REAL Careers

An Inside Look at Broadcast/Digital Sales

Exec Jo Ann Ross Thrives on New Challenges

CBS presents its 2017–18 prime-time schedule at Carnegie Hall. Pictured from left to right, Jo Ann Ross and Jon Batiste and Stay Human from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Photo credit: Jeffrey R. Staab/CBS ©2017 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

REAL Careers: Women in Sales explores the different sales roles in sports, what they entail and the skills necessary to succeed. Jo Ann Ross, a 2005 WISE Women of the Year honoree, is president and chief advertising revenue officer at CBS. She began her 25-year career with the network in 1992, overseeing Olympic sales.

Job Responsibilities

Broadcast network sales is basically the group at a network that sells the commercials that air nationally within its programs. In my role, I work with programming, scheduling, the people on the West Coast who are looking at scripts, and finance to make sure that if the West Coast is buying a show, we can make a profit on it. At CBS, the CBS Interactive Sales team also reports in to me. That’s in-house. Outside the house, I work across agencies whether it’s the account management team, the buying team or the team that does innovation and creative. Essentially, you’re running a division in which you have to have your hand in every piece of the business from start to finish — working with the clients on creative with storyboards to making sure it gets on the air.

Education

Bachelor’s degree, government and public administration, American University

You said you’re involved in every step of the client and consumer journey. How do you prepare for that skills-wise?

A lot of what I do today and a lot of what I know, I’ve learned as I’ve gotten the roles. I learned from the people who were over my head or by just doing it, making the phone call and following up. It wasn’t book learning. I didn’t take one communications or advertising class in college. I was pre-law, and I wanted to go into international studies. I think if you have the personality and the instinct that you think you can sell and you want to sell and you want to be client-facing, you don’t necessarily need those skills to be taught to you. You can learn on the job.

How did you wind up moving in the direction of sales from pre-law?

I wanted to go to law school. I took the LSAT, but didn’t prepare for it and didn’t do as well as I would have liked. I’m type A, so I took them again, this time taking whatever courses were available at that time. I did better, but again, type A, it wasn’t as well as I wanted to do or thought I should have done and I needed to get a job. I was living in Manhattan, and I needed to pay my rent, be able to buy food, so I went into retail for a few years. I worked at Lord & Taylor and small high-end boutiques. I loved clothing and fashion, so I liked my job, but I had to work Saturdays and I had no social life. A friend’s dad was running a network buying department at an agency, and he needed an assistant. Back then, an assistant was basically a secretary, but I couldn’t type. I didn’t take any typing classes in high school or in college. The weekend before my interview, I broke my right hand bodysurfing, and when I interviewed, I had a cast on my arm. I couldn’t take the typing test, so I got the job.

Ross at the CBS Television Studios “EYE Speak” event on March 14, 2018, in Los Angeles. The event featured a panel of some of the strongest female voices in front of and behind the camera. | Photo credit: Sonja Flemming/CBS.

Was there a moment when you realized sales was a good fit for you?

Oh yeah, you realize sales is a good fit when you’re coming up through the agency, and you’re putting together presentations and doing new business pitches — it’s nonstop. Back then, the hours at the networks were more structured than the hours at the agency. I had become very friendly with the salespeople who called on me and a lot of the management at the network, and my boss at the time was making sure I got exposure. I went everywhere he went; he had me at all these meetings. When ABC had an opening, I interviewed with two people there that I knew really well, and they hired me. In sales, you’re constantly being challenged. Can you make that call asking somebody for a lot of money and explain why you’re the best network to go with? Obviously, it suited me because a lot of years later, I’m still in sales.

Is making that call something you can practice? Does it get easier over time?

I don’t know if you practice it, but I think it comes with self-awareness and relationships you build over the years with people who are on the other end of the phone. Also, you need to know your business. You can’t fake this. You can’t say you understand a concept if you really don’t because you’re accountable, so you have to know your business and you have to be aware that you need to continuously learn. I was just in a meeting where we were talking about new data and new research capabilities. I’m learning every day because the business is changing. I have to change with it. My team has to change with it. And, last but not least, salespeople have to have a lot of self-confidence, but the self-confidence has to be born out of being intelligent and understanding what you’re doing.

What experiences and resources early on proved integral?

I made sure if I was going to call on a client, I had done my research. It may be a little bit different now. Everything’s at your fingertips; you can just Google the client. But learn as much as you can about the client and also about the people who are going to be in the room. I still tell this to recent grads: Read every one of the trades, whether it’s Variety, Adweek, or the business section of The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. Make sure you know your facts and do some role play. I think role play is always important. And after a big deal is done or after you get a big win or even after you get a big loss, you should sit down with your team and ask what have we learned.

What does learning look like as you progress in your career?

I always want to learn, but I always have people who work for me who are smarter than I am, and they can help teach me. We have data scientists that work here who understand what the data is and can interpret the data. So that’s when you lean on somebody to teach you, which I think is really important. I really feel like if you get up in the morning, come to work and you want to be at work, you are also there because you want to learn. I did something very different today than I did yesterday, and when we’re done, I’m going to be doing something else that’s different than what I did at 4 o’clock yesterday. Every day is a new day, which is great. I think that’s why I’ve stayed in the business as long as I have, because every day is a new challenge and a new learning experience.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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