administrative aspect, such as reporting your activities, updating our databases, preparing work orders, and more.

Keys to Success

In order to be an outstanding Account Executive, you will:

Possess strong initiative and self-motivation, and achieve your goals with minimal supervision.
Maintain a high level of innovation and creativity and be willing to try new things and find new inspirations in unusual places.
Bring a competitive spirit and goal orientation, including persistence in pursuing your objectives in spite of obstacles.
Be confident and resilient in the face of challenges and disappointments.
Partner effectively with a variety of personalities to achieve customer satisfaction and promote team success, including sharing credit with your co-workers.
Remain flexible and adaptable, whether it is rescheduling your day in response to changing priorities or incorporating new products and strategies into your sales approach.
Drive toward continuous learning and the pursuit of knowledge, and be able to absorb, assimilate, and apply information quickly.

If this sounds like the right mix of challenge and opportunity for you, and you meet the minimum qualifications, we want to hear from you!

Who We Are

The Community Newspapers Division, with a combined circulation of more than a half-million subscribers across the nation, remains committed to the communities it serves by focusing on local customers and markets, and doing what it does best: delivering quality news products every day.

Freedom Communications, Inc is a privately owned diversified company that integrates newspapers, broadcast television stations, and interactive media businesses. We are in the midst of an exciting period of growth and transformation. We continue to innovate by looking for new business opportunities through a mix of acquisitions and internal growth, developing our Interactive business, and pushing the envelope in print, online, and on-air media delivery.

For more information, including a listing of the key publications in each of our markets, please visit www.freedom.com/newspapers/community. Clicking on this link will open a new browser window, but be sure to come back to submit your resume!