Small Business Commando News

In yesterday’s keynote presentation at the Kelsey Group’s DMS ‘08 conference in Atlanta by Marilyn Neal (not pictured here), Chairwoman of Local Insight Media took the Yellow Pages industry to task.

Marilyn Neal (not pictured here)

It was a very refreshing and invigorating presentation, and it could not have come at a better time for the industry.

Marilyn Neal has been a leader in the Yellow Pages / directional media for 40 years, and she is currently Local Insight Media.  She was at GTE, Verizon, DEX and now Local Insight Media.
It’s funny, because she’s not a typical conference speaker.  Rather than ply the audience about how great her company is (and she has plenty to brag about), she talked about the fundamentals of managing the business and running a disciplined sales organization.

There were a few messages that stuck with me.

• She is a “Sales driven leader.”   A major portion of her presentation revolved around management and control of the sales process.

• Respect the advertisers time and simplify the product offering.  This is especially important as the rep must cover multiple products (online and print) in the same call.  Customers are not allowing more time.
  Hold each sales manager accountable for checking the account prep before every sales call.  For those of you who don’t know what account prep is, it means preparing a custom presentation and recommendation that respects the customer’s time and presents the value story.

• She insists on 8 AM sales meetings every day with afternoon reporting of daily activity.  People in the post sales and production function are not allowed to contact the sales reps during selling hours.  Nor is mail allowed to be delivered on the sales floor during the sales day.

• She challenges sales managers to spend 3 days per week in the field with sales reps meeting with customers.

• Training, training, training.

• Every executive should spend at least one day per month meeting with customers.

• Every customer complaint must be addressed within 24 hours, and with the goal of 100% customer satisfaction.  She helped challenge GTE to earn the Malcolm Baldridge award by stressing customer service.

(This is not Marilyn Neal either
Marilyn challenged the industry leaders to stop allowing negative press and ideas that are based on opinion rather than facts to drag down the message.   She stressed the importance of supporting the sales team with facts, research and data to give them ammunition and confidence.

She challenged the industry to aggressively build relevant products that better match the needs of consumers and advertisers.  One example she gave was the Phoenix metropolitan directory.  She said that it takes 85 minutes to drive from one side of the market to the other.  The large directory does not properly address shopping patterns and isn’t serving the needs of people looking for local business.
Bottom line . . .

She’s bringing old school management practices back into the process, and is promoting technology as a means to better serve advertiser needs.

The “real” Marilyn Neal