New head of sales & marketing at RBS

Reporting the news –we know we’re good at that and the numbers confirm it. Around 40 new subscribers sign up each week for the email. And the website routinely is reaching 4,000 people a day now. But selling ads and making sure each advertiser is impressed with our response and our effectiveness, that’s been a real challenge. And that’s the key to the revenue.

At some point we had to stop reinventing the wheel on the advertising side. And so we’ve hired a full-time head of sales and marketing.

Eric Mays joined BizSense in September. He’s previously worked in advertising for the Baltimore City Paper and more recently for Clear Channel here in Richmond.

Eric has more than 10 years experience, and he will be able to help us improve the ad packages we put together for each client, as well as hopefully create some even better campaigns for clients.

It’s a particularly communication-heavy job, and emails/calls were getting lost in the shuffle. I’ve written about enough businesses to know you can’t alienate perspective clients. We also had a few embarrassing gaffes that resulted from too few people trying to keep track of too many disparate responsibilities.

Entrepreneurs will know what I’m talking about here and smile, but as much as you think you can just work a little harder, or find a few more hours a week to get some additional work done, the quality suffers.

This is a huge step for our business, and one that is paying off already.

And it has another plus: it lets me get back to doing what I’m best at: chatting with local businesses and writing news stories. We’re also hoping to hire another reporter by years end.

Stay tuned.

Eric can be reached at eric@richmondbizsense.com.