Cox takes a 60 question approach to improving digital sales.  Hundreds of Cox Media Group salespeople have gone back to school over the past six months as part of the company’s effort to improve digital sales.  It began last October when every account executive was required to take a confidential 60 question assessment exam testing their aptitude at selling digital media.  After the baseline scores were established, Cox worked with the Center for Sales Strategy and the Laredo Group to train the sales force. When the follow-up final exam was given last month, across all of Cox Media Group the digital knowledge scores jumped 35%. “Radio scores were the most improved, mostly because they had the least amount of training,” Cox director of digital sales strategy and training Jeffrey Ulrich says. The average radio AEs’ test score jumped 46%, while television (+27%) and newspaper (+25%) scores also improved.  Radio clusters with the biggest jumps were in Long Island, Houston and Tulsa.  Testing isn’t something a lot of adults like to spend their workday doing, especially when they’re making money from commissioned sales, so Ulrich says having buy-in at the local level is essential. “The smart sellers recognize that there traditional media budgets are getting smaller and if they want to maintain their household income they have to adapt,” he says.  Ulrich told last week’s Borrell Local Online Advertising conference that the program is an outgrowth of the company’s decision to more closely align the multimedia assets across 27 markets.  That brought together 1,200 salespeople with different levels of knowledge while some were used to selling video, others audio. “When we combined our media assets, we realized that in order to marry them we were going to need a better trained sales force,” Ulrich says. Now that the first phase of testing is completed, the real work begins — using it to sell more digital advertising.  “It’s elevated the status of our sellers in the eyes of clients,” Ulrich says, adding, “It isn’t about the test scores, it’s about the revenue.”

From Monday, March 7, Inside Radio