To reach that audience, companies spend more than R400,000 according to the official pricelist. That is a sizeable chunk of change and for companies to see value in that spend, they have to see a strategic plan.

That keeps Wertheim Aymes busy with training, product knowledge, education, marketing and decision making support for the chief sales officers. But her role has also enabled her to build up a significant amount of knowledge over time. Here are some excerpts from a recent interview conducted by SALESGURU.

On complex decision making

It is a factor of the media business today that salespeople are no longer dealing with one person in a sale. In fact, the norm is a complex maze of organisational structures which involves an average of six decision makers for every sale. “The buying decision is fragmented. A big corporate may have several brand managers or marketing heads. Then you add into the mix a media head who coordinates all the different media needs of these different units as well as the media agencies which often comprise both a strategic media agency and a buying agency. That means that you have to influence six people in different ways and all in a meaningful and relevant way,” says Wertheim Aymes.

On selling cycles

Depending on the size of the deal, Johnnic newspapers will work six months in advance on sales, including the renewal process for contracts that are scheduled to run out in six months time. “We have an ongoing campaign for this where we identify our top 30 clients and work out how we are going to communicate with them. Those relationships help us to understand when they are setting their budgets, what they are intending to do for the coming year. It isn’t an exact science, because sometimes they don’t share it, but depending on the strength of the relationship, we will have a sense that they are going to shift money out of print and into TV for example. If the relationship is good, they will warn us in advance and that will help us to fight that decision and to prepare if we can’t convince them,” says Wertheim Aymes.

Of course there are going to be times when a client simply doesn’t want to be in print and chooses to spend budget on a TV or outdoor (billboard) campaign. At times like that, there is no option but to take a knock on the revenue and find new business to replace it. “But with a strategic plan in place, it is never going to be a sudden shock. You will have the visibility that it is coming and you will have a good idea of when, so you can take steps to handle that,” says Wertheim Aymes.

On the changing shape of influence

A decade ago, it was a relatively simple task to invite a marketing director away on an overseas trip and there was a fairly good chance they would go. Building influence through friendships and the occasional round of golf was the norm in the media industry. However, today, with corporate governance guiding business relationships, Wertheim Aymes says there has been a dramatic shift where the sale has to be on the value of the product offering. “We do a lot of workshops with clients because that is how we understand what they want and what they need and it gives us a lot of ways in which we can show them what sort of knowledgebase we are sitting on. But we have noticed that some companies have taken corporate governance to such an extreme that it is difficult for us to even interchange in a workshop. Those are the realities of the business environment we operate in.”

On teamwork

Johnnic’s sales operation is divided into teams; a structure that deliberately moves them away from an individual focus. There is a level of individual focus when it comes to normal key performance measures which affect salary reviews and individual rewards, but when it comes to the task of selling, the team becomes the key. “The most important thing is the customer,” says Wertheim Aymes. “We don’t want a customer to be caught in a bun fight between two salespeople over commission. There are pros and cons to both the team structure and an individual structure, but to ensure a high level of integrity here, we work in teams.”

On great salespeople

“In any environment, a great salesperson is someone who really understands what their customer wants, truly gets to know them and then never lets go. And I don’t mean that in a negative sense, I mean it in a very positive sense. The mark of a true, successful salesperson is that they develop long-term relationships,” says Wertheim Aymes. “You have to build up collateral over time, even if the client is not spending, and carry on servicing that client because one day they will come back. I think that good salespeople are those that understand that building a relationship requires knowledge, trust and integrity, as well as continual follow through, regardless of spend. And a good salesperson will not go and waste a decision maker’s time with information that is irrelevant.”

On mentoring

“Mentoring should be a natural part of management today. It is important that we are continually upgrading the skills of all our sales staff. And it happens at all levels. That means that the manager of the team has to continue a process of self-improvement and I have to continue working on self-improvement, so that we are able to manage them,” says Wertheim Aymes. “Mentoring should happen more often than it does, especially in the sales environment. People have the view that salespeople are money hungry, and couldn’t find jobs elsewhere so they went into sales. But that isn’t true. Especially in media where salespeople have to have a certain level of intellect and be passionate and involved,” she says.

On Perceptions

“Our salespeople have to understand what our competitors’ positioning is, the core content of other newspapers, the circulation and so on. It is very complicated. And our industry is measured and managed by research tools such as the All Media Products Survey (AMPS) which measures and manages how buyers of media perceive particular newspapers. If AMPS says your profile is X, then that is what media buyers believe,” says Wertheim Aymes.
It is critical therefore that Johnnic newspaper salespeople understand the perceptions, that they are able to work with them and to argue for and against them.

On benchmarking

The strategic approach enables Johnnic to identify a softness in sales in a particular category on the Sunday Times, for instance. Wertheim Aymes works constantly with market researchers – or marketing services consultants in Johnnic parlance – who will identify whether the Sunday Times is benchmarking correctly against the market.
When a problem is identified, Wertheim Aymes and her team will analyse what is happening in the industry, whether the positioning of the publication is correct, what competitors are doing, and why it is that a competitor might be getting revenue that a Johnnic newspaper is not. “And it isn’t just newspapers. We look at the entire media spectrum because we don’t just compete in print. If, for example, Bank X is shifting its spend away from print into TV, we go to them to understand why they have done it and what type of information we can give them to come back to print. Because sometimes the sale is not about your newspaper, it is actually about the whole category of print publications,” says Wertheim Aymes.
“So what we do is to sell the medium and then we sell the actual brand. So we never just sell the Sowetan, we sell the benefits of print and then we sell the Sowetan to keep reaffirming print in the client’s mind.”

On losing business

Losing a multi-million Rand client without warning is clearly a matter of great significance, but it isn’t without precedent. Wertheim Aymes says that several years ago, Johnnic newspapers lost a “huge” account based purely on the client’s decision to shift out of print and into TV. Losing the client hurt, but not as badly as the lack of warning that it was about to happen. “We were never alerted to it so we never had the opportunity to discuss it. If the relationship had been very strong we would at least have had some warning that it was about to happen. And then you can start at least preparing,” she says.
Preparation is a big part of Wertheim Aymes’ responsibility and strategic planning is key to the whole process. “I would feel like a total failure if I lost a piece of business like that because we have put measures in place on our big key accounts where we understand where all the money is coming from. We understand the complexity of the relationships in those organisations, so if it happened again, that would be a failure of the strategic plan,” she says.

On Integrity at all costs

Wertheim Aymes must always face the reality of a potential showdown between one of her newspapers and an advertiser. In a world in which a newspaper’s sole basis for existence is that it is perceived to be totally independent, totally trustworthy and tells the truth at all times and at all costs, it happens from time to time that an advertiser might find itself the subject of bad press. When you have a company spending R400,000 on a full page advertisement on page three of an edition where it has been lambasted on the front page, the risk of conflict can be very high.
According to Wertheim Aymes however, there is no contest. “I support the editors 100% and if that means losing our biggest client because a newspaper has to publish a story, then so be it. We are selling trust to our readership, and I will not disturb that line of thought. Good relationships always help, but we have to do what we have to do. If an advertiser threatened to pull their support based on an objection to editorial, it wouldn’t be a debate in my mind who to support and that would be the editorial staff.”


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