The problem with many sales contests is they reward results rather than behaviors, activities or effort. These sales contests are often weighted in favor of the rep with ‘the best list’.
Your commission or bonus structure already rewards results. Try running a sales contest where the account executive who gets the most ‘no’s’ wins first prize and the account executive who gets the most yeses wins second prize.
Here is a little secret…..the person who wins first prize will also likely win second prize!

Here are some of the advantages of my ‘most no’s’ contest.

1-     Your clients sign off on the qualifying presentation with a brief explanation why they said no. Armed with this knowledge you can overcome that objection and/or uncover a flaw in your presentation.

2-     Our ‘most no’s’ contest circumvents reps pre-judging accounts or not presenting because they assume the client will say no. Some of these calls may result in a surprise sale.

3-     At the end of your ‘most no’s’ drive, your account reps will have overcome the call reluctance caused by the fear of rejection…after all they’re rewarded for rejections.

4-     Each presentation they make will be better than the one before. Practice makes perfect.

Behaviors which get rewarded get repeated. You know the behaviors which inevitably leads to more sales. Start rewarding the behaviors or activities you want to see more of and the sales will follow!   
If you know another sales manager, or general manager who would benefit form receiving these free weekly tips, click here to forward their address.

Your news director knows your audience can not relate to the American national debt at a whopping eight trillion dollars. In fact, most people don’t even know how many zeros to put behind the eight to write $8,000,000,000,000.00.
But it sure hits home when he says, “The American national debt is approaching nearly $3,000 for every man woman and child living in the U.S.A.”
Your large audience estimates can be equally baffling or meaningless to your prospects.
I went on a call with a radio rep, calling on a wood flooring company last week and detected the client was not relating to the station’s, ‘70,000 listeners.’

 We broke down the numbers in some terms the flooring guy could relate to.
“Yes, we have more than 70,000 listeners, but we know that only 30,000 of them are home owners.” Cutting our number in less than half and only talking about ‘home owners’ seemed to take us a rung up the trust ladder.
Then we went on to say, “Our goal is to have only 1.5% of those home owners shop at your location. Does that sound realistic?”
We then suggested he should close one third of that 1.5%. In other words, we only targeted half of one percent of our homeowners to buy from him over the next 12 months.
We then asked if a $300 cost of sale ($45,000 ad campaign divided by 150 sales) against a $10,000 sale was realistic.
I think you know the answer. Who wouldn’t invest $300 to make a $10,000 sale.
Encourage your sales people to get off of the big numbers or “number-one” bandwagon and you’ll be amazed how the client’s trust will escalate when you talk in numbers relevant to them.

We had such an overwhelming response to last week’s note about our Station Marketing Audits, that I thought I’d share two of our key findings with my SoundManagement readers, no charge!
1.  Our mystery shoppers push hard for low rates.
We have discovered your  competitors are not pricing themselves as low as your clients or your sales people would have you believe.
It seems clients feel they have a vested interest in telling you they can buy the competition cheaper. It’s a negotiating tactic for some.
It also appears some sales professionals find it easier to sell their sales manager on a low rate than it is to sell the client on the right rate.
2.  Our team makes it very clear when they ask for presentations from you and your competitors that they are only agents, they are NOT the decision maker.
In virtually every audit more than 80% of the media, (that’s all media including radio, print, billboards, TV, coupon envelopes, online and transit) never try to reach the decision maker.
It is incumbent upon you to find a Valid Business Reason to contact the decision maker if you want to increase your closing ratios.  
Our SoundAdvice system gives your clients a new Valid Business Contact every week.  For more information on SoundAdvice, click here

Do your people do what prospects ask them? I hope not!
I became an advertising prospect a few weeks ago when I launched an exciting new product called SoundAdvice.
I called four different trade magazines and asked for their rate cards, and they sent them. That’s the good news.
The bad news? That’s all they sent rate cards or media kits….. no one followed up, no one made a presentation.
There was a fifth trade publication that found out about my SoundAdvice through the grape vine who has followed up three times. Each time he had a great story about his publication but he has yet to send a rate card.
Hello! Until you find a need and fill it, why would you send a rate card? I have the utmost respect for this fifth suitor.
Okay, so that was magazines. What’s that have to do with radio?
The bottom line is we’re not much better in radio. When someone calls for a rate card, we assume they’re going to buy. Many of us only put half the effort into those inquiries as we do trying to turn cold calls into warm calls.
This is NOT an opinion, it’s a fact.
At ENS Media Inc., we do marketing audits which include, among other components, mystery shoppers asking for rate cards and media kits.
I’m sad to say, 86% of my friends in radio will send rate cards or media kits and never follow up.

Do you have a clear policy and expectation when it comes to following up on bona fide leads?

          The dictionary defines coaching as ‘a vehicle to transport a valued person to a place where they want to go.’

          Let’s examine the key phrases;

‘A vehicle to transport’– that’s you, the coach. You are simply there to facilitate the transportation of your people to another level.

‘A valued person’– in the past, only valued people, like Kings and Queens had access to coach transportation.  The commoner traveled on foot or by horseback.

To make the best possible use of your coaching time, make certain your recruiting techniques only attract ‘valued’ recruits; people who have it in them to succeed.

‘To a place where they want to go’ – Different people want to go different places, we all have different goals. You cannot coach successfully without first understanding where each individual on your team wants to go. Once you understand where they want to go (in other words what motivates them), the coach then simply demonstrates how meeting the company’s goals will help the valued person get to where they want to go.

          There is much more to coaching than these basics. Managers who recognize that coaching skills will help them get where they want to go will read books or attend workshops to enhance their coaching skills.