From Inventory to Impact: The Shift to Outcome-Driven Media Sales

If you're navigating the shift from traditional media to integrated digital sales or looking to unlock new revenue growth, this episode provides a clear, actionable roadmap as BIA’s Rick Ducey talks with Stephanie Slagle, Chief Revenue Officer-Graham Media Group, about how sales teams are transforming for today’s market.

At the center of their conversation is recognition of a clear shift: moving from selling inventory to delivering outcomes.

Stephanie shares practical insights on leading through change, overcoming resistance, and building high-performing, digitally fluent sales teams. She also explains how automation and AI can streamline workflows, why outcomes and not products should lead every conversation and what truly sets top sellers apart today.

Transcript

Setting The Stakes For Local Digital

Rick Ducey 0:34

Hello and welcome to BIA Advisories Leading Local Insights Podcast. I'm Rick Ducey, Managing Director at BIA Advisory Services, your source for local market media intelligence, insights, data, and strategies to grow your business. Today we're going to talk about building digital first sales teams at legacy media organizations and specifically how local TV sellers can expand their knowledge and skill set to get into developing digital revenue growth, leveraging the value they can deliver from local TV stations into campaign activations using all of the digital assets that advertisers and agencies are now looking for. So in local advertising, digital remains the growth engine for advertisers and media, and audiences for that matter. Marketers and agencies are leveraging the strength of digital with its ability to target, get performance data with the high volume attraction of audiences, and still brand trust in traditional linear media like broadcast TV, but now in cross-platform strategies, planning, and activations, and then optimizations and assessing outcomes. And outcomes is really what's um that's no longer the tail wigging the dog or whatever animal we should talk about. It's it's the thing. You know, we're really looking for outcomes now. And so how do we do that? Um that's one of the things we're going to be learning here. For example, BIA forecasts that about 20% of the $182 billion that will be spent in advertising this year in 2026 will be spent on local cross-platform video. Uh video is a particularly hot space, uh, audio is showing up. Um, but video, um, both the short form video like TikTok and threads and so on, but also long form video, both linear and digital, um, streaming um TV as well as broadcast TV, that video impression is super powerful on the TV set. And that's one of the things we'll be we'll be tracking today. And that get caught that gets complemented with other tools and the whole advertising arsenal of uh linear and digital. And and the challenge is really how do we put this together most effectively and compellingly, both to tell a client story and to deliver on that story in terms of what kind of customer or protective customer response we get back. So, how are we going to learn all about this? Well, luckily today we have Stephanie Slagle, who is VP CRO with Graham Media. Um, and Stephanie have been building, again, a digital first sales team to represent uh Graham now to better serve both your current and prospective client bases, um, looking for revenue growth, of course, in um their base and broadcast TV, but really looking for growth like the rest of the market is in digital. And um, you've built some formulas and some practices uh that provide leadership, um, support, and actual achievement in the marketplace. So I'm really excited to hear what you have to say. Uh what you've been doing at you know, your uh previous companies and now what you're doing at Graham. Um kind of um you're not even a ringside seed, you're in the ring, and we're watching you now. So really looking forward to this. Um before we jump into the hardcore substance, just be curious if you'd share a little bit about yourself, um, your background and and how you got into who you are now, leading digital first with legacy media companies.

From Clicks To Outcomes Mindset

Stephanie Slagle 3:51

Thanks for having me. That was a wonderful introduction, Rick. Thank you for having me on the podcast today. Um, so a little background about me. I can I've been in the digital ring, so to speak, as you said, since 2010, which seems like a lifetime ago. Maybe in many ways it was. Um so, but I've actually been in in um broadcast my entire career since 1995 when I started at a TV station as the receptionist, because that was the only job you could get in the 90s. Uh and so, but but over the years I I found my way to the sales uh part of the organization and ultimately watching uh consumer needs change over my years in in sales has really inspired me to continually help to stay ahead of the needs for the for our consumers. Um we've always taken our our client, no matter where I've been, I've always taken our clients' needs uh to heart. And I've always been a solutions-oriented seller. I want to solve problems. Um and so we've kind of taken that over over the years. I I have been um at a number of television station groups. Most recently, uh before coming here to Graham, I was at the dispatch uh media group in Columbus, Ohio, working with the newspapers for a number of years and then also on the TV side, uh, and then moved on over to Graham when the dispatch company sold um the TV station to Tegna. So um it's been a it's been an amazing path of helping customers solve needs, but then also helping organizations uh stay current with the needs of their customers because we've all seen uh those needs evolve and the solutions to them evolve as well. So it's been it's been a wonderful path of starting, start again, starting in digital in 2010 when it was, you know, we were selling banner ads, banner ads, and we were reporting at the time on um clicks and impressions served. And I will never forget my very first digital call. And someone said, um, well, how did it do? Right? How did my how did my campaign do? And I, and again, it was a direct client, and largely I'd been in television most of my career. But in this case, we were speaking to a large direct client in Columbus, Ohio. And how did my campaign do? And and I had that moment, that human moment of looking at this person who just gave us a lot of money, and I'm looking at an impression and click report, and I'm going, good, I think. Good. You got a bunch of clicks. I don't know.

Rick Ducey 6:33

Let's just say your campaign clicked.

Stephanie Slagle 6:36

Exactly. It clicked. And it was it was kind of a seminal moment for me to say, um, I would like to be able to tell them more. I would like to be able to tell them what impact this had on their actual results. And so that launched the journey of the um the the obsession with actually providing results to our customers.

Rick Ducey 6:57

That um that's really interesting. I mean, and that pivot point in your career, like you're saying, it was it was a different life. Um, so you kind of faced that and said, you know, I gotta change, which is rare. People don't do that. You know, they kind of live by the impression, die by the impression, let's go ahead and clicks. Um, you know, but you said, no, I mean, let me take this on, and I need to do differently. I need to do better for our clients and you know for my company. Um, so you kind of personally went through that transformation to go from you know, um king of linear, uh, so to speak, to our now I'm digital. You know, with digital, we can do more. I can answer that question better, I can perform better and I can deliver better uh for the client. So it's really interesting. So now you brought that um in your leadership role to a number of companies, as you were saying. Um, and I guess the challenge and opportunity is you've got a legacy sales team, not trying to be pejorative, but somebody who's you know in place, in market, they've got terrific relationships. You know, for the most part, they've demonstrated great success in selling advertising inventory of a certain type. But the world shifted and you know, the market's pivoted, you pivoted, uh, and now you're leading sales teams that I'm doing what I used to do, but it's not happening as well or as fast. And I'm not sure what to do differently. What should I do differently? So so people see the need for change, but people pretty much don't like change. It's pain. I I have to learn, I have to do things differently, I have to take a risk. Um, you know, I don't know these people, I don't know these words I'm using. Um, help me. So I mean you face a room full of people, and um obviously there are people that are much better um adept at this, but I mean you know, you face a room full of people like that. It's like they're leaning on you to what can I do? You know, I don't want to, I don't want to lose my job, I don't want to not be successful. Um, I want to help the company. It's been good to me, I wanted to be good to the company, my clients, and so on. So it's there's a human element to this as well as the business element. It's like, oh my gosh, you know, look at our PLs, look at our margin, um, look at our budget. We need to get this machine in in higher gear yesterday. So that's you know a light set of challenges for you. Yeah. How have you taken those on?

Leading Change With Transparency

Stephanie Slagle 9:09

Very seriously. Um, because it you're you call out the human element of it, and that's absolutely the way we look at it, is um there will come a time, and you know, whether it's five years, 10 years, even 15, who knows? We, you know, everything is moving faster than it used to. Um, but there will come a time when, you know, what we think of as the legacy TV sellers of today, um, that role won't be the same. And so I I tell all of our leaders, you know, there will that time will come and your team will be looking at you and saying, why didn't you prepare us? And if you're not working to prepare them to have these types of conversations that we know are the future, the direct conversations, uh, which are the future of our organization and our industry, if you're not preparing them to have those conversations, you're letting them down. And and there's resistance, right? So it you, you as the leader uh have to push through the resistance of look, we've got to do this, we've got to try this, we've got to help these customers differently because they need it. They need the help and we're perfectly positioned to help them. We care about helping them, but it really is um, you know, Catherine Batalemente, our CEO and I often call it a labor of love because there is a lot of like, there's a lot of resistance to it, like, well, but we're doing okay and things are going fine now. But as you know, the leaders of the ship, you can see a little bit further down the road and you can see that this, the direction, the direction of the industry as we have it today is clearly changing. And so if we're not, if we're not preparing our teams for that change, even if it's uncomfortable and they don't want to, uh, then we're doing them disservice. And so we tackle that through Catherine and I are very transparent, right? We tackle it with this is this is some of the changes. These, this is how much um revenue, how much the revenue is to the company is declining through the retrans conversations, right? There's a lot of things happening that maybe those those sales teams on our orgs don't have purview into, but we want to make sure they do. We want to make sure they understand we're putting you through this for your own good. We're making you eat your vegetables for your own good, right? And so it's a lot of, it's a lot of um leading by example. Let's go do it, let's just figure it out, let's show people what we can do because we have a lot of faith in our sales teams that they also want our communities to thrive. And that's our vision statement at Graham is helping our communities thrive. And we mean our communities, and sales and businesses are a very large part of our community. And so helping our communities thrive is is key. And we we tell our salespeople that's really what we're about, and we hope that you are too.

Rick Ducey 12:00

Right. Yeah, I always love a chance to use a tortured metaphor, uh, but but for change and resistance, it's like the frog and uh the boiling water kind of thing. So it's not so bad. It's not so bad.

Stephanie Slagle 12:11

That's right.

Rick Ducey 12:12

You can see where it's going though, right? So we need to do something differently here. And you're you point out some objective things, you know, budgets, um, the ability to sell competitively against other media, pure play, digital, and so on. It's like uh this is our game and it's changed. You know, there's new rules. And if you want to stay in the game, um, you have to play by the new rules. You have to learn the rules and learn how to be effective with them and use them to leverage your wins. So that makes a lot of sense. I mean, so some of that is um, I guess maybe going back to the human element a bit, but also that change in resistance and the mechanism of how you encourage, you know, hopefully most of the people to make that transition from what used to work so well to what doesn't work so well and need to do some new things. Um can you can have a top-selling TV uh performer? Then you say, well, now we've got you know social video, we've got our streaming um uh operations going on, um, you know, maybe fast, maybe direct-to-consumer, maybe some other distribution partnerships, uh, virtual MVPDs, um, you mentioned um some of those uh channels. So how how do we um sell that inventory? We sell it differently. You know, the data's different, the promises are different, um, the way we book it is different, it's programmatic, not IO kind of things. So it's a different business process, opening up new opportunities. Does everybody make that transition? Or who from the existing team, what kind of characteristics or training are they most responsive to to make that transition? And then just to make the question even more complicated, um where do you find new people? Um, so you start with your existing sales team, of course. Of course, their performers are trusted, but at some point not everyone's gonna make um that transition for their own personal reasons, maybe, um as well as their professional kind of aptitudes, whatever. And then you need to fill in with strong sellers that maybe come from pure play digital.

Who Adapts And How To Hire

Stephanie Slagle 14:04

Yeah, yeah. Wow, that is a that is a big question. Um, you know, who some we were very clear, some people um don't want to make the transition and and are pretty vocal about, you know, we've actually even over I've over the years, over all the years I've been doing this, have people come to me and say, this is not what I signed up for. And my answer is typically, I get that. And this, but this is where the company has to go. This is where we have to go. Um, what what we found is that good salespeople will are are smart and will figure it out and um care about their clients. And ultimately that's really it. So there's the two things, the two, the one main thing I look for in a in someone who I know is going to be successful in digital is they're a problem solver. If you have a problem solver, um problem solver with a nice mix of intellectual curiosity, those are my two uh traits that I look for in a digital seller, and mainly because the problem solver is is not obsessed with selling the product, they're obsessed with solving the problem, identifying and solving the problem. And if you can identify and solve a problem, you will be so successful in sales no matter what you sell, right? And and that's the big one. And then intellectual curiosity because um it's different. Every single sale you make is different than the last, exactly different. And so you have to be curious about it's not an assembly line sale, like like television potentially could be, right? If it's you're kind of selling the same ads to the same, but it's not an assembly line. There is a different nuance to every single one. There's different targeting, there's different um um analysis, different analytics on the back end. There's so many variables inside of a digital sale. And you as a seller have to be intellectually curious about why isn't that working? I'm not angry, I'm not angry and gonna like be nervous that it's not working, but instead I'm gonna go, oh my gosh, why isn't that working? And how can I make it work better? And so those are the things that I see in a successful seller. And we we are grateful to have so many of those on our teams, even on our, you know, typical legacy TV teams. Uh, it just has to be, it has to be um, they have to be comfortable with what that looks like on the digital space. As for how we get new people, that that is um that I I will tell you that has been more challenging over the last few years because um it's a it's an interesting thing with with a uh younger generation of people who don't who have kind of a bad taste in their mouth for sales. And so, and and I will tell you ironically, I was kind of the same. Here I am chief revenue officer of a company, but in the when I started selling, I was kind of the same. I thought I don't I don't know that I want to be in sales. But as soon as I realized and and flipped the script for myself and said, well, I'm not just selling something, I'm actually solving problems and helping people as soon as I did that. And so that's kind of what we do. Uh, we've also changed our comp plan so that we are not 100% commission based. And because we recognized a couple of years ago that that was a barrier for people who were not incredibly comfortable coming in on what their minds said it was 100% commission, like uh in the fear of you know, a lot of these younger sellers coming in was, well, I'm not gonna eat, right? If I don't make money, and so we kind of exactly so we switched up our comp plan to kind of account for that and make sure that they saw that we're we're valuing what you do here um with a with a different commission structure. So, but we're very we're very enthusiastic about our mission and how our salespeople can can help us um help our customers.

Comp Plans And Talent Pipeline

Rick Ducey 17:53

Yeah, it's good. It's and I I love your concepts and the words you picked. As my two girls are growing up, um uh we would always have this conversation where I'd say there's two kinds of people in the world. People um one kind is a problem finder, the other kind is a problem solver. I said, trust me, you want to be in the problem solver group. And to solve a problem, if you run up something you don't know or can't fix, you don't give up. That's not the end of the journey, that's the beginning of the journey. Then you figure it out.

unknown 18:19

Absolutely.

Rick Ducey 18:19

And then you solve the problem.

Stephanie Slagle 18:21

Yeah, I tell my nieces, my nieces and nephews are all in different fields, but I tell them when they ask for advice, career advice, I always tell them find problems and solve them, and you will not have any problem with your career. Just find problems and help solve them.

Rick Ducey 18:36

Positive. Let me switch to um, if I could, a couple um, I guess more nuts and bolts kind of things. So um people have to learn, they have to change while they're doing their main job. I mean, they have to keep bringing in revenue. Um and it is different, the whole workflow uh and what data tech um and processes and you know how you build stories and deliver the success results uh to clients. Uh so there's a lot of work, uh, and there are technology tools uh that people can use, but I know that you've been active in leveraging um, you know, AI kind of uh platforms, automation platforms, the idea being, you know, if there's you know, I I think you had just done a webinar where somebody said there were, I forget, 27 workflow steps, or uh, I know other people have said there's 35 workflow steps, it's like you you're killing me smalls. Um if there's some way we can reduce the workflow steps and have people do actual intellectual curiosity and you know do actual problem problem solving and following up with the client. So how how are you, and I know you've tried several different solutions trying to find the best fit, but there are, and we don't need to be specific with vendors unless you feel you want to, but I mean what would how do you arming yourself, the company, and your and your sellers with technology and and tools and uh kind of resources to be successful?

Workflow Pain And Automation

Stephanie Slagle 19:56

Oh, that's a that's a great question, Rick, because I am obsessed with uh streamlining because we have so many things to do now uh that that we've got to get to a point where we're streamlining some of these processes. And so we have we have taken a lot of our standard processes and and my my famous my team says this to me all the time, but the fame, my famous quote is, if we build it today, is this how we would build it? And the answer is almost always no. And so then my second question is, okay, well, how would you build it if build it if you built it today? And so let's investigate that. And so as we as we look through our workflows, every single person, and I asked them because they're the ones that are on the ground doing it, every single one of them would say, Oh my goodness, no. I mean, if we had to build this today, it would be completely different. And so that's the beginning of it is how would we build it? And um, we don't always have the ability to bring in the things that that we would like to because the connections aren't there. But boy, I will tell you that of late with with you know the the speeding up of AI, we've had a lot more opportunities to streamline things than we would have five years ago. And so we've done some pretty radical things. Um, and this is radical on a TV sales force. Like we have taken make goods completely out of the hands of our sales reps. Because when we looked at it, we thought, man, that's a that's a big old, big old time suck for them is doing reselling the spot that they sold already, and now they've got to resell it five times. And so figuring out and with our partners, and it really is, we have we have wonderful, wonderful technology partners who help us. As you can imagine, I'm pretty mouthy, right, about what we need and how how we can help. And so, but they're always so wonderful to uh visualize with us because Graham is a company that is, we have large markets, um, we don't have a ton of stations. So there, but that's kind of the perfect match for partnership with these technology companies because we can actually make something real in Houston, Texas, um, that could actually really impact the industry. And so we were very fortunate to have wonderful technology partners who will help play along with us and say, this is nuts. How can we fix this? Now, a larger company may not have that luxury because it's a lot more, it's a lot more difficult for them to move 85 stations forward than it is for us to move six forward. And so we kind of provide a little bit of a petri dish for that. But um automation on things that need to be automated is really important to me because it's important to our large agency partners. And so that's something we really have to lean into and help figure out for them. So it's been, that has been a a project, a really fun project of mine because um I think we need it. I because to your point, this is different. The digital sale is wildly different and there's more to it. And so, in order for me to task these salespeople with that extra amount of work, I really need to remove some of the day-to-day work that they have. And so we're making investments to do that.

Products Vs Outcomes Philosophy

Rick Ducey 23:11

That's fantastic. Um, I have um two more questions, if I could. One um is of all the different things that you could be selling, um, obviously you've got your TV station and you've got a you know a whole range of digital kind of video, um, audio, um, social, interactive kind of things you could do. Um what do you have sellers that know how to sell? At some point, it's like, well, it's not it's not a sales problem, it's a product problem. Or, you know, the product has really helped me get the leverage and and growth I want. Um how do you, you know, what do you go to market with? What's your product set that you think is like this is a competitive differentiator? Um obviously you can bring TV uh to the market, which uh I guess more people can these days as if it becomes adjustable through programmatic channels. But I mean, um you've got the uh feet on the ground, you've got a lot of relationships with the TV station over the years, and you can bring in the digital kind of solutions so the people can can bring in integrated cross-platform measurement, targeting, optimization, and then performance. Um, which kind of your favorite products to go to market with to really get the growth you're looking for?

Stephanie Slagle 24:22

I love that question. And I'm smiling and smirking because um, if anyone who works for me would know, oh my god, he did not ask about products because I get because I always say the difference maker is how we look at things. And so it's it's not actually so much the product that we bring, it's it's the the analysis. Because I this is my true belief. A client who places their buy in your hands does not care about the product, they only care about the outcome. So hence our our our uh motto for this year, which is driven by outcomes. Because I always tell them, I always tell my teams, if you're leading with the right types of conversations, the product is a secondary conversation. The outcomes are the first conversation. And so the the that product set is wildly different depending on the needs of the customer and um and the outcomes they need to achieve. And so the outcomes will actually that would answer your question, depending on the outcomes of client would answer what kind of product set I would bring. And that nuance right there is the hardest thing to teach somebody.

Rick Ducey 25:31

It really is because it is because yeah, it goes back to being Glenn, I'm sorry.

Stephanie Slagle 25:35

We even had a training session yesterday with digital. And we're, you know, I tell I told people, we are, we you need to learn marketing. That you need to be able to have a marketing conversation with your customer about solving their needs. And the product is an is almost in the background because here's the other thing as we optimize, that product set will change significantly. As we optimize the campaign, I may start you with a CTV and a geofence targeting video campaign, and then some, you know, all kinds of email and all these different things that I think are going to work, but within four to six weeks, that will change drastically once I start learning the behavior of your customer. And so our difference maker is the way we optimize and the way we think about your campaign. And so I often tell our teams the reporting call is the most important sales call because that's the call where I'm telling you if my hypothesis worked and if it didn't, what we're gonna do next time and how we're gonna continue to iterate on your campaign. And that's our difference maker. And it's funny, it's funny because over the years, I answer this question so many times for our sales people. There's nothing different about us. Like we don't have, we don't have anything that anybody across the street is selling. And I was like, absolutely, and get used to that. But what we do have is we think about things differently, we approach the campaigns differently, and uh we deliver on results. And what we find is when we do that right, our clients don't leave. When we're doing that right, the clients don't leave.

Optimization And Reporting As Sales

Rick Ducey 27:09

Yeah, I mean, and I like your um angle on the marketing aspect too, because it it sort of brings to mind um selling um features of a product versus selling benefits, and so it's uh you know, it's like sell me this pen. It's like, well, it's got blue ink and it's made out of plastic. It's like I actually couldn't care less. Well, you can write the great American novel with this, you know, you may be selling exactly yes, and so you know, let's focus on the benefits, let's focus on what your business needs are, and we'll assemble the right solution set to deliver on those benefits, you know, the the um the uh benefits, not the features. What do you you know, why do you care how that video engagement is happening, if it's streaming or if it's linear, if it drives somebody to your tier three auto lot, that's what we're that's what we're looking for. So that's great. Um thank you so much for for your generous um sharing of time here and your um and I love your insights and your all the programs that you're doing and the change you're doing for your company, but also you know, it percolates out into the industry, of course. Is there anything that um I I didn't touch on that you'd like to bring up before we close out?

Stephanie Slagle 28:19

Uh I think one thing I I really like to impress upon people is um is focusing on our customers. This is what I focus on with my salespeople all the time. If you focus on the customer success, success, not just they bought us and they and we we did a transaction. But if you focus on your customer success, that's that's where winning happens for everybody. It happens for you as a seller, it happens for your client, it happens for your company, ultimately the industry. Um, that's where the win is. And it's just really focusing on the customer success and genuinely, genuinely driving to that. That's what that's what the success of all of it is.

Rick Ducey 29:03

Hard to question that. It sounds like a beautiful thing. And you're doing it. It's exciting. Congratulations. I know it's not easy.

Stephanie Slagle 29:10

This was fun.

Customer Success As The North Star

Rick Ducey 29:11

Yeah, absolutely. Stephanie, thank you so much for being with us here today. Um, sharing your experiences and insights, you know, your leadership, and you know, um on behalf of the industry, we need more people like you uh getting this done uh to help everybody in the whole mix here. Um, if you have any questions, don't um hesitate to reach out to either us here at BIA or or Stephanie. Um I know you have an active speaking um calendar, so that that's great to see you out there and sharing this all the time. Um we look forward to having you join us again at our next podcast, and we'll have another exciting speaker talking about leading and local. Thanks so much for joining us today.