Hammock partner Jim Elliott of the national advertising sales firm the James G. Elliott Company shares some tips on how to train your magazine sales force to sell digital platforms in the latest issue of their company newsletter Ads&Ideas:

Training is, of course, necessary here to sell a brand which resides in different media platforms. But that training has to be in just the fundamentals or basics of each medium—not in the technical or mechanical aspects.

For instance, a seller should understand the fundamentals of podcasting; how it is delivered, its advantages and drawbacks and what kind of advertising works with the medium, but the seller doesn’t have to be an expert in the technology. Hopefully, the brand has a podcast traffic manager to handle the technical questions.

Our client, Ancestry.com, is creating ongoing webinar programs for each of their various delivery platforms so that our sales force can become educated on the fundamentals of each electronic medium.

This is an interesting time to be in the media business. There will be lots of new media headed our way in the near future and, more often than not, they will be headed up by individuals with technological backgrounds. But at the end of the day, creating a brand is what will separate those that last from those that don’t. And a part of selling the brand is having a sales force with the right skills to communicate the brand into something an advertiser can understand.