Nailing down your budget for the year is no easy task. Once you’ve navigated the obstacles in your budgeting process and came to your best conclusion on the many unknowns of the year ahead, you are finally at a number that allows you to rest easy. However, the battle is only halfway over. Now you need to figure out your spread. You know where you need to be to come out on top for the year, but how about each quarter or each month? There are many smaller victories along the path to conquering the year.

Your budget is only as good as the data you use to create it with. Without reliable data, your budget is highly likely to miss the mark. With accurate historical data, you can build a budget that you and your sales team can stand behind with confidence for the year ahead.

The media industry is a data-driven industry. ShareBuilders uses that data to help clients navigate forecasting, budgeting, and inventory management with pinpoint accuracy. Working with data from every corner of the country provides fantastic insight to the industry. Patterns such as Olympic sellout trends, effect of sudden economic changes, pacing comparisons, and many others provide a multi-angle view of the industry at any given moment. This level of insight gives customers the ability to be proactive instead of reactive to any situation in the market.

By this point, you’ve likely read enough about COVID-19. With the pandemic continuing to impact all facets of daily life for close to two years now, it’s not a novel insight to suggest this has all been and continues to be “unprecedented.” That said, in our industry, it’s important to look at COVID-19 through the lens of future preparedness.

Your inventory is always evolving, and keeping up with it is a major part of your sales team’s job. Staying on top of the solds, avails, pricing, demand and changes of your inventory is likely taking your sales team more time than it needs to.

The right data can turn a standard proposal into something captivating and competitive. Instead of just talking about the benefits of a potential sale, you can show the proof in numbers. 

There’s just one problem - who has the time to gather, analyze and chart all that data?

As an already fast-paced world speeds up, technology gives your team the edge it needs to succeed.

When it comes to managing your inventory, you know there are several moving parts to keep track of. You’re managing current sellout levels, forecasting future demand and keeping track of historical inventory, all the while trying to handle any day-to-day changes, making it harder and harder to keep everything moving.

You know that your rate card is an essential tool for your team sales goals. It’s a key component of the sales toolkit, but if it’s not up to date, it can leave a significant amount of money on the table.

Here are five signs that it’s time to take another look at your rate card:

Think about how much technology your business relies on every day: All those apps, tools and systems become essential components of your work. But if those components don’t integrate, you are potentially wasting a lot of time (and missing out on opportunities) trying to keep track of them all.