Monthly Archives: August 2015

A No-Brainer to Increase Your Sales

Imagine you own a local business, and you have a salesperson who has developed great customer relationships and helped to build your business.

 Then picture what you would do if another salesperson offered to join your company and bring with them their great customer relationships and database.

 Would you terminate your current sales person in favor of hiring the new sales person, or would you increase your sales even more by keeping both salespeople?

 I think the answer is a no-brainer. We know more feet on the street equals more sales and why would you sacrifice one sales source to attract another? You would invariably have both salespeople go to work for you.

 Advertising is merely multiplied salesmanship, permitting advertisers to make more ‘sales calls’ and reach more people than their salespeople alone can reach on a regular basis.  But almost on a daily basis we’re hearing from radio salespeople who tell us some of their clients are abandoning their radio campaigns in favour of social media.

 Even more ludicrous, we’re hearing that some advertisers say they don’t notice a drop off in business when they abandon their radio audiences.

 If they terminated one of their salespeople who had a loyal following, they wouldn’t notice an immediate drop in sales either. Depending upon their product and sales cycle it could take months, or even years, before the marketplace learned where that sales person went or that they had left.

 The effect of having two media working in tandem can be even more powerful than having two salespeople because there may not be synergies between salespeople, but there are huge synergies between media.

 Greek philosopher Aristotle identified the power of synergies when he said, “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” The impact of a multimedia campaign, like radio and social media, is certainly greater than the impact of one media alone.

 And unfortunately for advertisers who abandon tried and proven radio, there is another force at work in advertising called momentum. The momentum they built with radio doesn’t quit the moment they leave radio, but by the time they realise they’re losing momentum it may be too late, or very expensive, to regain it.

 Our Local Share-of-Mind Surveys are proving the power of radio in markets across North America and are helping radio sales executives to increase their local-direct sales.

 To learn how we can help increase your sales contact [email protected]

 

[email protected]

An Ounce of Prevention

So one of your biggest accounts has just announced they intend to cut some of their traditional media in favor of digital. They currently use outdoor, radio, newspaper and TV in their traditional media portfolio.

How much time and effort will you invest to present your stations to avoid becoming one of the victims of the pending cuts?

Allow me to share a hidden truth in pending cuts… long before that cut-back announcement was made the client was already forming hard to change perceptions on which media they should cut.

          ‘Preventive maintenance’ is always more effective, and less costly, than ‘damage control.’

          Do you have a preventive maintenance program or does all of your energy go into making the sale, looking for new business, and damage control?

          A well-planned system of regularly thanking your customers, a continuous education system like our SoundADvice highlighting broadcasts’ relevance, and regular post campaign analysis and wrap up reports can put you in the driver’s seat when advertisers hungry for change begin to wield their cut-back knives.

          If you’re surprised by a cancellation or cutback, it’s probably because you didn’t have a preventive maintenance program.

 

[email protected]

Stop Blaming New Media

What’s New?

I’m hearing more and more stations grumbling about the loss of revenue as advertisers switch to new media.
But maybe it’s not new media to blame…. maybe it’s ‘old’ media.
Advertising, by nature, is supposed to be dynamic, exciting, fresh and even somewhat adventurous.
If you haven’t presented anything ‘new’ to your clients recently, perhaps your clients are just plain tired of same-old, same-old.
Look at each of your clients and ask yourself, “When was the last time the client was excited about something new I presented?”
New ideas?
New promotions?
New schedules?
New research?
New strategies?
New creative?
Maybe it’s time for you to ‘re-new’ your advertiser relationships. Sometimes we seek change for change’s sake, even if what we’re doing has been working.

 

[email protected]

Make it Feel Like Christmas Now

While your salespeople 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.

           You know, “the early bird gets the worm.”

           Yet many media account executives will be panicked and running around like frantic last-minute Christmas shoppers, trying to pick up the crumbs left by more professional account executives who captured their prospects’ Christmas budgets while they were still in the planning stages.
I can still recall my rookie days when I called on my prospects with our newly-released ‘Christmas package’ only to hear, “Sorry, but we gave our budget to the newspaper just last week.”
While it might no longer be “the newspaper”, you can bet there are countless traditional and new media reps who will be pounding the pavement around mid-October in the hopes of capturing lucrative Christmas advertising dollars.
If you want your competitors to hear that you have already captured their prospects’ Christmas budgets, you need to begin planning your Christmas sales meeting NOW.
A properly planned Christmas Sales Meeting can put your sales team in the mood to be the early bird, to be the first in the door to talk to their prospects about the important Christmas selling season.
You need to plan now, for your Christmas sales meeting the first week after Labor Day. And it needs to feel like Christmas!

          Click here to read some of the tactics we encourage the stations we consult to utilize during their early-September Christmas sales meeting.

 

[email protected]