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.

Clear Channel, which has 850 stations in the U.S., was the first radio firm to “go really big” after the Telecom Act of 1996 deregulated the market. At one time, it had more than 1200 radio stations.  Clear Channel has had some measure of success but had a number of setbacks tied to various management problems (e.g., excessive expense cutting, endless reorgs, selling too much commercial time.)

After the exit of founder Mark Mays from the family business, Clear Channel has been in  pursuit of a permanent CEO that could lead a company with a lot of legacy media and propel it into its digital future.  Enter Bob Pittman, the co-founder of MTV who cut his teeth at Roberts Radio. After MTV, Pittman was CEO at Century 21, making it the first truly national real estate brokerage; CEO at Six Flags Entertainment; and President of AOL Time Warner, his highest profile position. Recently, he’s been a very active investor in both broadcasting and digital media. Some of his investments include Thrillist, Daily Candy, Group Commerce Inc. and others.

Since joining Clear Channel as an investor and chairman of its media and entertainment platforms, Pittman has focused on iHeartRadio, a Pandora rival.  Clear Channel used the incredible promotional power of its radio properties to bring to market a digital audio product that it believes will surpass Pandora.  The lead up to the event that launched the new service was all that radio has delivered for its clients for years but with a digital hook of their own at the end. 

With Pittman at the helm, Clear Channel now has a CEO that has the street credibility in the digital world that has to be taken seriously by all of Clear Channel’s competitors both locally and nationally.  That credibility should make it easier for Pittman to sell his vision to his internal team, too. 

“The problem is that advertising comes slowly to any new medium or product,” Pittman told The Los Angeles Times in May. “When I was at MTV, we projected $10 million in ad revenue for the first year. We did $500,000 and almost went out of business.”That’s how slow advertisers are to warm up to new media. But over time, it will grow.”

A considerable amount of the debate on the reclamation of the TV spectrum cites several studies that seem to unrealistically estimate the net proceeds of a spectrum auction. For example, the most recent anonymously authored study offered by CTIA and CEA suggests a $33 billion to $34 billion value to the Federal Treasury will result from the auction. However, this estimate seems dramatically off because the price of spectrum has to decrease with the greater amount of supply that will be available, an economic fact not taken into account by this study. In fact, it actually uses a higher price than listed in an earlier CEA study even though a recent sale of spectrum clearly suggests more reasonable pricing. Without realistic revenue estimates, everyone is still unsure of what the proceeds of this auction would generate.

Most revenue estimates of the sale of this reclaimed spectrum assume that everyone will be allowed to (and probably will) participate in the auction. This begs the question, will the FCC bar companies that own a certain amount of spectrum from the auction in order to best serve the interests of competition? Additionally, AT&T, if allowed to acquire T-Mobile and all of that spectrum, may not be as active a bidder. Finally, with the present or expected owner concentration of wireless spectrum, will there really be many companies with enough financing to enter into this marketplace on widespread basis? The answers to any of these questions could seriously affect the levels of revenues generated by this auction.

This discussion then bleeds into the concern that the CEA/CTIA, like many others, understates the amounts that broadcasters will receive in the incentive auction. The FCC has stated that this auction will be truly voluntary. (As a side note, Alan Frank cautioned everyone when he said at the session, “I was in the Army, I know what voluntary really means.”) In a voluntary incentive auction, television broadcasters will not just ask for the value of their operations (sometimes referred to as their enterprise value). Instead, they could take the value of their spectrum (as possibly estimated by a third-party valuation firm), and combine that number with the powerful knowledge that their participation is necessary for the sale of this spectrum. That analysis could result in much higher revenues going to individual local television broadcasters. Given the number of large markets that are in hot demand, and the number of local television stations that have to participate in those markets to clear up enough spectrum, the total amounts earned by local television stations could be substantially higher than the total enterprise value of these stations. Hence, the net proceeds earned by these auctions will be noticeably less than what has been suggested.

With so many questions on the table, everyone is turning to the FCC for answers, but for now the FCC says it is focused on securing the rights to hold an incentive auction and that all questions will be answered in time. Consequently, all questions will continue to be carefully examined until the start gun goes off.

One of the big themes in local this year is the increased amount of localization in national ad campaigns. We saw it with U-Haul and Progressive Insurance a couple of weeks ago on our podium at ILM East in Boston. Those have been mostly search plays. But we also see it with display ads on national networks developed by local companies, such as Gannett and Morris. And we see it on localized efforts placed via companies such as Centro.

A mainstay in that part of the industry is Media Networks Inc., the Stamford, Connecticut-based Time Warner-owned company that specializes in localizing national advertisers in print magazines and more promisingly — given the decline in the print magazine business — a wide variety of national and local websites.

MNI dates back to 1969, but really began transforming to the digital age in 2006. Today, digital accounts for roughly $35 million, or half of its $65 million to $70 million annual revenues. Key categories include auto, health care, finance and regional banking. Education is also a big play. In addition, the company places smaller regional advertisers that want to broadcast a national-like presence via placement in national publications.

MNI Digital head Michael Nasif tells us the company works in close partnership with agencies. “You need a very specific approach to local markets,” he says, noting that a carmaker might be pushing a family van in one part of the country and a sports car in another.

While MNI is agnostic toward media channels, Nasif says the challenge is to provide more accountability at the local level. National clients are used to greater accountability from print magazines. “The nature of a paid subscriber in terms of brand value and a trustworthy approach is not automatically replicated online,” he says.

Nasif also notes, interestingly, that while tablets have been suggested as the savior of magazines, it is going to take a lot of work, given that tablet penetration is still relatively low, and that media subscriptions on tablets are a piece of a piece of that.

When it was launched in 2004, Gannett’s Planet Discover was a pioneer in local search and later, the development of local online marketplaces. But it has lately had a lower profile, dating to a temporary mid-2007 mandate to focus on Gannett newspaper and broadcast properties. That mandate ended in mid-2008, and the company has since been aggressively going after new accounts both inside and outside of Gannett.

Today, the company, which is headquartered in Cincinnati and also maintains an office in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, provides directory, local search, events and marketplaces for nearly 100 Gannett properties. It also provides services for a wide range of non-Gannett properties. These include, most notably, CBS owned- and-operated stations, as well as McClatchy and Dow Jones community newspapers.

CEO David Lenzen tells us that the company’s directory product has especially evolved. In one installation, directory listings pull in content from CityGrid Media, such as ratings and reviews. The highly targeted content really helps “ramp up the sales effort” for Planet Discover’s partners, he says.

The modern directory actually has multiple facets to it, Lenzen notes. “We really don’t focus on it so much as an Internet Yellow Pages as an online local marketplace,” with coupons, etc. The way it has been configured it also works very well with various vertical skins. “We can easily create vertical marketplaces for a local market, including wedding, dining and specialty automotive, for example,” he adds.

The company is now leveraging its development expertise to create native mobile apps, such as a Local News reader for Apple’s iOS and Android. The news reader is based on content that has already been ingested into the company’s seven-year-old Search Publisher.

Local and vertical content is eagerly sought by national players, from The New York Times to Yahoo, MSN/Bing to AOL. Now, Thompson Reuters is leading the local, vertical charge for wire services.

In an aggressive push to lure traditional U.S. media away from the Associated Press, the information industry giant is moving into aggregation with Reuters America, striking content-sharing deals with local and vertical providers that it hopes will differentiate it from AP. Its first subscriber is The Tribune Co., which will halve its financial commitment to AP and incorporate Reuters America’s content into its Media on Demand content modules for Tribune papers.

Among the companies that will support Reuters America are Examiner.com, SB Nation and The Wrap. Examiner said that Reuters will begin distributing the local and topical content contributed by 65,000+ “Examiners” (with more than 6,000 being added each month). The local content aggregator reports that more than 22 million people see its content across 230 U.S. cities. In return for supplying locally targeted content, Examiner.com can publish Reuters’ work on its own vertical Examiner sites. The deal is similar to Demand Media’s agreement with USA Today and Hearst Newspapers.

SB Nation and The Wrap are adding sports and entertainment content, respectively. At ILM:10 last week, SB Nation CEO Jim Bankoff noted that the company now features upwards of 300 online sports communities built around teams, leagues and regions.

The big picture here? Reuters America clearly sees profitable potential in building aggregation around verticals. “Profit pools have gathered in vertical markets,” notes CEO Devin Wenig, in a memo announcing the initiative.

At ILM:10, Pandora’s Cheryl Lucanegro (senior VP of ad sales) and Brian Mikalis (VP of performance sales) made it very clear where the popular Internet radio service is headed next — to your car dashboard.

The company is leveraging two fundamental insights in driving (pardon the pun) its migration into the vehicle: More than 50 percent of all radio listening occurs in the car, and more than half of Pandora’s traffic is mobile (with more than 100,000 mobile activations each day) … a natural transition for on-the-go users.

Currently, Pandora’s auto strategy is nothing more than basic Bluetooth phone connectivity, but that will change in 2011 with manufacturing deals having been announced with Ford, GM and Mercedes.

Auto represents just the latest turf traditionally reserved for over-the-air broadcasting that Pandora is now loudly treading on. Now, the Oakland, California, service is targeting local businesses, many of which have longstanding relationships with legacy stations.

Mikalis runs an inside sales team that mainly prospects national and mid-market clients but has also begun local outreach. He emphasized that Pandora is also “aggressively talking to companies with feet on street to allow them to include Pandora as part of their network to find distribution for their advertisers.”

Pandora users personalize streaming stations around their favorite music genres and bands. This behavioral information, combined with gender, age and ZIP code, gives its sales force the ability to do multi-layer targeting for local business advertisers. Lucanegro said it distinguishes Pandora’s value propositon from traditional radio by allowing clients to “reach the right person with the right message at the right time,” and then measure how well they’re doing this.

Advertising can assume several formats (Web, mobile, audio, video, banner) and create multiple consumer experiences (branding, direct response, engagement, multi-screen). For instance, businesses can direct audio commercials to consumers, coupled with companion banners that allow them to simultaneously act on it (including unlocking local offers). The net effect, Lucanegro said, is pushing a message in front of consumer “more dramatically,” and at a price point that is competitive with its traditional broadcast rivals.

If the first two decades of the local Internet were primarily about on-boarding traffic, then CBS Local Digital Media President Ezra Kucharz foresees that the next decade will be about “opening doors to consumers, getting them the information they want, and getting them to transact.”

This philosophy drives CBS Local’s digital philosophy across its 28 owned-and-operated TV stations and 39 radio properties. Four consumer desires undergird this strategy: robust content (news, sports, local info, weather and traffic), business listings, local deals and answers to local questions. Kucharz shared with the ILM:10 audience that CBS Local will launch a Local Answers platform in January that will address queries as diverse as “who do the Yankees play?” and “who’s a trusted plumber?”

Like so many others who see deals as the hottest inferno of opportunity in the red-hot local ecosystem, Kucharz is also a believer. He spearheaded CBS’ deals launch four months ago and calls local deals “the best way for SMB to get local consumers in the door right now.” He also stresses that business listings must include “rich experiences” that exceed mere links within a directory.

Of course, none of these insights is necessarily new, so what positions CBS Local to capitalize where others may fail?

According to Kucharz, the network’s well-etched brand advantages with its local business partners distinguish it. SMBs encounter several problems in moving their message and money online, from an aversion to complex digital buying to a lack of creative to a general lack of coherent strategy. CBS’ formula to leverage its assets is “the reach of traditional media + the targeting of online media + mobile media = results for SMBs.”

To generate even greater brand and platform synergies, CBS Local is in the process of rolling up its various properties in major markets under a larger banner. In New York, for instance, three radio and one TV have been fused into CBS New York. This approach will scale to its 24 major metros in 2011. The bundled effects (both in revenue and traffic) of rolling up individual properties into an aggregated brand have produced “1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 7″ benefits.

Local media brands continue to look for ways to populate their sites with local bloggers and Twitterers. In return, they provide them with a bigger platform.

The latest to jump into the game is NBC Universal, which paidContent reports has developed “The 20” to highlight selected Twitterers in all 10 of the markets where it has owned and operated stations. The effort, which is expected to zero in on politics, sports, culture, education and crime, complements NBCU’s The Feast, which focuses on Eat, Play and Shop content, and relies on NBC writers and aggregated content from the Web. NBC will periodically adjust its list of Twitterers.

The 20 launches after New Year’s in Washington, D.C., New York and San Diego and will roll out in the remaining markets throughout 2011.

NBCU VP Greg Gittrich is speaking on the Progressive Traditional Media panel at ILM:10 next week, alongside Peter Weinberger of Advance Internet and Stephen Weis of Hearst Newspapers.

High school sports have been the centerpiece of many hyperlocal efforts. They bring to the table highly passionate fans, families and players in the hard-to-reach 12- to 17-year-old demo.

But the economics of school-by-school efforts don’t always work, whether for branding, region-wide advertisers and advertising sales, production needs, data and content acquisition, or site infrastructure. Just getting the scores on a timely basis has been a major chore, much less coverage rights. Various athletic councils tightly control play-off rights. Consequently, it truly makes sense for sites to be developed on a regional and/or national basis. But to date, nothing has been especially effective.

Gannett is making a fresh go at it, however, with Highschoolsports.net, adding to its roster of other vertical developments (moms, shopping, etc.) A start-up version of the site was acquired in 2007 from entrepreneurs who tried to leverage their customer base for Schedule Star, a software program created in 1964 that manages athlete data for 7,000 schools.

The site hasn’t developed much in the three years it has been owned by Gannett — it is currently only in 13 markets in Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee. Each of the markets contains multiple schools. Indianapolis, for instance, includes nine schools.

Now, the site is under new management and things are expected to change quickly. The company has announced that it is ready to launch 38 markets by the end of August, and 100 by the end of the year, which it expects will bring it 9.4 million unique monthly visitors. The initial flurry of rollouts includes major markets such as Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Denver.

Gannett’s local TV, newspaper and Web properties are attached to each rollout. There is also a tie-in with Gannett’s USA Today for national content and cross-promotion. While the sites are geared toward national and local advertisers, there is also an e-commerce play via MyLocker.net, which provides school, team and league-specific clothes for 110,000 custom online shops. Gannett owns a minority share in the company, which promises to give a portion of sales back to its school-partners — up to 17 percent when the schools themselves initiate the sales.

The larger question is whether Gannet intends to try to go truly national with Highschoolsports.net by teaming up with other media companies that also have their eye on high school sports. Tribune and Belo, for instance, have also been developing high school sports sites in several markets: Tribune, with several sites under different brands that have been retooled from My Varsity Sports, and Belo, with High School Game Time.