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Let’s face it, folks, linear TV is not getting any easier. More screens, more measurement, more rate types all spell more work for your sales organizations. So with all that MORE, you know what there is less and less of…TIME.

Time is of the Essence for Sales Automation

As a product owner, the word “time” is immediately met with the term “automation.” We’re asking more and more of our sales organizations, and in turn, we need to be arming them with the kind of automated toolset that will allow them to succeed. The amount of manual work required to even get to the point where you can SELL would surprise most people.

And this is a universal problem set. You don’t even have to look outside of our own industry—look at Quality Assurance in digital as an example; there is a great deal of automated testing which allows QA folks to assess the bigger picture, plan better, and ultimately be far more efficient. Those kinds of tools are what we need.

Making Efficiency Possible 

So we should change out all the systems that power TV to be more efficient, right? Not even kind of. This is very much about progress, not disruption or dropping bombs on your engineering orgs. The systems that hold up TV are purpose-built machines that can execute like no other and that we have seen play out. I believe that we need to be designing products for the gaps, allowing these systems to be the workhorses they need to be but not allowing their limitations to create more work.

It takes collaboration and a lot of patience, but I honestly believe there is a path to unlocking the power of those salespeople by creating less friction and manual work and empowering sales organizations to do what they do best—SELL.

Possibilities are Growing for Your Sales Organization in the Future

When you think about the process required to create meaningful rate cards, manage yield across your portfolio, manage your liability, and ultimately optimize your inventory, it’s spreadsheets and databases and more spreadsheets and more databases; and all that takes away time for building and fostering client relationships, thinking about what’s next, etc. These are the kinds of processes we can, and should, be talking about automating.

And my favorite part about this issue is that the time to fix it is right now! The political season in 2020 is not far away. Premium inventory has never been more valuable. I think if you’re not at the very least in discussion around how to make the lives of your sales organizations easier through sales process automation, you’re doing a great disservice to not only your team but your bottom line.  

At Furious, we designed PROPHET to sit on top, adjacent to, or in some cases plucking out midstream of the systems that power TV sales. This allows the present day process to exist without disruption but seamlessly streamlining workflow. The power of these organizations lies within the people who run them, and spending hours a week just getting access to the data required to do your job cannot be tolerated.

So I implore everyone to take a step back, really look at what you are required to do to GET to work on a given day, and ask “how can I get to point C as if it were point A…”