Yearly Archives: 2015

No Excuses

We hear sales people every day saying they sell themselves first. But as soon as something goes wrong, they don’t take responsibility. They blame everyone else in the organization. Traffic, copy, management, the IT department….you name it, the fingers start pointing when a promise made to a client falls off the rails.  But the client doesn’t care what went on behind the scenes. They counted on you when they bought, and they’re counting on you to fix the problem without having to hear a bunch of excuses.

    If you did sell yourself, the client bought because of faith in you. You made the promise and it’s up to you to take responsibility and deliver. You’ll build a much stronger relationship with your clients when you say something like “I apologise. I made a promise, and it’s up to me to fix the problem and solve it to your satisfaction immediately.”

 

[email protected]

If You Never Fail, You’re Not Trying Hard Enough!

I believe the best salespeople are competitive by nature. Whether they are competing against themselves to increase their numbers, or helping their clients to be more competitive.  Competition gets their adrenaline flowing.

Strategically-designed sales contests can be just what the doctor ordered to jump start your best salespeople. But interestingly, most sales contests are counter-productive as they reward something beyond the salesperson’s control.
Many industries suffer from incentivizing the wrong things. For example, oil company executives can receive huge bonuses when oil prices go up, but receive no such bonuses for making the best of a bad situation when oil prices drop, even though oil prices are really beyond their control.
While your account executives have influence over whether a client says yes or no, they have no actual control over those decisions. What they do control, and what should be rewarded, is the quantity and quality of their presentations.
Here is the thing. Try running a sales contest where the person who gets the most no’s wins first prize and the person who gets the most yesses wins second prize. I can virtually guarantee you that the person who wins first prize, will also win second prize, because the number of successes we achieve is always in direct proportion to the number of times we fail.
Of course to qualify as a no, the client must explain and sign off on why they said no, which in itself is a valuable learning exercise.

 

[email protected]

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]