Company Company Profile
Haymarket is responsible for more than 100 consumer, professional, business and customer publications. Consumer magazines, many with editions around the globe, range from modern and classic motoring and motor sport to classical music, consumer electronics including hi-fi and home cinema, and football. Business and professional interest magazines range from medical reference data to news coverage of marketing, advertising, public relations and charity professionals, management and human resources, computer security, the print industry, horticulture, planning and development, as well as youth workers.
Media Sales, what it involves
Selling advertising space is crucial for any publishing company. Advertising brings almost all the revenue for business-to-business titles and just under half the revenue for magazines sold on bookstalls. Media sales staff identify advertising markets and the big players within them.
Working in small teams, members of an advertising department have their own clients. They ensure that they get to know each of their clients well so that each potential advertiser understands how advertising in the magazine will help them develop their own business.
Staff use the knowledge which they have built up through effective training and experience. Part of the route to success is, of course, knowing competitors closely.
A sales career at Haymarket
Advertising is normally sold by telephone or face-to-face. Telephone sales involves selling classified - recruitment or services - advertising. Display advertising is selling adverts to companies that try to sell a brand or a product.
As a career develops, the salesperson acquires bigger, higher revenue-generating accounts and begins to sell face-to-face. Ultimately, the best will obtain very senior sales roles such as advertisement directors and ultimately may become publishing directors. Haymarket has a meritocracy culture and a clear career path, which supports such a culture.
For the right person, working in a commercial, people-oriented role like this will be a challenging opportunity in a professional working environment like no other.
Is this the right career choice for you?
Team targets forge close working relationships and encourage learning across the team. The media sales environment is not for the faint heartered. Magazines have deadlines and cannot go to press with empty pages. It is a job that:
- does not have strict 9-5 working hours and has challenging targets which are set to be achievable, but stretching, which sometimes means there do not appear to be enough hours in the day;
- includes a multitude of rejections from clients who do not want to advertise and it takes a degree of detachment to avoid taking it all personally;
- includes its share of administrative tasks, keeping client records up to date so that each client gets personal attention;
- after closing a difficult sale and reaching a tough target, teams will always bask in the congratulations of its members with a pat on the back and the occasional bottle of champagne after work
Networking with clients and agency contacts is crucial to a successful career in media sales. It often means making sure you attend events that attract the key figures in an industry. These include international motor shows, black tie award dinners at famous venues like The Savoy and the Royal Albert Hall, or festivals like the Le Mans 24-hour Race in France, where many Autosport staff spend the weekend under canvas.
