Leslie Talansky & Steve Voith, Cox Media

Throw away your pre-conceived notions of a “rookie” when considering Cablefax’s Rookie Sales People of the Year. Both Talansky and Voith have been around the cable block more than once, with decades of combined experience in marketing but none on the sales side of the business until 2012 when they took on a new mission at Cox Media: create a new model that takes the operator-programmer ad relationship to the next level by creating more of a partnership. The idea was that Cox Media would agree to specific benchmarks to promote the net’s priorities across platforms in return Cox would ask for a specific level of tune-in commitment. It worked. In 2013, Talansky and Voith partnered with seven networks resulting in $2 million in revenue to Cox Media, with four of the partners in the premium network category and 3 in the linear network category. Meanwhile, 70% of the campaigns contained either a digital or VOD component. For their customized approach and bold thinking, these two “rookies” meet all our criteria for recognition and more. And guess what? They’re still setting up meetings.