Yearly Archives: 2021

Creating Call-Ins

Ahhh, the good ole call-in. Are you receiving call-ins at your stations? A few, or a lot?

Good inbound leads today are hard to come by, especially if you don’t have a system in place to generate call-ins.

The one thing every station should have is a system to create call-ins. The best and most productive place to start… your own airwaves. And, it has to be more than just saying, “Hey, if you need to advertise, give us a call”. That won’t work. What’s your system?

On a daily basis, media reps suggest to their prospects and clients that they need to advertise and promote themselves in order to generate traffic. But here’s the funny thing… most stations do very little, if anything at all, to promote themselves on the sales side of the business. Huh – Why Not??? And the crazy part is… the inventory to promote your own stations, is FREE!

At ENS Media, we have a proven program to generate call-ins. In addition, it will train your media reps, and promote them AND your stations as professionals.

It seems like a formula for success, doesn’t it?

Are you doing what you are asking your clients and prospects to do every day?

If you would like to learn more about putting your stations on the path to getting more call-ins, click here to arrange a time to visit.

Zip the Lips

Every once in a while, I meet a salesperson who proudly proclaims, “I’ve got the gift of gab.” In sales, that “gift” is more aptly described as “the curse of chatter”.

Successful sales professionals know that sales are really more about listening than they are about talking.

Those with the curse more often engage in product or feature-speak than they do in providing customer-focused solutions or opportunities.

Customers don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care….and caring is demonstrated by listening.

Listening is by far the most important and difficult skill a sales professional can learn and practice. The salespeople who annoy and alienate prospects the most are those who claim to be good listeners but follow every customer objection with a “yah, but….”

There is no room for the word “but” in a good listener’s vocabulary. To be a professional listener you need to:

Earn the right to ask questions by learning something about the prospect’s business before you make a call. Prepare with open-ended questions that encourage the prospect to express their views and feelings.

Demonstrate you are listening by taking notes. (Always ask permission to take notes, “Your input is important to me; do you mind if I take a few notes?”)

Paraphrase and summarize what you hear. Don’t start a debate.

Use the language and needs you hear the customer express when you make your presentation.
Make certain that every benefit you present relates to a need you heard the prospect express.

There’s a lot more money to be made being interested than there is in being interesting. So why not, shut your trap, bite your lip, zip the lips, and make some money!

Subtle vs To the Point

I like quotes and use them often to make a point, whether to one person or a group.

Recently, as I was preparing for a presentation, I decided to use one of my favorite quotes by Brian Herbert…

“The Capacity to Learn is a Gift… The Ability to Learn is a Skill…
The Willingness to Learn is a Choice!”

To me, this quote simply states that we are all born with the ability to learn. Whether we choose to use that gift to learn and try new things is up to us. It’s subtle!

For this particular presentation, I wanted to be a little more direct and make the case that if you aren’t willing to learn and try new ideas, failure is inevitable. So, I chose this quote by Zig Ziglar to use along with the previous one:

“If you are NOT willing to learn, no one can help you!
If you ARE determined to learn, NO ONE can stop you!”

If you’re trying to make a point to someone or a group of people, try using quotes. Hang them around the office… or even hang one in your office to remind those that visit… or to remind yourself.

I hope that wasn’t too subtle!

We’ve created a clean, more presentable version of these two quotes together. If you would like a copy, click here and we will share them with you!

Last week’s ENS on Sales was titled, Warning Label and User Manuals. I may have been too subtle in what I was trying to get across, so let me be more direct.

If you aren’t having much success with selling recruitment advertising or with its effectiveness, give me a call. I know how to make it work for you and your clients. It’s a proven system that will help you sell mega loads of recruitment advertising.

Your investment is tiny, peanuts, crumbs, compared to the potential return for your stations. We will teach you how to present it, prepare it, and execute it!

If you want to make your clients happy, make your stations look like heroes, and create a ton of billing, contact us to arrange a conversation. Oh, and also let us know if you want us to send the quotes.

I hope I wasn’t too subtle this time!

Warning Label and User Manuals

Warning: Failure to understand how to present and execute recruitment advertising could lead to financial injury to you and your clients and cause severe harm (or worse) to your reputation as a media rep.

Many products we purchase come with some sort of a user manual. In addition, when there is potential for injury (or even worse), warning labels are required by law.

Recruitment Advertising should not only come with a user manual but with warning labels as well! Why? Because when recruitment advertising is not executed correctly your clients stand to lose money, and you, stand to lose a client, forever!

While recruitment advertising is a form of “direct response” advertising, it does have a different set of rules that need to be followed to achieve success. Most “direct response” advertising needs to address the who, what, when, where, and what else. With recruitment advertising, you MUST answer the WHY! Why would someone consider working for this company?

Understanding “How” effective recruitment works, then presenting this to your prospects and clients, and ultimately executing it correctly, is key to achieving success.

As states start to eliminate unemployment benefits and we get closer to September when the U.S. Government plans to eliminate the extra unemployment benefit, more of the population will go back to work. As this happens, we need to be prepared to reap the rewards.

If you want your piece of this huge, ongoing, recruitment pie, we have a system that is proven to work.

I learned this system from someone much smarter than I over 20 years ago. Since then, with some fine-tuning, it has generated millions of dollars in ad revenue, and more importantly, helped hundreds and hundreds of business owners and H.R. coordinators successfully recruit qualified job applicants.

This system not only trains your sales team on how to present and sell recruitment advertising, but they’ll learn how to execute it from beginning to end so that it has the best chance of success.

Once your team understands how to present, sell, and execute this system, you’ll reap the rewards, not only in ad revenue for years and years to come but also in your reputation as an advertising professional. Once they know it works and they’re looking to hire, they will simply call you and say, “we need to run that recruitment campaign again!”

Warning: Proceed with Caution – Failure to understand how to present and execute recruitment advertising could lead to financial injury to you and your clients and cause severe harm (or worse) to your reputation as a media rep. Proceed with caution!

If you would like to learn how you can implement this system and how our Return-On-Investment guarantee works, call Rick at (605) 310-2062 or click here to request information.

Halftime Interview 2021

Wow! Where did the 1^st half of 2021 go?

Over the holiday weekend, I read the book titled Talking To GOATs by the famed sports broadcaster/journalist, Jim Gray. It inspired me to write this week’s ENS on Sales using a sports analogy.

The following is a mock interview between a reporter and the GM or SM (coach) of a media sales team as they head back onto the field for the second half of the game/year.

Reporter: Hey coach, the game/year started pretty slow in Q1 as you were still comparing to pre-COVID numbers. What was your game plan for the first quarter? Can you tell us what happened?

Manager/Coach: We came into 2021 pretty optimistic, even though we were still in a state of uncertainty. The plan was pretty much the same as Q3 and Q4 of 2020. We knew that some business categories were doing great and others not so well. Our focus was to first see and help as many businesses as we possibly could.

Reporter: How about the second quarter (Q2) of this year? Did you change your game plan at all?

Manager/Coach: We did a little bit of adjusting. A lot of clients seemed to be searching for something new. We had to bring our best game and all our tools to the table, traditional media, digital, and we even implemented some promotions and events.

Manager/Coach: We experienced some losses but also some big wins too. Of course, we were going up against smaller comps. Even though the goal is to get back to pre-COVID numbers, a win is a win at this stage!

Reporter: What’s the current temperature of the business owners?

Manager/Coach: It varies, but one consistent thing is that they don’t want to buy advertising… they want IDEAS and they will buy if you have an IDEA that they believe will improve their traffic, and ultimately their sales.

Reporter: Going into the second half, what are your goals?

Manager/Coach: To Win and Win Big! I don’t mean by just beating the 2020 numbers. I mean by surpassing the numbers we were at in 2019, pre-COVID. It’s very doable, but we won’t get there unless we execute, work hard, and bring better ideas to our clients than our competitors are.

Reporter: Anything else?

Manager/Coach: You know, radio is in a great position to help these business owners. We just have to get out there and work hard. There are some real opportunities out there right now. Recruitment should be on everyone’s radar! But you need to execute it correctly or it’ll backfire on you. In addition, the combination of digital/social and radio can be very powerful. We just need to get out there and tell our story to anyone and everyone willing to listen. Then Execute!

Reporter: Good luck with the second-half manager!

Manager/Coach: Thank you! Go Radio!

At ENS Media, we wish everyone good luck as we start the second half of 2021.

We appreciate that you are a reader of ENS on Sales and we hope that you find the topics useful.

If you know of someone that you think would enjoy receiving ENS on Sales, click here and send us their email address. We will add them to our mailing list and send them an email letting them know that you suggested them.