Monthly Archives: September 2020

I’m Pretty Proud of Them

This week I am going to take this time and space to say congratulations to a few very deserving people. At the same time, I hope to provide a small lesson on how to create great advertising for your clients.

First, as you may know, the Mercury Awards finalists were announced this past week. I am extremely proud to announce that two of my past sales reps and my first sales manager are all finalists. Jay Murphy (Haugo Broadcasting, Rapid City, SD) has a finalist entry in the Humor category. Mark Tollefson and Leigh Anglin (Results Radio – Townsquare Media, Sioux Falls, SD) are finalists in the Best Use of Music in an Ad category. All three of these individuals and I worked together for nearly 30 years at Results Radio, where I was the Sales Manager.

Here is the link to all the Mercury Award Finalists:

http://www.radiomercuryawards.com/2020finalists.cfm

Let me be clear, I am not taking credit for any of this. All three of these individuals are super talented and I learned every bit as much, and maybe even more, from them as they ever learned from me. But, as we did and they still do at Results Radio, they work as a TEAM where the #1 goal is to get results for their advertisers.

Mark has worked with Sorlien Electric and has been creating and producing effective ads for them for nearly 20 years.  Actually, he has created many more ads for Sorlien and others that are as good as or even better than the one nominated.

Leigh has been a creative “genius” since the beginning of time and has been the brains behind many extremely creative and effective campaigns.

Jay recently moved on from Results Radio to become the SM for a group in Rapid City. Since his arrival, Rapid City has never heard a higher level of quality radio ads. Rapid City radio is better because of Jay.

How did they get to this level? They all have common denominators:  1) They all have a burning desire to help their clients succeed 2) They’ve been trained by the very best (Don Jacobs, GM Results Radio, Sioux Falls, SD and Roy H. Williams, aka, Wizard of Ads) and 3) They never stop learning and trying to get better. If you were to ask Jay, Mark, or Leigh how they create these types of campaigns, they might say, “Ask a lot of deep questions”, “Don’t worry about what others think”, “Just write, be creative”, and “Do what’s right for the client”!

 Thank you for letting me brag on these great and talented people. They deserve the recognition.

 Congrats to Mark, Leigh, Jay… and Don!

I’m pretty proud of them!

Self-Evaluation on Every Call

“Without proper self-evaluation failure is inevitable.”    – John Wooden

Hopefully, self-evaluation is something you do yourself or it’s a process your management team leads you through at least one time a year.

Do you self-evaluate every performance? Meaning, after every sales or service call that you make do you consciously ask yourself what you did well or what you could have done better?

If you are not doing this now, start! Conducting a quick self-evaluation immediately after a call will dramatically improve your overall performance.

Ask yourself, what did I do well? What things did I say, what facts, figures, or stats did I use that had a positive impact on the meeting? Did you complete your desired task for this call?

Likewise, was there any part of my performance that I wish I could undo? Did I spend too much time on small talk? Did I talk too much about our stations and not enough about his/her business? Did I cut him/her off? Did I talk too much, period?

Admitting to yourself that you did something wrong or that you have a flaw is never an easy thing. However, by doing so, it will help you to not repeat them.

There are hundreds of big and little things that we do on each call. By consciously asking yourself and conducting a self-evaluation after each and every call, it will help you better prepare for future meetings and ultimately make you a better salesperson.

Celebrate – All of Us!

How do you define hard work? How hard do you work?

As media reps and managers, we don’t typically describe what we do as “labor” in every sense of the word. Nonetheless, what we do is laborious.

One definition of labor is, “productive activity, especially for the sake of economic gain”. If you’re in sales, we hope that you are doing it because of the great potential for economic gain.

Another definition is, “physical or mental work, especially of a hard or fatiguing kind; toil”. While you’re probably not getting blisters, and the work we do is not physically toiling on your body, the task we perform oftentimes leaves you mentally shot at the end of a day. These last five and a half months has certainly taken its toll on everyone in one form or another.

This weekend, celebrate yourself for what you do and what you do for your customers and the economy. But, also celebrate those that make it possible for us to do what we do; the first responders (our police, firemen and women), those that work in the factories and fields, in the offices, retail stores, truck drivers, linemen, service and medical professionals, the stay-at-home moms, and dads.

More importantly, this weekend and always, celebrate and appreciate everyone, regardless of their political party and views, regardless of the color of their skin or the religion they choose to believe in.

This Labor Day, let’s celebrate us… all of us!