CSO Insights recently completed its annual global sales force survey and has come to some interesting conclusions. While sales objective achievement has increased overall, 2012 sales objectives are being projected at their highest level in recent years coupled with the lowest confidence levels in actually achieving them. One of our core beliefs with sales objectives is you can’t expect increased performance without increased support. CSO Insights’ data seem to support this:

“Increases in revenue goals need to be backed by investments in sales rep efficiency and effectiveness,” added Jim Dickie, managing partner, CSO Insights. “The study uncovered a wide variety of factors that can positively impact sales performance including optimizing lead generation, better alignment of the sell cycle and the buy cycle, and leveraging CRM 2.0 technologies such as sales collaboration, sales management analytics, and sales intelligence. Best-in-class sales organizations that focus on formalizing their sales process and deepening their relationship with customers are significantly outselling their competitors.”

From our point of view, those organizations willing to provide updated training on a more consistent and effective sales process, coupled with better market intelligence, are the ones winning in the local media space. So much of what we are seeing are inconsistent sales methods, lack of central management control over the sales process, more managers who are player/coaches, and a void in preparing media salespeople to have a deep strategic discussion on how digital media works with their core media or how digital media supports a small and medium-sized businesses’ needs and goals.

Recently, BIA/Kelsey has developed many new tools and research to help support managers and salespeople with market intelligence, education on the value of digital media and, more important, how digital media and traditional media can be sold side by side. Our core philosophy is that media salespeople should be the value experts with any of their portfolio products. As the value expert, they need to understand the customer’s challenges and the industry’s challenges so they can translate their portfolio of solutions to the customer’s needs and goals.

Sales is becoming less about personal relationships and more about information relationships. There is too much information on digital media available for SMBs and even brands to process which means the salesperson has to fill the role of information interpreter to become the valued consultant. Translating the myriad technical functions and features of digital media into concrete value messages, supported by simple to understand facts and figures, is what SMBs crave.

So while contemplating how to move the sales needle, think about how best to support the sales team and what support is needed to achieve even higher goals in 2012.

Four-month-old, Cincinnati, Ohio-based SmartyTags has a decidedly different approach to the technology of QR codes. Rather than just focusing on the technology, its focus is on how best to use them as a marketing tool, track uses of each code and make them part of an integrated marketing campaign.

As QR codes have advanced with the introduction of Microsoft Tags and Datamatrix codes adding to the existing QR codes introduced by Toyota’s Denso Wave, interest in how best to utilize them has increased particularly among local businesses as another direct way of tracking their media spending. We are now seeing QR codes appear on real estate signs, outdoor boards, storefronts and even on wine bottles.

Most small businesses, however, have been challenged by using QR codes because each program required a new code and often they had to pay per code and for each scan making them difficult to use and manage. What local and national advertisers have been looking for is a more accurate way of tracking QR code usage beyond how many scans were received.

“SmartyTags has developed a platform with analytics that helps address many of the early concerns about using and managing QR codes,” says J.B. Kropp, CEO of SmartyTags. “Much like SEM dashboards, SmartyTags can not only tell advertisers the number of scans, but where the scan took place, what mobile platform was used and what time of day the scan occured — all important to maximizing media spending and evaluating the success of campaigns in various locations or media.”

Coming from a marketing background, SmartyTags’ platform approach shows local and national advertisers how best to utilize the QR code by offering such options as connecting to a special Web site URL, which may contain promotional offers or more detailed information, simple contact information, a Facebook “like” button for a product or service, a simple text message, a prepared Twitter message, online video or delivery directly to a shopping cart. “Our platform provides a simple self-serve format that is easy to use and understand. We also host and develop campaign elements that can be rotated in and out making the process even easier to manage,” says Kropp.

One of the new features being introduced by SmartyTags and others is the notion of a single QR code or tag where the creative link can be changed eliminating the need for multiple codes. In the case of small and medium-sized businesses, they may only need a few codes and may only receive a few hundred scans over a month’s time. Eliminating the need for new codes for each execution makes using QR codes more attractive to a wider number of local advertisers. Offering a managed solution providing campaign development and creative flexibility, based on timing or campaigns, will truly allow QR codes to catch on with SMBs and drive the usage deeper in the local space. With the continuing growth of smartphone adoption and QR code reader applications, QR codes are well-positioned to become a vital part of local media campaigns.

Sebastien Provencher introduced the EADP audience in Mallorca, Spain, to the concept of conversational commerce. Praized Media’s latest product, Needium, mines local Tweets to uncover intent whether it is intentional or unintentional. Provencher offered the example of a series of tweets on people hungry for sandwiches or wishing for a particular type of sandwich. “While most think this is mundane, to a sandwich shop this is an opportunity to connect with an obvious sandwich fan.”

Needium’s platform examines local tweets to identify expressed needs, wants or life events that may be of interest to local advertisers. “With social media, it is a 365-day event with no holidays,” says Provencher. With 140 million tweets a day, there are many potential conversations to mine. “Those local businesses who are listening to and interacting with consumers via social media are being rewarded,” points out Provencher. There is a definite return to the beginnings of marketing where conversations between business owners and consumers are leading to long-term and valuable relationships.

When asked how to take advantage of social media, Provencher outlined his top three recommendations: “Recognize social media conversations constantly change and do not take a break, seek out influencers and make them feel rewarded, and use an authentic voice when communicating including humor.” If local advertisers can find ways to gain permission to interact with those who tweet their intentions, they have the opportunity to win new customers and build a potential long-term relationship with their customers — sweet!

The EADP conference in Mallorca was treated to the insights and good humor of Yellow Pages Group Canada’s Matthieu Houle and the company’s very funny ad campaign.

Mobile, Houle said, gives directories the appeal local advertisers are looking for. His opening slides revealed that “30 percent of YPG Canada’s searches come from mobile handsets which indicates the time is right to monetize this traffic.”

The reason for YPG’s enthusiasm, Houle said, is that “mobile fits into a directory’s established DNA because the content is local, it provides reach for an advertiser’s message, it is geo-specific, and it is searchable.”

While many complain that mobile is still too complex for local advertisers, Houle said this complexity actually creates opportunity for directory companies. “The complexity issue means that local advertisers need more of our attention to help them take advantage of mobile marketing. By helping them review campaign stats, make sense of how to improve a campaign, handle shorter campaign cycles and help them update content, we create closer relationships.”

The directory segment is uniquely positioned to provide deep local content closest to the actual sale in the form of maps, video, pictures, reviews and click to call. “With only 60 percent of advertisers having a website, the number decreases dramatically when we consider how many of those are optimized for the mobile Web. This means we have the opportunity to work with a huge number of advertisers we already serve,” Houle pointed out. The reality is, local advertisers need an easy-to-use destination to send their customers and prospect to whether a person is using a PC or a mobile smartphone.

When asked about the potential for mobile, Houle pointed to the growing number of mobile searches, saying that “intuitively these feel like new users; ones that may have not considered using the print book or the Internet Yellow Pages, but feel the mobile application best serves their needs. When we look at the demographics and the types of searches conducted, we certainly see a different kind of user.”

Billot pointed out that “PagesJaunes’ online search numbers have remained constant while their mobile search numbers have continued to increase. In fact we now have 2.5 million unique visits on mobile search, which is roughly 30 percent of our online search traffic.”

Billot remarked that “the mobile platform plays to the core strengths of the directory segment because it comes mainly in the form of an application with a dedicated audience, it becomes successful because of strong brand awareness and brand support and it offers a wider array of partners (handset manufacturers, telephone operators, OS providers) who can offer ways to monetize the mobile traffic.” In addition, he pointed out, “directories are all about local business, we understand location based searches and we have deep information on categories and segments in most local markets.”

Mobile search is a key area where the directory segment can emerge as a leader. The key to success, Billot says, is “gain exclusivity by making the database and delivery of content real time, make the content contextually specific, and be sure to accurately geotarget each listing and each location.” Blending contextually specific and geographically accurate data with links to coupons, click to call, click to Web and click to map has the potential to make directories a very compelling local product.

PagesJaunes is seeing early success with its mobile model having generated about 20 million euros in mobile advertising revenues. As mobile search traffic reaches the 30 percent mark and beyond, now is the time to begin to refine the monetization models to drive significant revenue growth on top of print and online revenues.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Brooklyn-based Pontiflex, which describes itself as “the industry’s leading mobile, email and social acquisition platform.” The real power behind the Pontiflex approach is the ability to capture email and consumer data in an open and transparent way. Advertisers only pay for the actual signups — data from consumers who have chosen to hear from them. Signup ads allow consumers to opt-in to get more information from brands and products that most interest them, without leaving the website or mobile app.

Pontiflex’s approach is to work with advertisers to create compelling reasons for consumers to click the ad and share their email address, social media connection, name and ZIP code with the assurance their information isn’t shared with anyone else besides the company they selected. “We find that if we approach signups in a transparent way, and don’t ask for too much personal information then we see a much higher rate of opt-in signups,” says Arun Krishnan, vice president of marketing. So unlike other pay-per-lead companies, Pontiflex does not resell consumer information, rather they work on behalf of each advertiser to build unique lead lists.

“High accidental clicks are a major issue particularly with mobile advertising,” says Krishnan. “Our estimates show accidental clicks occurring as much as 50 percent of the time creating a great deal of waste.” Because signup ads require action on the part of the consumer, there is no danger of accidental clicking.

Started as a pay-per-lead platform company, Pontiflex has continued to develop an approach to deliver what it calls marketing leads rather than sales leads. Gus Warren, executive vice president of sales and strategic partnerships, points out that “sales leads require consumers to surrender too much information before a relationship can be built. Marketing leads is a way of capturing basic information in exchange for something of value. It is then up to the advertiser to nurture the relationship, allowing them to capture more detailed sales information.”

When developing the signup ad format, one of the primary goals was to help create new revenue opportunities for publishers rather than getting in the way of their display ad units or taking local sales away from the sales force. Krishnan point out that “signup ads work alongside search and display ads as well as in mobile apps. The Pontiflex ad unit delivers top brand advertisers to a site or mobile app, bringing credibility and high eCPM’s in the range of $15 – $101.” Client, Parenting Weekly, used the signup ad program and realized, “this was not displacing any existing digital ad unit, so we are treating this as found money.”

Just as advertisers have migrated from clicks to calls, BIA/Kelsey is now seeing the shift begin from calls to leads. Coming out of our recent ILM:East conference, cost-per-lead and developing significant email and consumer lists were key goals for many of the daily deal and social media sites. Being able to develop a qualified leads list with email addresses and social media connections is vital to reaching a large enough audience to generate sufficient deal flow and conversion rates. Signup ads may become the new model for building highly qualified lead lists using opt-in as the primary driver of delivering relevant ads and building relationships.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Graham Clarke, CEO of Dealicio, an offshoot of 53 Technology. Dealicio is a white-label platform enabling local media companies to launch, manage and advertise daily deals. Dealicio recognized the power of social media in driving deals and spreading them through social networks from their earlier work with half-off offers. What Clarke envisioned for Dealicio was “a simple platform that would make it easy to launch and manage deals to generate profits.”

While many of the larger daily deal companies seek to be the only provider or the “powered by” provider, Dealicio is set up as a flexible platform that can be branded by the media company and integrated with other internal platforms such as e-mail server, payment systems and back office systems. “Our goal has been to make it a closed loop offer that makes it simple to integrate into a media organization,” says Clarke. Dealicio’s model is based on a per-transaction charge, but allows additional flexibility for a company to bring in affiliates to extend the offer and generate additional revenues.

Facebook integration is a key aspect of the Dealicio platform. Every deal is geotargeted and indexed, and tags are added for easy social sharing. Clarke recognizes that, “Facebook is a significant traffic source with more people interacting and turning to this source more so than even e-mail or search.” By integrating with Facebook, Clarke sees that, “reach and SEO are significantly enhanced because all deals are connected to a company’s social media stream.” Using Facebook’s Open graph protocol enables sites to integrate Web pages into the social graph. This means when a user clicks a “Like” button, a connection is made to the Web page and a graphic appears in the Facebook profile helping to further promote the offer.

When asked about the future of daily deals and group buying, Clarke felt that, “the transactional model is here to stay for both local merchants and brands.” As a form of pay-per-action, deal flow is measurable and demonstrates a clear ROI for advertisers if they are clear on the costs and initial risks of offering discounted deals. While discussing what will further compel the daily deals space, Clarke sees, “mobile as one of the major forces pushing the daily deal space because of geotargeting, and the addition of mobile transactions once they are formalized and adopted by consumers.” While it is still early days for the segment, Clarke feel strongly that, “some consolidation will occur for the basic daily deal providers, but there is still plenty of room for innovation particularly for segment specific deal offers such as electronics, clothing, children’s items and others.”

What the daily deal space has done is create, what Clarke calls, “transaction pipelines.” The real question for the daily deal providers and platforms is what other transactions are possible within this new pipeline. Clarke feels, “Dealicio’s growth is only limited if we fail to innovate and to respond to the needs of our media partners.”

We’ve been starting to see the signs of recovery for the past few months. Companies that have been cutting costs and back office expenses are now realizing they need to get the sales end of their businesses moving again. Throughout the recession, salespeople who could at one time demand higher base salaries, fringe benefits, signing bonuses and vacation time suddenly found themselves under-employed, unemployed or struggling to find a better job. Many simply hunkered down and accepted lower pay and scaled back commission structures because they did not want to be searching for a job in a down economy. Employers that were hiring salespeople suddenly found themselves in a favorable position with more prospects in the past 12 to 18 months than ever before.

Now we find ourselves in 2011 with all of the economic signs pointing to a slow recovery. Our view is that the need for new salespeople or people with enhanced skills will begin to ramp up much like we saw prior to the economic downturn. A recent Sales Gravy survey indicated “75 percent of sales companies plan to increase their sales force and 23 percent plan to maintain their headcount.” Having worked for a media sales company myself, these figures indicate that through attrition and salespeople trading up to larger or more attractive sales organizations, there is a battle brewing for qualified salespeople. It is unrealistic to think attrition won’t increase in a strengthening economy.

Another trend continuing to heat up the battle is the move away from transactional single product selling to consultative multiproduct selling with a focus on online and mobile products. As more local media companies seek to move toward multiproduct portfolios filled with digital products, they will inevitably be seeking the same types of prospects in their hiring process. Salespeople who understand how to integrate traditional media with online and mobile media continue to be highly sought after, leading to a shallow pool of candidates who can and will demand higher salaries and benefits. According to the SalesGravy survey, “77 percent of media companies surveyed expressed moderate to significant concern about the availability of sales talent to meet their hiring needs.”

We recently spoke with Robert Hawthorne of Hawthorne Executive Search, a firm specializing in media sales and sales management recruitment, about this subject and he relayed some additional challenges looming for sales recruiters. “With the elimination of relocation benefits, it’s extremely difficult for candidates to sell their homes quickly and move to a new location,” pointed out Hawthorne. “With home values slipping, many candidates are locked into their local area for jobs, which further shrinks the labor pool.”

Hawthorne is also seeing that “candidates who weathered the economic storm are starting to see the advantage of exploring the marketplace creating unexpected turnover in media sales teams.” One new challenge in the hiring battle is that online and mobile companies are moving toward creating their own sales teams rather than relying on partner organizations, thus creating increased demand rather than just replacement hiring. “The increase in new products and the opening up of new markets is creating new demand for sales talent and putting pressure on legacy sales companies,” Hawthorne said.

Those sales organizations that have not increased their investment in recruiting and training or retooled their hiring process and candidate profiles, or have relied on front line sales managers to make hiring decisions, could find the battle even tougher. Traditional media companies in particular may be even more challenged by what Hawthorne describes as the three Cs, “You aren’t cool, you don’t offer enough compensation, or you can’t help the career climb.”

Media companies that are perceived as “hot” will have the advantage including online and mobile media companies that have traditionally been more aggressive in leveraging their “cool factor” and compensation models to steal or win talent. Hawthorne believes “that local media is still a good bet for salespeople because the unemployment rate in this sector is relatively low and the products being sold are from recognizable brands.”

BIA/Kelsey has been investing time and resources in understanding how this battle will play out. In the coming weeks, we will be releasing an Advisory on this topic as well as offering continuing coverage of new approaches and success stories from traditional, online and mobile media companies. We welcome feedback and case studies from our readers, which may be featured on our Local Media blog.

Leading off the day at the Internet Summit, Chip Perry, CEO of AutoTrader, revealed that the company’s main business focus is not on e-commerce but on filling the gaps in the consumer shopping experience and providing valuable tools for sellers.

“The Internet was supposed to change the buyer-seller interaction,” Perry noted. “But AutoTrader kept in mind that people need a live person to negotiate a price, trade in a vehicle and get financing; these are common sense notions. AutoTrader understood that we needed to fill in the gaps and make the process easier to help consumers narrow their search so the end result has a greater chance of making a sale.”

Asked about what the “secret ingredients” were for AutoTrader, Perry said: “Our focus has been finding ways to bring together the most buys and the most sellers in one place. In order to do that we needed a consultative high-touch sales force to build relationships; we needed to understand how people were buying so we could create new tools and approaches for our sellers to take advantage of and to address new needs in the market.”

One new initiative revealed by Perry is the introduction of the Trade-in Marketplace, which provides instant trade-in offers that are typically above normal values, giving consumers more flexibility and value when buying a new vehicle and in turn delivering the used car inventory local dealers are seeking.

One of the other keys to AutoTrader’s dot-com success, according to Perry, has been its focus on brand marketing. Perry presented data indicating that 80 percent of people who visited the site either typed AutoTrader into the search bar or came directly to the site. He also shared that the No. 1 place people look when shopping for a used car was the dealer site with AutoTrader being the second most frequently used online place people searched for vehicles.

When asked about the importance of location, Perry mentioned that “location of the vehicle is an important factor when shopping since it expands what was once a small shopping area in your hometown.” Mobile will also play off this importance on location by allowing inventory within a dealership to be accessed, and in current testing are apps that offer the ability to enter a VIM number and get the information on the particular car and what other similar vehicles are available locally.

While many dot-coms focus on building a successful model to generate investment and ultimately the sale to a larger online company, Perry said “AutoTrader’s focus has been on focusing on marketing fundamentals, making the site attractive to both buyers and sellers so they can capture the most buyers and sellers in one place.” A successful dot-com needs to have a solid business plan that draws in advertisers first before going too far afield with more technology, applications and features since this is what allows for more growth and profitability.

There is a lot going on in online media on the East Coast evidenced by the panel on geolocation here at the Internet Summit in Raleigh, North Carolina, sponsored by TechMedia and Southern Capital Ventures. Geolocation continues to be major news given the press coverage of Gowalla, Foursquare, Google and Facebook, which are all chasing the best solution. While an ever increasing number of players continue to move into the space, geolocation remains a growing category as business models are continuing to be developed and consumer needs are finally being recognized.

Simon Salt, CEO of IncSlingers, made the point that “geolocation needs to get beyond check-ins because they are not the end game. Check-ins are merely the portal to engagement and we need to decide what the end deliverable will be.”

Amy Dalton, senior director of marketing for Topix, said that “people are experiencing check-in fatigue where they can’t possibly check in with all the services they have signed up for.”

Salt shared one creative solution addressing check-in fatigue: “POS America is utilizing loyalty cards as a way for automatically enabling check-ins each time the loyalty card is swiped.”

When asked what it will take for geolocation to take hold, Chad Reed, director of field marketing for Whrrl, supported the idea that “marketers need to bring real value to the consumer in the form of deals, offers and meaningful promotions before geolocation will take hold and move beyond early adopters.”

What may move geolocation forward is a broader definition of location. Salt put forth the idea that “location is more than a physical location; it’s a TV show, it’s a store, it’s an event. This is how Facebook will extend how location will be defined.”

The consensus of the panel was that the combination of better smartphone handsets, a new definition of location and the addition of more tangible consumer value — be that promotions, coupons or unique events — will be the main factors going forward that will define the success of geolocation.