Skills shortage in media sales apparently.

Over the past few months I have been seeing many quotes and conversations regarding the lack of top quality candidates across many media sales disciplines. I cant help but think that this 'crisis' has been brewing for a while and the industry has only itself to blame. I would guess that if you went into local schools and asked a thousand young people what career path they are considering, the amount that would say 'media sales ' will be non-existent. Why? the pay is good when you progress, the opportunities for progression are great for the right people. In many cases if you work internationally you get to travel. On the whole you get to work in an exciting team environment that is hardly boring. It can be a great life.Quite simply not many know or care about selling media or are aware of its benefits.

I have a few observations from my 25 years+ in the business, and some may agree or disagree. Media owners have collectively not done enough to educate/encourage new blood into the arena. You could argue that a 19 year old from college lacks certain levels of maturity to deal commercially with some markets, however, this is the pool of people that you are going to need to develop. Trying to attract graduates who have just completed 4 years at university doing a 'proper' degree who then decide its not for them and they need a job isn't a firm recruiting foundation. With my experience I can say with confidence that there is lot of people selling media because they needed a job and saw an ad, realised they could communicate well or they knew a friend that had sold ads and had made a decent living from it.Many seem to just fall blindly into it. Many perish and the rest survive, then jumping from job to job to increase salaries when experience allows.Paying tens of thousands every year to recruitment agencies for individuals that will drop you like a stone 6-12 months down the line when an offer for 3k more lands on their laps seems crazy to me. There has to be a better way of finding, training and keeping staff surely. I do have my own ideas that I wont bore people with on here.

This industry employs thousands selling every possible medium, where is the collective force to secure the new talent? You can't moan that its difficult when you have generated millions from ad revenues over the years and invested little to secure future talented resources. Also not all able media sales people want or can afford to live in London. In an industry seemingly obsessed with the capital, it is missing out hugely because of its dependency on getting people into the city. Again why? most agencies are too busy to see media reps. On most products if they are international your customers are not even in this country. And now lots of deals are conducted through email or telephone as face to face is too time consuming for some!

Things have to change if media owners of the future need the best people. It seems to me that it is such a lottery, maybe everyone has got so wrapped up in how the content/delivery is changing they have forgotten that they will still need quality, loyal and professional personnel to deliver it. To enable this I believe that so much more needs to be done much earlier to educate and promote the amazing benefits that come with a job in media sales. It should be a profession that is recognised not one that you fall into.