Yearly Archives: 2010

Opprotunity’s Door

Stick Your Foot in Opportunity’s Door

           Did you know that Yellow Pages takes more money out of your market than all radio and TV stations combined?  And a full page in your local Yellow Pages costs more than 20 spots a week for 52 weeks on your radio station?
          And did you know that 86.2% of every ad dollar spent on print goes to paying for lumberjacks, chain saws, forest lots, trucking companies, unionized paper mills, printing presses, and delivery people or postal workers?  Those are all unnecessary costs in the new electronic media age.
          I hate hard-sell cliché’s like, “you must act now” or “once in a lifetime opportunity,” but sometimes it’s true.  When opportunity knocks, you have to answer before it leaves.  When it comes to halting the migration from old printed newspapers or Yellow Pages to their new on-line properties, we as an industry, must act now!
          Human beings can be stubborn animals, reluctant to change.  Die hard newspaperand yellow pages advertisers have historically been reluctant to switch to radio.  But out of necessity, the yellow pages and newspaper salespeople are now opening the door for their advertisers to switch media.  We must stick our foot in that open door now!
          Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, announced last week that Yellow Pages will no longer be delivered in Canada’s seven largest markets. Yellow Pages sales forces across North America have increased their staffs to persuade advertisers to switch their dollars to their digital products.
          It seems that Bill Gate’s prediction that yellow pages will soon go the way of the magneto crank telephone and party lines, is about to come true across North America.
          Newspapers are also witnessing the demise of printed newspapers and are opening the door to change by desperately trying to sell their alternative on-line products.
          The new Yellow Pages and newspaper salespeople are selling S.E.O , Search Engine Optimization, as the alleged science of getting your name to the top of a Google or Yahoo search.
          We have the research to prove to your prospects that a consistent radio campaign is the best and most cost effective Search Engine Optimization strategy on the planet!
          Our radio marketing system, called Selling in the Electronic Media Age, is proven to intercept the migration from printed media to their on line products.
          But we’re almost sold out, with only 20 open dates left between now and June 15, 2011. Click here to arrange your free on-line demo of our Selling in the Electronic Media Age. “but hurry, you must act now! ” J

Who’s the Boss?

Who’s the Boss?

           I hate the word ‘boss’.  The Webster’s dictionary says to ‘boss’ is “to order about in a domineering way”.
          I once presented a strategic plan to a large broadcast group in which I proposed their sales people would work for their clients and their management people would work for their employees.
          The president of the company asked, “If the salespeople work for our clients, and our managers work for our staff, who the heck is working for the company?” He just didn’t get it. His company would reach its goals if his managers helped their people reach their goals and their people in turn, helped their customers reach their goals.
          The most successful managers hire people who have a passion to do their jobs to the best of their ability…these people don’t need a boss. These managers realize their job is not to ‘boss’, but rather to give their people access to the tools, training, people, resources and environment that allows them to be more productive.
          So if you’re a manger, here’s an idea. Instead of giving your people a ‘to-do list’, ask them to give you a ‘to-do list’. What do they need you to do to help them be more productive?
          Zig Ziglar said, “You can get everything you want, as long as you are willing to help others get want they want.” It’s also been said that “You can be as successful as you want, if you are willing to let others take the credit.”
          Are you ready to quit being the boss, and to become the facilitator to your team’s success?

Do You Fear Great Creative?

Do You Fear Great Creative?

          Some misguided radio account executives fear counseling their key clients to pay for outsourced creative. They believe that every dollar invested in creative is a dollar they lose from their airtime budget.
          The opposite is true. Once clients have invested in great creative, creative that works, they invest MORE on radio, not less!
          Many radio stations do have excellent creative resources in house. The problem is the same writer is often saddled with writing commercials for four or five competing car dealerships or furniture stores.
          Couple that potential conflict of interest with the fact that same writer writes hundreds of commercials each month, and the likelihood that they’ll knock the ball out of the part every time is dramatically diminished.
          Great creative ultimately results in happier clients and bigger broadcast orders. The myth that radio advertisers should use ‘free’ creative has caused more advertisers to conclude “radio doesn’t work” more than any other factor.
          When presenting to local business owners, focusing on the creative instead of your station, achieves a number of objectives;
 
1.) Customer Focus Your media presentation is all about you, the commercial message is about the client….which do you think is more interesting to the client?
 
2.) Differentiation  Advertisers with increasing media choices and a growing list of competitors know they need a message that clearly differentiates them from those competitors.
 
3.) Results     Your prospects can buy spots and space anywhere, and most of them are weary of every media’s claim to be ‘number one’. They want results, and need help crafting messages that will create those results, regardless which media they buy.
          Are you looking for a proven creative outsource for your key accounts? We often work with, and recommend, Jeffrey Hedquist of Hedquist Productions. Jeffrey can be reached at  [email protected]

Widdle Wabbit Lesson

Widdle Wabbit

          A precious little girl walked into a pet shop and asked the owner in the sweetest little lisp, between two missing teeth, “Excuthe me Mither, do you sthell widdle wabbits?”
          As the shopkeeper’s heart melted, he got down on his knees to be on the little girl’s level and started his pitch, “Do you want a widdle white wabbit or a thoft and fuwwy, bwack wabbit, or maybe one like that cute widdle bwown wabbit over there?”
          The little girl put her hands on her knees, leaned forward towards the pet shop owner, and looking him in the eye said, “I don’t think it weally mattows to my python.”
          In sales, we often misinterpret or don’t take the time to explore the motivation behind our prospects’ questions or decisions. We assume we know what the client wants and jump in with our pitch without asking one of the most powerful words in sales…. “why?”
          Had the pet shop owner taken the time to learn why the little girl was asking about wabbits, he probably would not have positioned them as “thoft, fuwwy, or cute”….neither the little girl nor the python cared about those features.
          Do you take the time to uncover why your prospects really make the decisions they make? You may be surprised, and change your presentation accordingly, if you dig a little deeper before you start your presentation.
          The Huthwaite study of more than 60,000 business-to-business sales calls revealed that the ability to ask deep probing questions was the single most important attribute of top performing sales people.
          But most of us ask the same boring questions as our competitors.
           I recently had one client say to me, “If I have one more media rep ask me who my target audience is, I’m going to scream! I want to deal with professionals who understand who my target is and can ask more intelligent questions.”
 
P.S. Click here if you would like me to call you to discuss what our Questioning Skills sales training workshop can do for your team.

Recession Lesson

Recession Lesson

           The recession is not over!
          Now that I have your attention, I’m going to ask you to tell yourself this every day… “The recession is not over. The recession is not over.”
          Many of the stations I work with learned some valuable lessons during the recession that helped them build revenue increases even though their competitors experienced losses.
          Now that the automotive industry is picking up steam and we appear to be on the road to recovery, I’m afraid we’ll go back to our fat and lazy ways and forget those lessons.
          Instead of falling back into ‘order-taking’, let’s keep selling as if we are in recession so that those orders take us to never before achieved revenue heights!
          Most of you know the psychology behind the four minute mile. Until Roger Bannister achieved it, it was thought it could not be done.
          Since he broke that record, it has been broken numerous times and the record is now 17 seconds better than the four minute mile.
          Many stations have broken records and proven there is more business out there, even during tough times. Let’s not turn the clock back.
          Let’s take those lessons into the new economy to continue breaking records.
          Those lessons?
1.) Look beyond top-line sales reports. Your top ‘biller’ is not necessarily your top seller. Many top billers didn’t make the cut when their dependence on order-taking, and heritage or entitlement accounts caught up with them. 
2.) Leverage your websites. You can now offer one-stop shopping, leveraging the pictures, promotions, details and fine print you can publish on your website to dramatically increase your airtime buy.
3.) Print is dead. Your clients no longer need to pay lumberjacks, truck drivers, paper mills, printing press operators, postal workers or carrier boys to produce and deliver their messages. The internet has freed up former print budgets for you!
4.) Local is reliable. Stations that have learned to reduce their dependency on agencies and ratings actually grew their sales in tough times! Less than 10% of the businesses in your market currently use radio. There’s lots of room for growth. Once you teach those businesses how to get a return on their investment with radio, you’ll have friends (clients) for life.
5.) We’re in a knowledge economy. Busy multi-tasking business owners are looking for someone they can trust to direct their advertising buys. Media sales people who continue to learn the new media landscape and how to produce measurable results for their clients will continue to break revenue records.
 
          The economic downturn forced many of us to become physically and mentally fit. Let’s stay in shape to continue breaking revenue records in the new economy!