One of the most self-serving things you can do is to educate someone else.
In the process of educating someone else, here is what you will achieve for yourself:
1.     You will learn more about the subject matter. As you research and prepare to pass on your knowledge, you will actually update and enhance your knowledge of the topic.
2.     You will improve your self-confidence. Inevitably, you will surprise yourself at how much you already know as you teach someone else.
3.     You will elevate your image as a professional. There is a certain amount of respect and recognition that is given to anyone who teaches us something.
4.     Everyone you teach will either become a client or give you a referral.
Two of the most effective teaching platforms will actually help you to market yourself:
1.     Write a regular column or news letter about your areas of expertise.
2.     Speak to business groups and schools about your areas of expertise.
Both speaking and writing require a great deal of discipline and up-front effort…….. researching, designing, personalizing and creating your material takes more time than actually delivering it. 
But you will never regret the effort. 
As you plan your career path, make room to aggressively seek out writing or speaking platforms to help you grow from helping others grow.
“Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater”
                                                                                                                   -Gail Godwin-          

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as difficult to sleep after.” –Anne Morrow Lindbergh –

          One way to avoid the boredom of weekly sales meetings and to break down the barriers between programming and sales is to invite your program director to speak at the first meeting of each month.

          Their mission? Simply tell us, ‘What’s new?’ and ‘Why we’re doing what we do on air.’

          This exercise not only brings programming and sales together in a common goal, it also gives your programmer the opportunity to showcase their expertise and build confidence among the sales people in the station’s programming strategy.

          A programming consultant I worked with years ago, told me he could predict how a station was going to do in the next ratings simply by calling all of his program directors on the phone and asking them, ‘What’s new?’

          If the response was ‘same old, same old’, he knew the station was headed for trouble. On the other hand, he said that if he couldn’t get the programmer off the phone because he was so excited about the new programming initiatives he was implementing, the consultant knew he had a winner on his hands.

          Sales people are often the last to know what’s happening on air, and often are never told why we do what we do. Bringing them into the fold with regular communication can really bolster their confidence and make them feel like part of the team…….and visa-versa.

          Each programmer’s guest appearance in your meetings should also include a question and answer session.

P.S. Some programmers are hesitant to tip their hand to the sales people for competitive or alleged confidentiality reasons. In my experience, this paranoia is never justified. If your competitors are going to have a knee-jerk reaction to every rumor they hear about your strategy, they are already doomed.

                   In The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, and its follow-up book, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, Jack Trout writes about the importance of “exclusivity”, of “creating your own category” and of “owning a word”.

                   But many product and service categories today are already owned by someone. Home Depot might own building supplies in your market, and Coke probably owns colas.

                   If you look in the Yellow Pages under restaurants, for example, you will probably see someone already claims steaks, another claims seafood, another claims pizza, someone probably claims home-cooked burgers and yet another claims Chinese or Italian cuisine.

                   Here is a tip that will help you to uncover a category your clients can own on your airwaves.

                   Look for an experiential category to own instead of a product or service category. By choosing an experience to own, rather than a product or service, your clients can actually broaden their target audience.

                   In restaurants, for example, who owns the “romance” category in your market? Probably no-one. In the romance category, you have the ability to offer steaks, seafood, Italian or Chinese.

                   Who owns the “private business luncheons” category in your market? Or the “served in less than 10 minutes” category?

                   Does someone own fun and parties?

                   By choosing an experiential category which no one owns in the minds of your audience, your client has the opportunity to become a market leader. Wal-Mart, for example, doesn’t own a product or service category, they own an experience….low prices. Michelin doesn’t own tires, they own safety. Another tire manufacturer, Pirelli, owns performance…again, an experience, not a product or service.

                   That does not mean if you promote the romance category that the only time people will go to your restaurant is on a first date, Valentines Day or on their anniversary. It just means your restaurant now has a chance to stand for something and to be remembered. In today’s advertising maze, it is no longer adequate to just “keep your name in front of the public”. You have to stand for something to be remembered.

                   If you can help your client to discover a unique experience they can own, you will help their advertising to work harder for them and assure yourself of more renewals.

                    As always, your unique experiential offering must actually be delivered by the client, not just advertised.

          “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning” –Bill Gates-

          Your advertisers have never been faced with so much choice……cable, conventional TV, lifestyle magazines, new radio stations, direct mail, mass mail, daily newspaper, community newspaper, billboards, transit, transit shelters, internet, and more.

          Each and every one of your customers can use other media to increase their sales, and can stay in business without you. That is why you must manage customer perceptions and expectations of your stations.

          And you can not manage perceptions and expectations if you are not measuring your clients’ perceptions and expectations.

          Even once-arrogant large auto manufacturers like Ford and GM, now measure and reward dealers for improving customer satisfaction levels. You should too.

          Many stations experience 30% account attrition levels. If those stations could retain half of those accounts through improved customer satisfaction, they would experience a 15% sales increase without any hard-fought new-business.

          Most of us have seen the surveys that conclude it can cost six to twenty times as much to find a new customer as it does to keep an existing customer satisfied.

          Measuring and monitoring what your customers expect from your stations can be the first step in reducing account attrition. Most of us spend a fortune on ratings to measure how audiences feel about us, and yet we ignore our paying customers’ perceptions.

          I recommend that all new accounts receive a Customer Satisfaction survey within 30 days of their first order, and that all regular clients be surveyed at least once per year.

          Sometimes, just asking customer opinions can improve your customers’ impressions of your company.

          Your top fifty accounts, one per week, should be surveyed in person by management. This not only helps to make your key accounts feel important, it keeps management in touch with the market and with customer perceptions.

           I think it was business guru Tom Peters who said, “If it can’t be measured, it can’t be managed”. How are you managing so far?

            This week’s SOUNDManagement is a copy of a response to a question I received via email from a station sales manager recently.   

Question

            “I’ve lost my top billing salesman. I’ve dispersed his accounts among the 3 sales people who remain.  I have not found a replacement yet and need to re-do projections for the 2nd quarter and beyond.  If I do not replace this person, or even if I get a new hire within 4-6 weeks, how much of his projected billing can the sales department expect to reach?  75%?  85%?.”

             “A certain line of thought here is that we ought to be able to recover or reach his goals simply by absorbing his accounts and working them, along with working our own lists.  My feeling is that it’s unwise to expect the original stations’ goals to be reached when we’re dealing with one less person on staff.”

Answer

            I’m afraid you might not like my answer. I’ll answer like a station owner.

Unfortunately, staff turn-over is a fact of life we must always be prepared for. We need to always have a recruit in the wings, or better still a "farm team" or raw recruit in training who can fill unexpected vacancies when we realign our accounts.

            Station owners can not afford to loose the race because we blew a cylinder. It’s management’s job to keep us running on all eight cylinders at all times, or to have spare parts on hand.

            In reality, the potential dollars in your market do not change because your internal circumstances changed.

            Winston Churchill probably said it best when he said "Sometimes it’s not enough to do our best, sometimes we must do what is required."

            Even if the existing staff was able to pick up the slack left by the unexpected departure, what about the new business those people won’t be pursuing while they are cherry-picking your entitlement business?

            Sorry, (name withheld), but your owners have made commitments to their employees, to the bank and other creditors based upon your market potential. They rely upon us sales-types to realize that potential no matter what happens. You must put a plan in place to see that the station captures it’s full potential.

P.S. I can tell you that I have consistently been able to replace a senior with two intermediates or three juniors and DOUBLE the productivity of their lists. That’s not because the seniors were doing a poor job, but rather because more feet on the street always  equals more sales.  

P.P.S. Did you conduct an exit interview to uncover what you might be able to do to prevent future desertions?