Hiring the next generation of local media sellers requires a shift from legacy experience to candidates who are digitally curious, data-literate, and self-motivated to win. Top performers are organized, goal-driven, and possess a natural competitive spirit that fuels consistent follow-through and client success. Strong hires also demonstrate consultative selling skills, storytelling ability, and a passion for helping local businesses thrive. Managers should watch for red flags like tech aversion, disorganization, and a transactional mindset, which often signal underperformance. By focusing on mindset, adaptability, and strategic thinking, local media companies can build sales teams equipped to lead in a hybrid, AI-enhanced marketplace.

Clients and colleagues frequently ask my opinion of people they are considering hiring. It’s often a request, “Dave, what do you think of each of these candidates? Who would you hire?” And the requests are accompanied with resumes, each extolling the fantastic accomplishments the candidate has achieved through their career.

Clarity fuels progress—and growth begins with intention.
At Marketing Insights, we believe that setting bold goals and committing to personal growth isn’t just smart—it’s essential.

Success in today’s world demands more than just talent. It requires vision, discipline, and the willingness to keep evolving. Whether you're leading a team or navigating your own career, growth happens when you set clear, purpose-driven goals and show up for them—day after day.

This collection of quotes celebrates:
✨ The power of intentional goal setting
✨ Growth as a lifelong practice, not a final destination
✨ How reflection, learning, and resilience create lasting momentum

The news media, including newspapers and news magazines, are often criticized for printing only the bad news. If they printed editions with coverage of their own industry, then they wouldn’t have much choice but to print the bad news because the good news for print media is difficult to find. There are a few sparks of life, however, and more so in magazines than newspapers, as the conversion from the physical to the digital version of print media continues albeit slowly.

If you are a sales leader or sales manager, you struggle to get everything done. You want to work with your team, but you often find yourself being pulled into meetings and conversations that have no ability to help you reach your sales targets. It can be difficult to decide what gets your attention and what doesn’t deserve your time.

To achieve top sales performance, you don’t need a sales team dominated by business degrees from Harvard or resumes full of eye-popping company logos. Those attributes are all well and good, but they’re not requirements for top performance. Instead, look to your sales managers. Are they prepared to provide the leadership and coaching their sales teams need to maximize selling potential?

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A new report shows that 55% of Americans say their online search habits have shifted significantly over the past five years—and they're increasingly discovering products through ads, editorial content, and apps rather than traditional search engines. This evolution marks a major opportunity for local media sellers: consumers trust ads across multiple platforms and make quick purchasing decisions when they discover products via native, embedded content. For local sales teams, the key takeaway is clear—you don’t have to be Google to win in the search-driven economy. You just need to help advertisers show up in the right context, across trusted platforms.

A few of the panelists started showing organization charts, discussing how they were restructuring their organizations to improve results. Each chart showed hierarchies of boxes, each with a functional name. Some showed how they were restructuring sales and marketing, moving to a Revenue structure. The presented the “before” and “after” org charts, the only thing that seemed to have changed is the CRO role and a RevOPs hierarchy combining marketing and sales ops.

Media sales professionals must refocus their efforts on understanding the advertiser’s business rather than simply promoting their own multi-media offerings. While digital media has become ubiquitous and powerful, traditional media still plays a vital role in building trust, reach, and local relevance—and the two work best when used together. Tools like The Media Audit and Scarborough provide rich qualitative insights into consumer behavior and advertiser categories, helping media reps consult rather than just sell. The key to success lies in empathetically listening to advertisers, diagnosing their challenges, and crafting solutions that genuinely serve their goals. In a world full of shiny digital distractions, media reps must “keep their eye on the ball”—the advertiser—and build relationships rooted in strategy, not salesmanship.

To start, recognize that entire teams—and not just individuals—require clear feedback.’ Making the leap from individual contributor to manager can be fraught: for the new manager, their direct reports, and the organization as a whole. New managers tend to rise into their position based on past success. But few have the experience or training to effectively manage a high-performing team.

The world of work is filled with challenging moments, unexpected events and unanticipated reactions. Learning to lead yourself first is critical for survival and seizing any possibility of success in these stressful moments. One of today’s essential skills is developing a personal system for keeping control of the logical thinking part of your brain when your body’s natural reaction is to rip away this control in a flood of chemicals. Get this right, and you’re at your best when many are at their worst. Get it wrong, and you’ll set an example for those around you — just not the type of example you want.

Businesses and media in all their forms are preparing for what comes next. Some will stumble into that future, others will accelerate and others will remain steadfast – always familiar, comforting and welcoming. TV is the best example of the latter. TV is not immune to the popularity of streaming video services and content accessible from many devices, but it remains too healthy to succumb. TV is still the most trusted or one of the most trusted advertising media.

Convenience stores did their best to remain convenient to customers during the pandemic; however, the abrupt change to many people’s work schedules and their reluctance to shop inside stores disrupted the entire convenience store model. With fewer people working and remaining at home, the demand for motor fuel declined significantly. Similar to many other local businesses, convenience stores have continued to face labor challenges and supply-chain issues.

Meta’s reported decline of 20 million daily active users across its family of apps suggests that even the largest digital platforms can lose audience momentum when feeds become cluttered, repetitive or low-value. For local media sellers and agencies, the lesson is clear: advertisers do not simply need impressions; they need attention in environments people still trust, use and value. Radio, TV, cable, print, outdoor and local digital can use this moment to argue that quality content, community relevance and audience loyalty are increasingly valuable alternatives to algorithm-driven clutter.