Jessica Hoffman
Senior Account Executive, Tucker Publishing Group
How long have you been in media advertising sales, and how did you get your start?
I was hired full-time at Tucker Publishing Group in December
2001. During my last semester at the University of Southern Indiana, I was an advertising intern for Evansville Living magazine. The owners hired me before I graduated, and I started in December after I completed my finals. I served as a marketing coordinator in my first year at the magazine. The sales reps then asked me to schedule sales calls for them. When the owners were interested in hiring an additional sales rep, I thought I should throw my name in the hat. I figured that if I could schedule sales appointments for others, I could likely do it for myself.
Who had the most influence in helping you become successful in sales?
A combination of people and experiences has led to my success in sales. I started selling Girl
Scout cookies as a kid, followed by yearbook ads in high school. I ran track in high school and worked hard at it. I’ve always had a competitive spirit, but it has always been about trying to be the best I can be. I selected advertising as my major and interpersonal communications as my minor in college, because I liked the professors that taught most of those courses: Bob Jeffers and
Leigh Ann Howard. I was not a quick success out of the gate in sales. I credit the owners of the magazine, Todd and Kristen Tucker, for giving me the time I needed to figure out my plan of approach and the systems I needed to create to be successful. Jennifer
Roe and Prudence Hoesli, who served as account executives alongside me at the beginning of my career, were great role models both personally and professionally. Ryan Dohrn and Brain Swell Media’s webinars were extremely helpful when navigating sales through the pandemic. My identical twin sister works alongside me daily as the magazine’s other salesperson. Sales is a difficult job, and we lift each other up. We occasionally tag team on appointments and use each other as sounding boards. It has been such a blessing in my adult life to come to work and know we are doing this together.
What advice would you give to those struggling with media sales and/or who have become frustrated with the new digital solutions they must master to represent their company to advertisers?
Show up every single day. Try very hard not to measure your success on a given day by your current sales number. Focus your day on enjoying your phone interactions, in-person meetings and email correspondence with people. Stay up-to-date on the industry by reading about it, as well as reading about the local community in which you are selling. Treat the people you are meeting with respect. Everyone is extremely busy. Show up prepared for your appointment by knowing about their business and what you want to accomplish at your meeting. As a company, we have been print-centric and are just now getting into offering digital solutions. I’m choosing to approach it with a sense of excitement and possibility. There is so much to learn about digital. I’ve always wanted to offer clients options that are best for their business; digital is giving me those additional tools.