Lance Helms Email & Phone Number

Atlanta, GA, US

Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Connecting smart brands with the audiences that matter most in Atlanta and beyond. The AJC is on a dynamic multi-year journey to be the most essential and engaging source of news for the people of Atlanta, of Georgia and the South. News, Sports, Politics, Food and Black culture are the franchises driving our audience growth as a modern media company.

Dallas, Texas, United States

• Chief sales enabler for 20+ sellers engaged in agency-style business development for a $100 million book of O+O and marketing services business, and leader of a business development team focused exclusively on net-new.
• Achieved 44% overall team opportunity closing ratio (39% on new business) in first 12 months, including Agility Insurance, Hotwire Communications, Part Time Beverage.
• Led the sales organization through a five-month training on the company’s new sales process for marketing services opportunities, including a kickoff summit, all-hands sessions, breakouts and team-based practical.
• Collaborated with agency SME’s to develop and launch a multi-pronged go-to-market for four new turnkey marketing services products (Google Analytics 4 implementation, audience intelligence, web development, paid media).

• Leader of a 10-person team responsible for digital pre-sale, solution architecture, training, market research and CRM for a 75-person sales force driving $53M in revenue across 30 business units in 24 markets.
• Finalized and rolled out 100% new sales playbook, value proposition, ICP and related go-to-market assets developed in collaboration with sales leadership.
• Verticalized nine-industry go-to-market for local sellers, including weekly scrums and Empowerment team support with research insights, talk tracks and media strategies.
• Managed ongoing evaluation, optimization and increased utilization of $1.3 million prospecting and research tool stack including AdMall, BuzzBoard, Claritas, Nielsen Scarborough, ZoomInfo.
• Increased speed of key proposal development path for major digital opportunities by 2.5x.

Miami/Fort Lauderdale Area

• Sales leader responsible for double-digit revenue growth from a digital and print product portfolio of branded publisher solutions, digital media and events. Manager of a 10-person Premium and Digital sales team for.
• Responsible for $14 million in annual Premium account revenue and $10 million Digital revenue.
• Achieved 109% of 2019 digital revenue goal and 113% of Q4 2020 goal, plus 127% YOY revenue growth in digital premium product sales and $430k in 2020 digital sponsorship sales.
• Leader of Education, Furniture and Cannabis prospecting teams; led the company’s first Cannabis Marketing Summit in 2019.

Atlanta, Georgia

• Sales leader with shared responsibility for growing a multimillion-dollar O+O digital product portfolio of native advertising, sponsorships, video pre-roll, premiums and sports verticals while maintaining and growing.
• Responsible for $6.2M in 2016 digital product sales and $9.4M in 2017, closing the AJC’s largest programmatic account, Red Hat.
• Sold the AJC’s first native campaign in 2014 and its first international native campaigns in 2018; achieved first million-dollar native sales year in 2018 (77% over goal).
• Helped lead the total AJC sponsorship sales effort including product development, sales training, prospecting, proposal development and execution.
• Served as AJC point person for integrated Cox Media Group-Atlanta Super Bowl LIII sales efforts across newspaper, TV, radio and associated digital properties – Sole winning CMGA collaborative pitch for SunTrust.
• Sales champion for the launch of AJC magazine titles Living Intown and Living Northside that resulted in $500,000 in incremental revenue in year one.

Atlanta Metropolitan Area

Managed 35 active accounts in the wireless, energy, healthcare, home improvement, automotive aftermarket and retail categories for five daily newspapers in suburban Atlanta including the Gwinnett Daily Post, the second-largest Sunday newspaper in Georgia. In five years, quadrupled revenue from existing account base through aggressive prospecting, an.

Abj, Journalism

Activities and Societies: The Red and Black

Education record

H.S. Diploma