Talk about a great quote. Ain’t that the truth!

The answer to your question about finding the good sales staff lies first with having a good sales manager (or consultant). One who understands the product and also is experienced and successful in sales. This person needs to bring the methodologies that work into the public space. And, they need to be tough, that is, we in public media are not very good at cutting ties with low level performers. A good sales manager cannot afford to “carry” someone on the sales team. If targets aren’t met, the incumbent is gone and another is found who makes it work. We tend to analyze the cost of replacing people - which is not insignificant - but we don’t analyze the cost of under performance.

I mean, if I wanted to hire a sales person or manager or team that was focused on selling on multiple platforms and understood new media sales models and all that, would I just setup a high-paying (high commission) environment and then search for the best, most experienced commercial sales folks I could find? This is a tough one, I think. We need hard-nosed sales teams to keep moving us forward (without compromising our values or the law as laid down by the FCC, of course).

I do think your last points make a ton of sense. We need to bring in folks that are real-world (even commercial world) “pros” in their work. And we need to be prepared to be transformed by them. Indeed, we need to ask them to help transform us.

There’s a growing place for public media in the world as commercial media devolves into a a crass miasma of marketing. It deserves support, financial support, and can help a thoughtful audience connect with thoughtful companies along the way.

PRP still must deal with some resistance to new ideas from the tradionalists at the station, (the business-like approach and the “commercialization” of some of it’s services - like on-line or ancillary delivery of programming) but, as the need grows and the comfort level with this sales approach works, most find that the “public radio sound” is not negatively affected and the bottom line does improve.

The key here is that while we’re very good at programming, and very good at soliciting contributions from listeners, there are aspects of our business in which we don’t have experience and we should learn that to become expert we need to employ professionals. One area where this approach applies is in sales and another is in helping us convert our thinking from public radio or TV to the new paradigm of public media in all its forms.