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Director of Advertising-St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The Director of Sales is a high-impact sales leader responsible for driving revenue growth, developing talent, strengthening client relationships, and advancing the organization’s digital sales strategy. This role leads a team of sales professionals, sets clear performance expectations, and creates a culture focused on accountability, initiative, and results.

The ideal candidate brings a strong bias to impact…someone who moves quickly from strategy to execution, identifies opportunities, solves problems, and consistently translates ideas into measurable business results.

Key Responsibilities

Revenue Growth & Sales Leadership

• Lead the sales team in achieving and exceeding revenue, new business, retention, and growth objectives.
• Develop and execute sales strategies that drive both new business acquisition and growth of existing accounts.
• Establish clear sales priorities, activity expectations, pipeline goals, and performance metrics.
• Maintain a strong focus on prospecting, pipeline development, conversion, and closing.
• Identify opportunities to increase client spend, expand relationships, and introduce additional products and solutions.
• Champion consultative selling that connects client objectives to measurable outcomes rather than simply selling individual products.
• Personally engage in high-value opportunities and strategic client relationships when appropriate.
• Analyze sales performance and take decisive action to address gaps and capitalize on opportunities.

Digital Sales & Innovation

• Ensure the sales team understands and effectively communicates the value of digital advertising, audience targeting, branded content, data, social, video, email, and other emerging solutions.
• Identify new revenue opportunities created by changes in consumer behavior, technology, and the media marketplace.
• Build the team's confidence and capability in selling integrated digital and multimedia solutions.

Team Leadership & Development

• Directly manage, coach, and develop sales team members with a focus on performance and professional growth.
• Establish a culture of accountability, urgency, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Conduct regular one-on-ones, pipeline reviews, coaching sessions, and performance discussions.
• Recognize high performance and address underperformance constructively.
• Recruit, retain, and develop high-caliber sales talent.
• Create an environment where salespeople are expected and empowered to take ownership of their results.

Client & Market Leadership

• Build and maintain strong relationships with key clients and business decision-makers.
• Emphasize strategic partnerships that create long-term client value.
• Maintain a strong understanding of the competitive landscape, marketplace trends, and evolving advertiser needs.
• Represent the organization as a strategic media and marketing partner within the business community.

Operational Excellence

• Maintain disciplined pipeline and CRM management across the sales organization.
• Use data and performance reporting to identify trends, opportunities, and areas requiring intervention.
• Collaborate with marketing, content, digital, operations, and leadership teams to maximize revenue opportunities.
• Ensure sales initiatives are executed with consistency, urgency, and measurable accountability.

What Success Looks Like

• Consistent revenue growth and achievement of sales goals
• Increased new business and prospect conversion
• Strong retention and meaningful growth among existing advertisers
• Increased digital and integrated solution revenue
• A healthier, more predictable sales pipeline
• Higher productivity and performance across the sales team
• Stronger sales talent through coaching, development, and recruitment
• Deeper, more strategic client relationships

Ideal Candidate

• The ideal candidate is a proven sales leader who is digitally fluent and action oriented.
• Lead from the front and set the pace for the team.
• Have a strong track record of growing revenue.
• Know how to win new business while expanding existing relationships.
• Understand the changing media and digital advertising landscape.
• Coach people toward higher performance.
• Use data to make decisions and measure results.
• Move quickly, take ownership, and solve problems.
• Bring energy, competitiveness, and a strong sense of urgency.

• Have a bias to impact and consistently ask, “What will move the business forward?”

Why Join Us?

Lee Enterprises offers competitive wages in a dynamic, interesting work environment with career growth opportunities.  We offer an extensive benefit program that can be personalized to your needs. Our benefit program includes medical, dental, vision, short and long-term disability, company provided life insurance and supplemental life insurance. In addition, we offer a 401K retirement plan with company match.  We also offer generous paid time off to allow flexibility to balance personal life and work.  This includes paid parental leave for new parents.

Lee Enterprises is a leading provider of local news and information and a major subscription and advertising platform, with daily and weekly newspapers and rapidly expanding digital products serving 114 markets across 25 states. Our core commitment is to provide valuable, intensely local news and information to the communities we serve.

Lee Enterprises is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We respect and celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

For more information about Lee, check us out at www.lee.net.