10’s Group Sales Manager, Danielle Rigg-Smith, shares her experience in being part of the re-birth of Network 10’s Sales team.
It’s the little things that count. It always has been and always will be. In the world of media sales, it’s important to make yourself memorable to your team and your agencies – not only for your personal brand, but also for the brand you are representing.
Cue career challenge: be part of the rebirth of the Network 10 Sales department in December 2018.
Once in a blue moon, an opportunity presents itself to work for a well-established brand and at the same time build culture from scratch. That is exactly what we have done here at Network 10.
Back in December 2018, Rod Prosser, myself and our HR lead stared bewildered across the new sales floor littered with empty desks, cardboard boxes and the odd chair or two. But while the office was empty, we had big hopes and the clear aim of cherry-picking the best of the best this industry has to offer – with a firm “No B.S.” policy.
We landed on the catchphrase #10TVwithatwist and have embraced that mantra in not only how we approach our day-to-day life but more importantly how we treat our team.
In fact, this past week or so with the C word (that made you read twice didn’t it… see doing things with a twist!) has made me more proud of our team than ever before. We have built a culture where our team genuinely miss each other when they leave the office and continue messaging into the evening while watching our shows. Quite simply, we love what we do and who we do it with.
The sense of being part of a work family has never been more prevalent than in the current climate. We are checking in with each other every morning, ensuring time is taken out for the odd star jump or two, setting up a virtual lunchtime running group and then closing out the day with some more facetime. Happy people make for a happy workplace, whether it’s in the office or the home.
How did we do it? We already had a stellar leadership team lined up waiting to walk through the doors, along with an amazing talented MCN crew making the transition, however, we then searched high and wide for talented people who oozed the Network 10 values of being creative, thought-provoking leaders, bold, supportive and just a little bit irreverent.
From the offset we decided that no one person would be more superior than the other. When we had 14 staff, there were completely blurred lines with job responsibility and as such this has enabled everyone to learn the tasks at each level of the business. We dig deep and have each other’s back.
Having a team budget is critical: having worked for more than 14 years in radio where it can be a dog-eat-dog world to secure airtime and therefore earn commissions, there is something incredibly refreshing about every single team member working toward the one goal, both locally and nationally.
We spend a lot of time recognising and rewarding our team. As mentioned earlier, it’s the little things that count. Walking into the office to find Cupid has delivered heart-shaped chocolates to start your day with some love, acknowledging that your friend/colleague has had to postpone their wedding because the world has a virus or simply blasting music because no one likes to hear people typing – it’s the little things, on a consistent basis.
And finally, we have built a team of people who are brave. They aren’t afraid to challenge each other, challenge our clients and challenge themselves. We are no longer the challenger brand but we live and breathe a mentality of never becoming complacent.
So yeah let’s twist again, 10 twist’n time is here.