Sensis Bucks Trends With Strong Print Results

Australia’s Sensis released its results for the financial year ended June 30, and many in the global Yellow Pages industry will be interested to find that print revenues are growing in Australia, bucking a global trend of often steep declines.

We will report more details next week in a write-up of why Sensis is succeeding where others are failing, but here are the basics: For the year, Sensis reported a 5.4 percent increase in combined Yellow and White Pages print revenues, with total revenues growing 8.1 percent to A$2.13 billion.

At the Yellow Pages Association meeting earlier this year, Sensis executives offered some details on how they pulled off a turnaround in print results, and why they are bucking the global trend. Much of it was focused on retraining the sales force to sell on value, and restoring belief in the print product. It sounds simple, but the Sensis team described an arduous yearlong process, which seems to have culminated with some very impressive results.