Opportunity Snapshot

You are an interactive expert -- this is your opportunity to share your expertise with a large sales organization, empowering its members to be more effective and to obtain even more satisfaction from their work. If your passion is helping others to be successful, you'll find this position immensely rewarding, both personally and professionally.

Your Challenge. . .
Your mission as our Online Advertising Sales Coach is to assist in the design and implementation of training initiatives that raise the level of productivity of our sales leaders and associates. As the subject matter expert in all interactive advertising products and processes available to each division of our company, you will directly impact interactive advertising revenue across 200 websites and 100 newspapers and magazines. Quick question for you - click here

Our Requirements

• Bachelor's degree
• Strong (4-6 years) experience in sales including:
  • Expertise in consultative selling techniques.
  • Interactive media industry and products subject matter expertise, including experience selling Directory products.
    
  • Demonstrated success in interactive sales, internal/external customer satisfaction and territory management.
  • Successful background growing advertising accounts and prospecting for new accounts.
  • Sales training/mentoring would be a plus.
• Interactive products expertise supporting the following products:
  • Online banner display advertising
  • SEM - pay per click, sponsorship links, SEO
  • Directories or Listings
  • Email marketing
  • Online video
  • Mobile marketing

Preferred, but not required:

• A training/development background.

More About the Company

Freedom Communications, headquartered in Irvine, Calif., is a privately owned, diverse national media company of broadcast television stations, newspapers, and interactive media businesses.

You will join our dynamic Interactive Division, a group that is taking the lead in delivering relevant news, entertainment and local information to a uniquely educated and affluent interactive audience through more than 200 web sites, including 100 newspapers and magazines as well as eight leading broadcast television stations. We have some of the strongest brands in our local markets, including The Orange County Register in Orange County, CA, The Gazette in Colorado Springs, CO and WRGB in Albany, NY.

More About Your Role

You'll report to and work closely with the Sales Training and Development Director. You will join us at a busy time as we are rolling out two exciting interactive offerings to our sales team:

• Yahoo! Partnership: through this alliance, we are able to offer Freedom's advertising clients special pricing on banner ads on Yahoo!'s national website.
• Directory: this new product enables our local papers to build interactive lists of local businesses, and has a wide appeal across all of our locations.

Since both are new products, the training team has orchestrated their roll-out from the ground up, from contributing to the production of sales collateral and pricing sheets, to building the training program itself and executing it at our various locations. The training programs feature modules for both levels of the sales department: the front line Sales Representatives, and the Sales Leaders. Quick question for you - click here For each of the two levels of our training programs, you will:

• Design: with the Director, you will outline training programs that equip and empower the sales team to be successful selling interactive products. This will require designing comprehensive programs that are aligned with the needs of the local property as well as the goals of the organization.
• Deliver: you will travel (up to 50% of the time) to our various locations delivering training for large groups and smaller, more intimate gatherings. In both settings, you'll need to be highly engaging and creative in your delivery methods. Importantly, you will align with the key stakeholders before the training event on the goals, roles, and impact.
• Reinforce: you will partner with the sales leaders to coach and manage performance after the training event. This critical step will ensure that your training doesn't evaporate, but rather becomes ingrained in the sales culture.

Keys to Success

This is as much a strategic, visionary role as it is a tactical, hands-on one. Ultimately, your success will depend on your ability to effect positive change within the organization on an individual basis as well as at a department level.

To this end, you will rely on a number of key qualities and skills, including:

• Outstanding influencing ability and proficiency building relationships in large, complex organizations.
• Passion for sales and the sales environment (even though you won't be selling anything, other than yourself!).
• An organized and meticulous approach to identifying training needs, developing course content and evaluating success.
• Exceptional presentation skills for both large and small groups.
• Aggressiveness for your work and your goals, tempered with diplomacy and first-class interpersonal skills.

If this sounds like the right mix of challenge and opportunity for you, and you meet the required qualifications, we look forward to hearing from you!