Behind the Screens: Meet Manager of Sales Strategy & Enablement Samantha Wilson

Welcome back to ‘Behind the Screens,’ a monthly blog series in which we introduce members of our Cox Media team and share their stories.

This month, I was joined by Samantha Wilson, Manager of Sales Strategy & Enablement. We discussed her unique role, her team, and how she forms and leverages internal partnerships.

Welcome, Samantha! You’re the Manager of Sales Strategy and Enablement. What does that entail?

That is a great question because it’s a very unique role. 

My responsibility is twofold. First, I report to our Director of Marketing, but have a dotted line to our Director of Sales. I am a part of just as many sales meetings as I am marketing meetings, which allows me to hear from the sales team – what they need, what our clients need, what’s happening in the markets. I can then take that information and work with our Marketing team to create resources, trainings, initiatives…anything the sales team needs to help them be successful.  

Being that voice for the consultants, you can make sure the marketing team is creating helpful materials that get used?

Absolutely.  That applies to all our teams and is one of the secrets to OKAR’s success. We collaborate, cross functionally, and are really focused on making sure everybody’s voice is heard. We have representation from sales, marketing, sales services and inventory on our committees so we understand how what we create will impact how the sales team goes to market and the client’s experience with us.

What is something that you’ve partnered with everyone recently to create?

Recently we hosted our Ask the Experts events. Other markets did live in-person events, but since we had already targeted our direct clients earlier this year with an in-person event around streaming, we decided to take the Ask the Experts Live content and tweak it a little bit to create a webinar for our agencies and digitally-savvy direct clients instead. 

Overall, we partnered with Angela Kozlowski, two of our digital vendors and the KSO team to create the format and flow of the event. Locally, we partnered with our sales leaders, sales team, Director of Marketing, Director of Sales, marketing team members and fulfillment team members to focus on key aspects of the webinars, like the specific content and external messaging.  We called the webinar “Digital Brew” and sent all registrants a coffee gift card with their event reminder.  We took the opportunity to create something valuable for our agency partners and digitally savvy direct clients.  We just had those events last week and we’ve gotten some phenomenal feedback already. 

It was a great event and something that took a village to put together, but it was the feedback from our sellers that helped us identify what our agencies are wanting to hear and what questions they’re getting when they are pitching to kind of cater the content to that audience and make sure it was engaging and relevant for them.

What are you working on now?

Well, the other part of my role is to lead what we call in OKAR, our Sales Enablement Team.  That includes our local Marketing Strategist and our Senior Marketing Communication Specialist.  Between these two roles, we have a good grasp on how what we are creating is impacting our sales team and our clients – from our strategist’s work on proposals and strategies for our clients, to the one-to-many communications that are coordinated by our Sr. Mar Comm. We then use these insights to develop marketing resources, initiatives, events like the Digital Brew webinar, lead and demand campaigns, our monthly newsletter and so on.

You’ve mentioned that the Sales Enablement team is unique to OKAR. How did you end up in that role?

I’ve been with Cox for almost 13 years. I started as a Marketing Coordinator and found I had a knack for analytics and data.  So I moved into a Marketing Analyst position, which grew into the Senior Analyst Position.  In that role, I became our competitive subject matter expert with a heavy focus on market share, while also still doing research for our clients.  That’s where I found I had a real passion for strategy.  So I moved into the Marketing Strategist position and really found my niche. I’d established a lot of great relationships with our sales team in my previous roles and was able to have honest and open conversations with them and our sales leaders.

When this position came available, I was drawn to idea of it being focused on strategy and incorporating all aspects of our marketing team. It is really focused on aligning our goals with our clients’ goals to achieve that mutual success.

That really led to the Manager of Sales Strategy and Enablement role being a great fit for me.

What is one of your favorite things about working with our consultants?

We have a great mix of more tenured sales reps and brand new sales reps that have a very unique background.  Getting their perspective – how they approach clients, how they build their relationships, how they like to pitch the strategy – it’s always so interesting and fascinating to see how everybody approaches it differently.

Nobody’s wrong.  It’s just unique in how they do it, which is what helps them build their relationships with their clients.

Sales is a hard job – they have a lot going on.  I mentioned the mutual trust and friendship we developed – I love working with them and knowing they have all the trust that I’m going to put the best foot forward in whatever we need to put together for them and their clients to succeed.

I’m so grateful I joined Cox.  I’ve been able to grow a lot here. Everyone talks about the relationships you build at Cox, but they really are second to none. And something I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Last question!  What would you want clients to know about working with Cox Media?

We’re dedicated. Our entire team. I mean, that’s kind of the message throughout this is we are dedicated to their success and so we’re going to make sure we do what’s right by them in the best possible way we can. Because when they succeed, we succeed.

Thanks for chatting with me, Samantha! It was great to learn more about you and how your team strives to help Cox Media clients!