A new recruitment and training agency launches this week targeting
traditional media sales people who hanker after a lucrative career in
new media.
NewMediaHR will offer a free and confidential new-media
’acclimatisation’ course for media sales people, as well as offering
media owners a re-training service for their sales departments. It will
also act as a new-media recruitment consultancy.
The new company is backed by Universal Media managing director Paul
Angeli, and two of his colleagues, director Spencer Bailey and
communications director Jon Lefley. Former media salesman Vincent
Sheppard will run the company as managing director.
Sheppard has put together an advisory panel of new-media experts, who
will devise the four-day course. The panel includes: Tim Brown, managing
director of Real Media, Matt Hopgood, digital planner at Ammirati Puris
Lintas; Danny Meadows-Klue, head of new media at the Electronic
Telegraph; Rick Sareen, director of Media 21; and Dominic Trigg,
advertising account manager for Microsoft MSN.
’These are people who know the skills required to sell in new media,’
said Sheppard. ’In many ways what we want to do here is to create an
industry standard for new-media sales training.’
’We won’t just be doing one of these one-day, ’this is a browser’
courses,’ he added. ’This will be comprehensive, taking into account all
the sales, production, and account handling skills. There is a desperate
shortage of skilled new-media sales staff. There are great business
plans out there, plenty of venture capital funding, but there aren’t
enough salespeople with the right expertise to realise the business. We
aim to change that.’