Yearly Archives: 2010

Year of the Creeping Christmas

 

The Year of the Creeping Christmas
          While your sales people are boating, golfing and enjoying the summer weather, it can be difficult to have thoughts of sugar plums dancing in their heads.
          But your clients and prospects are planning their Christmas campaigns NOW.
          According to the just-released annual holiday benchmark report from Experian Marketing Services, retailers are pushing holiday sales messages earlier this year.
          And various consumer reports point to consumers being eager to spread their purchases over a longer season versus the hectic last minute spend.
          If you haven’t already, you need to plan your Christmas sales meeting NOW. How many of us have presented a Christmas promotion to a prospect only to hear, “Sorry, I just booked all of my Christmas advertising with the newspaper last week”?
          The first media rep in the door with a targeted Christmas campaign has the odds in her favor.
          To put your team in the Christmas spirit, plan a special ‘Sounds Like Christmas’ sales meeting, complete with Christmas music, a Christmas tree, and even a turkey dinner. Launch your Christmas sales incentives, promotions and brainstorm some Christmas campaign ideas at this meeting.
          Then keep the Christmas theme front and center with visuals in the sales office where sales people can post their Christmas sales and you can track and publish up to the minute results for your Christmas sales and sponsorships.
          And don’t neglect your web potential. The ‘gift guides’, pictures and details that were previously the exclusive domain of the paper, can now be accommodated on your website or by promoting the clients’ websites.
          Doing it now will ensure a merry Christmas for all, and for all a great year–end.

Question Yourself

Question Yourself

          You have undoubtedly been trained in the art of asking your clients questions to determine their needs, wants and desires.
          But have you learned the art of questioning yourself?
          It takes courage to admit you can be a better sales person, and confidence to ask the questions necessary to improve your performance.
          All learning springs from answering questions. At ENS Media Inc, we have two sets of questions account executives can ask themselves to increase their sales.
          The first set of four questions dramatically reduces account attrition rates and builds your brand as a marketing professional. Set aside time every month to ask yourself these four questions on every account;
          1.) What is the last Valid Business Contact I had with the client?
          2.) When?
          3.) What is the next Valid Business Contact I’m planning?
          4.) When?
          If the answer to questions two or four is “longer than 30 days”, the account may be in jeopardy.
          A ‘Valid Business Contact’ is defined as any contact which benefits the client. It may be a lead, a valuable piece of information, a new idea to help grow their business or any other contact  that positions you as a partner in their growth.
          Our second set is three questions designed to improve your performance after every single contact you make, be it in person, online, in writing or by phone.
          After every contact, ask yourself these three questions;
          1.) What went well? Then plan to repeat what went well as often as possible. 
          2.) What did I miss or forget to do? In spite of all of our pre-call planning,  the pressure we feel during a client contact can cause us to forget key points. Identify what you’ve missed on each call, and focus on not missing   them again.
          3.) What can I do better next time? There is always room for improvement. The reason employers want ‘experienced’ people, is because each experience can teach us how to be better at the next experience.    
          So, when you think of where questioning skills fit into the sales process, don’t forget to ask yourself these two sets of questions.

Feeding the Hungry

Special Opportunity

          We scan more than 40 industry newsletters every week to keep our SoundADvice radio e-marketing system timely and topical.  When I saw the attached article in Media Post’s Media Creativity, it touched me in several ways.
          The first was the good that media companies and advertising can do for their communities. Second, was the opportunity to prove the influence and impact radio could have in your community.
          I’m challenging you to work with every station in your market to develop a similar campaign NOW.  Here is what it can achieve for you;
1.) Reward some of radio’s top advertisers in your market by appointing them as distribution points.
2.) Prove radio’s cumulative impact in your local community.
3.) Open dialogue for future joint radio-competitor ventures.
4.) Most importantly, give back to the communities you serve.
          You receive these weekly ENS on Sales absolutely free every week. If you are successful in pulling the stations in your market together to run a campaign similar to the one in this article, please let me know.  It will make the efforts I’ve been putting into ENS on Sales worth while for me.
P.S. If you are selling convergence, make sure you add a web component!
Feeding The Hungry With Nothing
By Amy Corr, Monday, August 9, 2010
An ongoing campaign for the Rhode Island Food Bank proves that you can accomplish something with nothing.
According to numbers distributed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 50,000 Rhode Island households, or 11.7% of all households in the state, can’t afford adequate food.
Not surprisingly, The Rhode Island Community Food Bank saw a spike in demand at its pantries.
Nail Communications was tasked with creating a campaign that encouraged donations, especially from a younger demographic of 20- to 40-year-olds.
The agency created more than just an ad campaign; it crafted an entire brand and hit consumers in another venue that stores aisles of food: the supermarket.
The campaign first began with teaser radio, online, outdoor and supermarket circular ads that stated; "Nothing is coming," along with the Web site, http://www.Nothing.org.
Two weeks later, reveal ads featured a soup can, illustrated with an empty soup bowl, a "Nothing" label and copy that said, "Nothing can end hunger in Rhode Island."
Coinciding with the ad reveal were 40,000 empty cans of "Nothing" that went on sale for $2.99 each at nearly 200 Dunkin Donuts, Whole Foods, Dave’s Marketplace, Eastside Marketplace, Clements and Brigido’s Fresh Market locations.
TV ads that ran on local stations and were archived at Nothing.org featured average Rhode Island residents sitting down for a taste test. When their plates are revealed, they’re empty, leaving participants unsure of what to say and how to react.
Each can has a slot for collecting money and bright labels that highlight the Food Bank. The Rhode Island Food Bank hopes that many consumers will take this initiative a step further by collecting money in their "Nothing" can and delivering it to the food bank. The agency learned that schools and other stores were using the cans for this very purpose.
Cans are purchased much like any other supermarket item; you put in your grocery cart, it gets scanned at the register, you pay $2.99 and go home. Of the $2.99 purchase, $2.79 goes directly to the food bank, after taxes. This small amount of money is enough for the food bank to bring in and distribute 10 pounds of food. Many stores have already requested second and third rounds of "Nothing" inventory.
"Our biggest campaign challenge was the organizational effort: getting stores to agree to sell the cans and securing corporate funding to support some of the media effort," said Jeanette Palmer, account manager at Nail. "Once the pragmatic details were in place, development of all of the advertising and related videos took about four months. There was some paid TV and outdoor media, underwritten by the Citizen’s Bank Foundation, though most of it was donated," continued Palmer.
The Food Bank leased the www.nothing.org  URL for $1 from New York artist Mark Tribe. The campaign aims to raise $300,000 this year, enough money for the Food Bank to distribute one million pounds of food and serve 50,000 people.
Those who live far from participating stores can donate money online. Every donation of $25 can feed a family of four for three days. These are serious metrics.
"Nothing" is being done about hunger. And it’s turning out to be something substantial

Selling the New Media Mx to Grow Your Business

Selling the New Media Mix
to Grow Your Business

           New media practitioners today are using ‘new’ words to describe proven old communications techniques. Words like ‘interactive’, ‘participatory’, ‘social’  and ‘connective’, might lead you to believe human beings have turned 180 degrees in the way they receive or interpret your marketing message.
          But in fact, the only thing that is changing is the number of media platforms consumers are exposed to each day, traditional and new. What has not changed is the way successful marketers use media to reach and influence their prospects.
          The best communicators from the days of smoke signals, to newspapers, to radio, have always known the value of being ‘interactive’.  The effective sender of smoke signals was interactive, inviting the recipient’s response. 
          In newspaper’s hay days, every town had more than one paper, each with its own ‘social’ platform and ‘network of followers’.  The best newspapers had pages of reader ‘interaction’ called ‘letters to the editor’ and radio stations continue to run live (interactive) on-air contests and engage in two-way, on-air conversations with their followers.
          Every radio station today, by virtue of their format and target demographic, has its own unique ‘social’ network with which they ‘connect’ daily with their strategic choice of music and their spoken word.
          But there has been one dangerous marketing communications change according to Dennis Hurley, Digital and Creative Strategist at one of the world’s largest ad agencies, Tribal DDB.
          “Everything is measurable now, and it is very tempting to manage by statistics”, says Hurley. “Blind adherence to optimization and best practices could eventually leave your business with a cold and dry online presence”, he tells advertisers.
          Tribal DDB’s New Media expert suggests the true measure of great marketing communications is still in the emotive power of the message.
          The perfect ‘media mix’ today combines the emotional power of radio with easy access to information about the advertiser online.
          In short, radio inspires and internet informs.
          Your clients and prospects can be confused and intimidated by all of the new choices and the language used by some of the new media sales people who try to sell the technology rather than the message.
          Your sales, and your clients’ sales will increase when you learn how to  teach them the perfect new media mix….radio and internet.
 
P.S. Our Winning in the New Media Economy advertiser seminars are helping host stations across North America to sell more radio!  Click here if you would like to discuss how we can train your salespeople, and teach your clients how to use radio and internet in the perfect media mix. 

Who is Influencing Your Clients

Who is Influencing Your Clients?

          There is an old joke that says, “Those who can do it, do it; those who can’t do it, teach it”. Having become a management and sales trainer myself, I’ve never taken that joke personally, firm in the knowledge that I have sold and managed successfully for more than 35 years before becoming a consultant/trainer.
          By the way, ‘experience’ and ‘success’ are not synonymous terms. Many people with 20 years of experience really only have one year’s experience 20 times, and some have no successes under their belts other than keeping their jobs.
          But many self-described ‘experts’ today have little, if any, experience and even fewer have had any successes in what they teach! So those who couldn’t do, find it easy to resort to teaching with the magic of the internet.
          Anyone can start a blog, an e-letter or build a network online with no credentials. Why am I telling you this? Is it a slam at some of my competitors?
Is it to brag about my own successes? Or was I duped by one of these online gurus? None of the above.   
          I’m telling you because you need to be aware of the unqualified ‘experts’ who might be steering or influencing your prospects and clients! Do a search yourself sometime and you’ll be shocked at the long list of self proclaimed gurus who knock advertising or don’t even include radio as a contender in their alleged analysis of the pros and cons of various media.
          We’re in the information age, but a lot of what’s spread as information is actually misinformation!
          If one of your clients or prospects has become a disciple of one of these frauds, you’re going to have a tough time persuading them about your rightful place in their marketing plans.
          What can you do about it?
1.) Ask your clients and prospects if there is a particular blog or marketing guru they follow, then learn what these experts are preaching. If their teachings are false, tactfully expose them, and if they make sense, show how what you are offering is a perfect fit with their teachings.
2.) If your client is interested in broadening their marketing knowledge, suggest blogs, books and gurus like Roy Williams or SoundADvice that do justice to your medium.
3.) Become an expert yourself…not just at selling what you sell, but at understanding and helping your clients’ success. You can only become an effective ‘teacher’ by becoming an avid student.
          And after all, selling is merely teaching; teaching your prospects how and why you offer the best solutions.