Archive for June, 2011
How to Succeed in Digital
Today I have a new direct report starting and am very excited. Bright, articulate, driven and already adding value even before she starts. I was putting together a “how to succeed” document for her and figured I may as well share it. Utterly presumptuous.
I currently lead sales in the East for MediaMath. I’ve led consulting teams, operations teams, yield teams, biz dev teams and, now, a sales team. When building my teams, I’ve looked for the same thing: Driven multi-talented athletes who love marketing.
If you want to succeed in this business, here is my list of how to do it:
Execute – you simply must get things done and that is job one. Don’t get caught up in the hype. Don’t spend days at Adtech and drop the ball on driving your results. The conferences and lunches and drinks are the gravy. My daughter has to eat her dinner before she gets to watch her shows and you have to sell some stuff before you can go to iMedia. I’ll admit to having fallen into this trap at times. Also, don’t try to be too smart. Smart without getting things done is an unemployed person that people meet at Starbucks in Astor Place to “pick their brain”. Better to be described as “wow, he’s an animal. he just gets things done”.
At Cause – this means that you create what happens. Things don’t happen to you, you make them happen. As far as I’m concerned, every campaign of any of your clients is your problem. As Smokey the Bear says, “only you can prevent forest fires”.
Intellectually curious – you should find this stuff incredibly interesting. All of it – from learning how client-side cookies work to having lunch with an SVP of Analytics at a major holding company. If you find yourself sitting in the wrong panel at AdTech and it’s about SEM for local businesses, you should think “well, I’m here, how is this relevant for me? What can I learn?” Specifically to sales, while I appreciate guys who just love the sales game and love to close, if you don’t love the industry and don’t appreciate a real marketing challenge and how to solve it, you simply won’t do well with me and you won’t understand how I expect you to sell.
Make sure it’s hard – If it’s easy, you’re not doing it right because anyone else could do it and then who needs you? Trust me, winning six championships was hard for Michael Jordan. So if you feel like it’s easy, work harder.
Absorb like a sponge – related to being curious, you absolutely need to absorb what people are saying and doing in the industry (and by the way – those are two different things). What are they thinking? How does it impact my company and me? You do that in a number of ways.
- Conferences – meet with people and LISTEN. I learn more at conferences than people learn from me (and that is my goal). Sure, I make contacts to follow up on, but I spend most of my time listening and learning. I ask questions rather than pitch. I also focus. I see people at conferences with their laptop open, managing email or IM’ing a colleague or whatever. Sure there are times when there is something you simply have to get done (see “Execute” above) but multitasking rarely works because you end up doing both things poorly. So if you’re going to be at an event, focus on the event. I no longer bring my laptop to conferences for just this reason – I couldn’t focus. And if I find myself focused on my email or something else, I leave, because the conference is not earning my attention.
- Network – meet with people in the business. I’m shocked by how many people simply don’t leave the office and don’t meet with people outside their company or even their department. Sure, there are internal and external jobs, but an hour at lunch with a counterpart from another department or a partner, customer or competitor can give you a whole new perspective of what you are doing. If you’re internal and you don’t think you know anyone, use Linkedin. Find someone. Even if you’re Ad Operations you can join Admonsters and meet people and then go to lunch or grab a drink. Knowledge sharing like this helps you and the company.
- Read – many people in this industry love to tell people what they are thinking. After all, why on earth would anyone have a blog or tweet? Read, absorb, and relate it to what you do. There are a few publications and people you simply must read regularly:
- Adexchanger – this is a must on a daily basis. John Ebbert does an incredible job bringing together all that is important in the industry. I insist that my team read this daily and they should expect to be tested on it (“yes, Gabe, this will be on the final”).
- Exchangewire – also a must focused more on the European market but lots of US as well. Don’t be a typical American – there is a lot of interesting stuff going on outside of the US and it’s applicable to you even if you “just” do AdOps or “only” sell in the Midwest.
- Blogs – there are a few bloggers you have to read when they post and I focus specifically on guys who are (a) doing stuff and (b) have different lenses than me. Here is my short list (in alphabetical order):
- Twitter – note, I didn’t say Tweet. I said Twitter. It’s a firehose of information and, if managed correctly, you can let the world do your research and collate for you. Actually tweeting is a personal decision driven largely by personality and motivation. You can’t be made to tweet and twitter accounts where someone is made or encouraged to tweet tend to show it. But you should have a twitter account, follow the right people, and spend 10-30 minutes daily seeing what is being talked about. As for who to follow – start with Adexchanger’s list in the sidebar and follow people who are followed by people you find interesting..
Don’t believe the hype – Chuck D was right. Take everything that is written or said with a grain of salt. We all have our own perspective and motivations. Recognize that a post on a company’s blog is their perspective, not necessarily the only perspective. Articles in imedia, clickz, mediapost also are written from a specific perspective and tend to be position pieces supporting a specific product or service (oh, and so do Q&A’s on adexchanger). That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read them, just the opposite. Understanding these perspectives is critical. I read and re-read any articles from guys at other DSP’s and networks to learn what they are thinking. Where are they going? What are they telling my prospects that I need to counter? But they may not be “right”.
Be thankful – I consider myself extremely lucky to have literally fallen into this industry. Two weeks before I got my first job in advertising I interviewed for international internal audit at AIG. Let’s just say I’m much happier meeting with agency heads than I would be reviewing claims processes in the Philippines (and I think about that often). People on my team should appreciate that they are in a high growth, super exciting, fun industry. We should also remember that, at one time, automobile manufacturing was high growth with 100s of startups.
Carry on.
