Don Schmidt joined the Cars.com team with more than 10 years of media sales experience. Schmidt worked his way up the newspaper industry from account executive at Gannett to advertising director of the Kane County Chronicle daily newspaper in Geneva, Ill.

Schmidt's training specialty is competitive and consultative selling techniques. For five years, he worked for Media Marketing Inc. in Boulder, Colo., as a training manager. Schmidt helped media professionals and business owners determine a proper media buy including newspaper, internet, radio, broadcast, direct mail, and radio advertising. He trained consultative selling methods to thousands of media professional at hundreds of newspapers including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Newsday.