sales

News Byte

Tennis Champ Agassi Gives Yahoo Sales Troops a Pep Talk

Kara Swisher in News on January 31 at 8:24 am PT

Yahoo COO Henrique De Castro has been holding a global sales conference in Las Vegas this week, bringing together the large group of employees at the Silicon Valley Internet giant who are in charge of a big chunk of its revenue. While it’s a lot of talking by top execs about the dramatic new advertising structure that he has put into place, there is always the requisite inspirational speaker (in 2007, at another meeting, it was Apple’s Steve Jobs). For this event, sources said, it was former tennis champ Andre Agassi appearing there to get the troops juiced. The once-pugnacious athlete — who is now married to another tennis phenom, Steffi Graf — was probably a good choice, especially since one of his well-known quotes is: “Being number two sucks.”

News Byte

More Yahoo Ad Reorg Details

Kara Swisher in Media on January 7 at 12:41 pm PT

I just got some more deets of the Yahoo advertising reorganization by COO Henrique De Castro, which started taking place last week. As I previously reported, it’s a major shift of sales staff to a “category” model rather than one that is regional and tiered. Sources say that Mark Ellis, who has been VP of North American sales and global partnerships, still has a similar title, but now has a job with more responsibility and influence. Interestingly, Peter Foster, who has headed audience advertising, is now in charge of new sales enablement group, which includes sales engineering and training, as well as the mid-market segment. Both will apparently report up to another exec, who is still to be determined.