20 Under 40 - 1999 Profile: Helen S. Hoffman

PRESSTIME

By Presstime Magazine

First Published: December 1999

Figures dance in her head. "We check our [circulation] numbers closely every week," says Helen S. Hoffman, circulation-marketing director of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "We're always looking for ways to improve the numbers because we're so focused on sales and retention."

In a fast-paced environment, Hoffman and her staff have "to turn on a dime. What's working today might not work tomorrow."

Something that is working: a selling philosophy that strives to deliver what high-churn customers really want. "There's a group that's only willing to pay a certain price for a newspaper. We gave them that price, but asked them to sign up for one year," she says. The churn-busting strategy is working. A majority of these subscribers re-upped for a second year at a slightly higher rate.

Hoffman's supervisors credit her leadership, coaching and training skills for helping the Journal Sentinel set an all-time record in telemarketing subscription sales for 1998. Staffers are on track to break that record in 1999.

Sell the product, not the price, Hoffman advises. "Most telemarketing [approaches] put the price at the beginning of the script. If you can get the customer to ask what the price is [during a call], you've got a 90 percent chance of closing the sale."

The energetic Hoffman's a believer in both home-grown talent and recruiting outside the industry.

"No one goes to college to be a circulation-marketing manager," says the former sports writer. Her telemarketing manager formerly worked for retailer Best Buy, and a sales manager spent 20-years with Pepsi-Cola. "He knew everything [about sales], he just didn't know it in the newspaper realm."
Thanks to Hoffman's approach to team building, he does now.

Education: 1984, B.A., communications, journalism and English, University of Akron.
Career: 1984-87, sports reporter, Medina (Ohio) Country Gazette; 1987-89, assistant director, Poko Loko preschool, Glenview Ill.; 1989-93, office manager, R.P. O'Brien & Co., an insurance firm, Rye, N.Y.; 1993-98, circulation-sales manager, Gannett Suburban Newspapers, White Plains, N.Y.; 1998-present, circulation-marketing director, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Personal: Age, 37. Born, Clintonville, Wis. Married, husband Marc, one daughter.
Diversions: Reading fiction, singing and playing the piano.
Connections: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 333 W. State St., Milwaukee, Wis. 53201. E-mail, hhoffman@onwis.com; phone, (414) 224-2627; fax, (414)224-0823.