News Limited

Summary

• No market growth opportunity – market in decline – so adopted strategy to build market share 
• Prosell developed a training and Procoach^TM workplace coaching programme to develop and embed sales skills
• Advertising sales grew by 12% (the overall market declined by 13%)
• Average sales order value grew by 16.5%
• Conversion rates improved by 21%

Company background

News Limited, part of News Corporation, is one of Australia's largest media conglomerate companies, employing more than 8,000 staff nationwide and approximately 3,000 journalists and operates over 100 newspaper and magazine titles across Australia.

The challenge

Against the backdrop of the financial crisis, classified advertising revenues had fallen by 13% across the newspaper industry, with no sign of improvement.

In a stagnant market, News Limited realised that it had to realign its strategy to focus on market share instead of growth.

The solution

Prosell was brought in to put in place practices to help achieve these goals and consistently improve performance, including:

• Create sales execution models for inbound classified and outbound features and campaigns;
• Develop training course that would help Advertising Sales Consultants improve skills;
• Give managers and supervisors the skills to coach and develop their staff;
• implement a rigour in the management team that would report, measure and consistently improve results; and
• Embed this into the business so it became part of the company culture

In order for News Limited to place itself ahead of its competition, they needed to become more proactive and diligent in the way they approached the market.  Skills and attitudes first needed to be changed.  

Prosell took managers and supervisors through a customised Procoach™ programme, which combined workshops, tools and templates, followed by four months of support.  This gave them the capability to coach well and genuinely change the behaviours of their people.  

Changes in both behaviour and results were monitored and people were accredited with reaching the correct levels of skill and results in the workplace.

To ensure that this superior performance was embedded within News Limited, the skills and standards implemented became part of:

• Induction programs
• Targets and quality measures
• Performance Reviews
• Management Reporting

Results

Through a realignment of strategy and a focus on management and sales effectiveness, News Limited successfully achieved a:

• 12% increase in overall revenue (against an industry decline of 13% over the same 12 month period);
• 16.5% increase in dollars per ad; and
• 21% increase in measured conversion rates (enquires to bookings)

News Limited was able to achieve successful economic performance within a contracting market because of their willingness to realign strategic objectives and implement competitive tactics that won market share.

Prosell expects to work on a clear return on investment proposition.  News Limited was able to achieve a return on their investment within four months of the twelve month program.