Sales Management: Sales Manager Interview
For this interview, I interviewed Ms. Tori Grant-Welhouse whom is the General Sales team manager at the local WLUK Fox 11 television station. WLUK is located in the shadows of Lambeau Field and covers primarily the Green Bay and other Fox Cities regions. Green Bay is the sixty ninth largest media market in the United States and offers a unique marketing environment since it is small enough to still have farms and related things as well as many more modern day businesses you’d expect in big cities. WLUK is currently owned by Emmis Communications, which is a national media conglomerate whom operates stations across the country. I didn’t ask Ms. Welhouse about the ownership history, figuring that I had taken up enough of her time, and that she might not know off the top of her head. I assumed the internet would provide me with the desired information, however WLUK’s main site and other sites in the same vein did not provide ownership history. Well attempting to find the info, I actually came across another website that bemoaned the fact that WLUK did not provide their background info, but that site implied that the station had gone through many ownership changes in recent years.
As for the actual interview content, Ms. Welhouse began by informing me of her background, which included a Bachelor’s in English from Carroll College and a Master’s degree from Antioch University in creative writing. She came from a family that owned its own business, so she was well versed early on in how a company works, as she got older she worked in fast food industries until her typing skills were at a point where she could become a secretary for a moving company. She used that combination of jobs to pay her way through college. After graduation she went to work for an ad agency and stayed there for seven years, working at just about every position offered. Along the way she fell in love with selling media and was thankfully recruited by a television station to sell ad time. She was very aggressive at her job and within two years was named National Sales Manager at that company. At that point the man who had originally hired her went to work for Fox 11 and was named General Manager, and one of his first moves as GM was to recruit Ms. Welhouse’s services. She was originally going to work as the national Sales Manager for Fox 11, but by the time she got around to moving to Green bay, the General Sales Manager position had opened up, so she went for it and got the spot.
Her role as General Sales Manager has her in charge of WLUK’s entire sales division, which includes a Local Sales manager (with 5 sales reps), an Appleton Sales Manager (with 3 reps), a National Sales Manager (who has reps in major cities across the US), and a Traffic Manager to help keep everything organized. In order to recruit new sales people WLUK focuses on finding sales people who have had success outside of the television sales realm and converting them into media sales people. The interviewing process is that a candidate meets with the three primary managers, and they go over a questionnaire to gather pertinent info. Anyone who the majority of managers like is moved on to the next step where they are interviewed by a taskforce made up of WLUK’s own salespeople. If the candidates make it to this point, then they meet with the GM and he helps make the ultimate decision.
Once hired the new recruits go through an orientation in which they meet all managers and sales people, then go through a computer program that familiarizes them with pertinent info (Proper way to write a proposal, etc). Then the recruits are given a crash course in marketing principles and how they relate to media sales and finally they are giving a client to do business with in order to start orientating them into the actual process. Weekly meetings are done to discuss progress and other issues with the sales team.
WLUK offers a nice motivation and compensation package for their sales people. The company establishes short and long term goals and offers incentives for reaching criteria. WLUK also offers an end of the year bonus for the top sales rep, in that the sales rep gets to go along with the manager’s on a “working vacation” to some ritzy resort and in between conferences and seminars the reps get to enjoy the spoils of the good life. Ms. Welhouse stated that they generally do not go to any other lengths to provide motivation, since they believe their interview process provides them with self motivated sales people and that no extra emphasis needs to be placed on such things. The sales team was paid strictly on commission for a long time, however in recent years the company has been adding base salaries as well as commissions and turbo commissions to placate their sales reps. If morale becomes an issue, the reps are given the chance to have other managers help them with establish some fresh ideas, and sometimes the managers will actually go along on a sales call with them.
Sales reps are given a 100-200 dollar a month budget they may utilize for entertaining and travel in regards to meeting clients. The reps at WLUK have a looser system then most in media sales as WLUK does not require call sheets from their salespeople. The reps do have a weekly meeting with the managers though, at which they go over pending business. The managers then report to Ms. Welhouse, and she reports to the GM. The budgeting for the sales reps is done by Ms. Welhouse, with input from her managers. Forecasting and prospecting is done by the sales reps, and any call in inquires that the station may receive are handed out accordingly. The prospecting by the reps cover a 13 county territory, so finding potential customers is not usually a problem. The reps are given monthly, quarterly and yearly sales quotas they have to meet. The sales people are evaluated by management on a quarterly basis since month by month sales tend to fluctuate so greatly.
Mrs. Welhouse’s personal philosophy is basically set the goals, make yourself available for assistance, give the resources that are needed for success and let your sales team go. If the hiring process was successful, then her team selling model will be a success. It hinges on the ability of the individual.
Overall I have to say WLUK seems to have a pretty well put together sales force setup. It doesn’t offer anything revolutionary, but it has enough checks and balances to make it work. Someone in my position, fresh out of technical college and with no real selling experience is more than likely not going to be able to enter into a job as a sales rep for WLUK or a similar station, but that is to be expected. The interview did give me a nice view of a “real world” selling process within a company, and that will hopefully help me in the long run when I start interviewing at some lower level sales jobs, as then I may be able to speak intelligently on the subject. This was definitely an interesting project and was well worth the time invested.
