The ‘Gift’ of Gab

        Every once in a while I meet a sales person who proudly proclaims, “I’ve got the gift of gab.”  In sales, that ‘gift’ is more aptly described as ‘the curse of chatter.’

        Successful sales professionals know that sales is really more about listening than it is about talking.

        Those with the curse more often engage in product feature speak than they do in providing customer-focused solutions or opportunities.

        Customers don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care….and caring is demonstrated by listening.

        Listening is by far the most important and difficult skill a sales professional can learn and practice.  The sales people who annoy and alienate prospects the most are those who claim to be good listeners but follow every customer objection with a “yah, but…..”

        There is no room for the word ‘but’ in a good listener’s vocabulary.

To be a professional listener you need to;

1.) Earn the right to ask questions by learning something about the prospects business before you make a call.

2.) Prepare with open ended questions that encourage the prospect to express their views and feelings.

3.) Demonstrate you are listening by taking notes. (Always ask permission to take notes. “Your input is important to me, do you mind if I take a few notes?”)

4.) Paraphrase and summarize what you hear.  Don’t start a debate.

5.) Use the language and needs you hear the customer express when you make your presentation.

6.) Make certain that every benefit you present relates to a need you heard the prospect express.

There is a lot more money to be made being interested than there is in being interesting.  So why not shut up and make some money!

Harness the Power of the Paper Trail

If the only tangible your customers receive from you is a presentation and an invoice, you are missing the boat.

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!

           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.  

Time Sales?

Radio and TV people often say they are in ‘time sales’.  But do they really realize what kind of ‘time’ is most valuable?

In their book Sway, Ori and Rom Brafman examine the importance of investing your time in customer engagement.  Their study reveals a common experiential reaction from a wide range of unorthodox demographic segments.

Venture capitalists, for example, when surveyed about their investments and relationships with their investment firms, "the researchers expected a hard-headed focus on the ROI of each investment.  And while this mattered, the Brafmans discovered that venture capitalists place more trust in entrepreneurs who bolster the relationship with timely and thorough updates.

Surprisingly, injured patients also are dramatically impacted by the quality and quantity of interaction with their doctors.  “People don’t sue doctors if they believe they were treated fairly.  This belief, in turn, is based on the quantity of time spent and the quality of that interaction."

If you want your station to be like the doctor whose patient defends him—even after an injury-causing mistake—you need to invest time cultivating the relationship BEFORE that relationship is put to the test.

If the only interaction your station has with your clients is when you ask for an order or send an invoice, you are headed for trouble.

TIP The amount of time and interaction you dedicate to each client should be directly proportionate to the revenue potential of that client.  All too often, we spend too much time with clients we are comfortable with, or the ones that are difficult to sell, and we spend too little time cultivating a strong relationship with our highest potential accounts.

Radio’s New Future

Jay Conrad Levinson’s Guerilla Marketing, is the best selling marketing series of books in history. His expertise in squeezing the most out of marketing budgets reveals an amazing new truth about advertising. Here is his most recent marketing bulletin.

Prior to the internet, marketers spent huge chunks of their budgets for rising paper costs,  having their messages printed, and more again to deliver those printed messages by carrier or post office.

Smart ‘guerilla marketers’ today, invest their advertising dollars in intrusive emotional media to drive prospects to their information on the web….information which is cheaper on the internet than any hard printed hand delivered message ever was.

Advertisers today can do much more with less, using radio to drive prospects to their online brochures and ads.

P.S. Do your research to learn the household internet accessibility versus daily newspaper delivery in your market and watch those print budgets switch to radio web-driver campaigns!

      Goes Through an Agency?

          I was shocked last week when I asked an account executive for the contact name at one of her clients.  Her reply was, “That goes through an agency now so I no longer have a contact at the client level.”

          Are you kidding me?

          It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee!

The only justification for local reps handling agency accounts is because they do have a relationship with the client and intimate knowledge of the account.      

1.) All media buys are ultimately approved by the client.

2.) The client will fire the agency (they always do).

3.) No agency can sell your station to a client as well as you.

4.) Many ‘agencies’ are merely graphics design houses, web-design companies or TV production houses, selling strategies that give them, not your clients, the most profit.

5.) You can’t make relevant presentations to the agency if you don’t know what the client is thinking.

6.) On occasion, you will have a station promotion which might not fit the agency’s plans but does dovetail with something the client is doing.

        I’m not usually big on rules, but here is one every station should implement;

          All agency accounts are to be handled by our national or regional reps unless the local reps make a valid* business contact with the client directly a minimum of once per quarter.

* A valid business contact is any contact in which you deliver something of value to the client.