Monthly Archives: July 2008

Power of the Paper Trail

Harness the Power of the Paper Trail

          The value equation is simple;
Value = Your Customer’s Expectation + or – Your Customer’s Actual Experience.
          Here is the good news. YOU control both ends of this important equation. Value is a perception rather than a reality, and you have the tools to create realistic expectations and take credit for over-delivery on those expectations.
          Many sales people, however, in a frantic effort to capture a sale, make promises and build expectations they can not possibly exceed. And just meeting the customer’s expectation does not deliver the positive value perception you need to build strong customer relationships.
          What is even sadder, some sales people who do deliver an experience greater than the expectation, do not take credit for doing so!
          Do you deliver an impressive written wrap up report after each of your major campaigns, complete with photos of customer traffic and outlines of what you did over and above what was contracted for? Do you conduct a post campaign analysis to make each campaign better than the last? Do you ALWAYS under promise and over deliver and have a paper trail to prove it?
          Radio has often been defined as an ‘intangible’. The dictionary defines tangible as ‘able to be perceived by a sense of touch’.
          Delivering comprehensive wrap up reports to your clients, with scripts, schedules, photos and more, can actually make their radio investment tangible!
          If the only ‘paper’ from you in your customer’s file is your attempt to get an order (your presentation) and an invoice, you are missing the boat.
           Account executives who deliver tangible evidence of their over-delivery in the form of a written wrap up report soon find themselves immune to pressure from competitors who do not manage the experience side of the value equation.  
         
Budgeting for next year?  Consider including our Making Radio Tangible sales seminar for your team!  
 

The Nicest Lie

The Nicest Lie

          If you are working with the real decision-maker in an organization and they turn down your proposal because “it’s not in the budget”, you’ve just been lied to!
          Business owners often find it easier to turn you down by blaming their budget rather than your station, your idea, your audience or your price.
          You often use the same escape tactic.  When a clerk approaches you in a furniture store and asks, “Can I help you?” you’ve learned it’s easy to get rid of them by simply saying “No thank you, we’re just looking.”
          ‘Just looking’ is a nice lie.  No one takes time out of their busy schedule to ‘just look’ at furniture if they have no intent or money to buy.
          Here is how I know that “it’s not in the budget" is a courteous lie if you are dealing with the real decision maker:
1.) Who makes the budget? The real decision maker!  It is their budget and they can change or add to that budget whenever they want to.
2.) Business owners by definition, make investments with the expectation of getting a return on their investment….that’s what they do for a living.  When you are told “it’s not in the budget” they’re really telling you, “You have not convinced me I will get a significant return on my investment.”
          Your job is to uncover the reason they feel that way and return with a better customer-focused presentation that does convince the business owner she will get a return on her investment.    
NOTE: If the person you are presenting to really cannot change or increase the ad budget, they are not the decision-maker, only the budget-allocator.
  

Sunglasses Media

The Sunglasses Media

         If you are selling local radio or TV advertising, get out your sunglasses….your future has never been brighter.
        There have always been two basic types of media; intrusive media, are those media which reach and influence people while they go about their daily activities and while they are making brand or purchasing decisions…largely radio and TV.
The other type; passive media, are those media which require people to stop what they are doing in order to actively seek out more information at the time of purchase.
        Until the Internet, however, many local ad budgets were weighted towards expensive print media to cut down trees, cover rising print costs, and pay paper boys or postal workers to deliver coupons, brochures or newspapers.
        Passive media have long been considered a necessary evil by local advertisers who felt they needed to deliver detailed information, facts, figures, prices or pictures that could not be accommodated in 60 or 30 second ads.
        This left precious little budget for the intrusive ‘driver media’….media which create the interest, awareness, credibility or desire for a particular company, product or service, actively driving consumers to their passive media cousins.
        Well, hang on for the ride! Embrace the Internet!
        Local marketers no longer need to pay letter carriers, paper boys, forestry workers or press operators to deliver their ‘necessary evil’ details, information or pictures.
        They need simply to invest in designing and producing the information, at basically the same design or production cost they endured for old school newspaper, brochures, coupons or other print vehicles. The budgets for forestry workers, printing presses and delivery people are eliminated thanks to websites and the Internet.
        Those budgets can now go to intrusive media to drive traffic to the lower-cost websites. And here’s another reason we’ll do well in the new media world.
        Local advertisers previously only competed with a few local advertisers in the paper or mail box. Now they compete against thousands and thousands of easy-to-find competitors around the world.
        Smart local marketers need intrusive media more than ever to drive traffic and a create preference for their passive media message. Your intrusive media can create an awareness, credibility and trust for local business and their websites over the thousands of choices web-surfers have today.
        Better reach for those sun glasses…and don’t go for the cheap ones, it’s a bright new lucrative day ahead.
 
Have you scheduled our Competitive Immunity advertiser seminar in your market to persuade advertisers to invest larger shares of their budgets with YOU in this exciting new media world? We guarantee to increase your sales!  

You Might Be Customer Focused If…

You Might Be Customer Focused If…

             A lot of sales organizations today recognize how profitable being customer-focused can be, and subsequently ‘claim’ to be customer-focused.
            Here’s a litmus test to help you determine if your customer-focus claim is valid.
            You might be customer-focused if…
 
1.) You know that focusing on helping your customers reach their targets will result in you reaching your target.
           
2.) Your customers consider you an insider, part of their team, and frequently seek your advice and guidance.
 
3.) You spend at least as much time and money learning about advertising and what motivates your customers’ customers, as you do learning about selling or broadcasting.
 
4.) You have more consistent 52-week advertisers on the air than your package-peddling counterparts, and your renewal rates are notably higher.
 
5.) You are famous for your integrity. You have actually turned down business you felt did not serve your customer’s best interest.
 
6.) You don’t allow anything on the air until you have personally reviewed the scripts to ensure they will produce the desired results.
 
7.) You deliver comprehensive written evidence of your over-performance after every campaign and conduct a post campaign analysis to make each campaign work harder than the last.
 
8.) You never knock another station.
 
9.) You plan a Valid Business Reason for every customer contact.
A valid business reason is any reason that benefits your customer.
 
10. You always under-promise and over-deliver.

Selling the Sellers

Selling the Sellers

            Successful business initiatives are seldom a result of democracy.  New initiatives require the passionate leadership and commitment of focused management and their teams to be successful.
          Many sales managers confuse achieving staff buy-in for strategic new initiatives with winning their staff’s popular vote.
          It’s a universal truth that management must get staff buy-in on all new initiatives if they are to be successful.  To achieve that buy-in, the best managers SELL their staffs, clearly outlining what’s in it for them to tackle a new project.
          Some sales managers have made the mistake of putting a new initiative to a popular vote rather than selling that initiative to their staff.
          New projects generally equate to extra effort, uncertainty, breaking out of comfort zones, and frankly, can reveal the real achievers on your staff versus those big billers who might be winning by default.
          In the face of those fears, a ‘vote’ will generally be negative.
          Your internal customers, your account executives, are your most important and high-leverage asset.  It is imperative you invest as much of your time and skill as you can muster to sell your people on the merits of buying into your new revenue projects.   If you can’t develop a minimum of 10 solid benefits from your staff’s perspective, maybe the project is not worthy of pursuing.
          Over-the-top revenues do require over-the-top efforts, efforts which require focus, passion, confidence and more.
         Democratic sales departments don’t work.  If they did, we wouldn’t need sales managers, the company could just get the staff to vote on various new projects.
          Every package, promotion, concept and initiative needs to be sold to your team.
          Management’s mandate is to sell and lead new initiatives because your station can’t keep doing the same thing over and over if they want improved results.