Every once in a while I meet a sales person 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 is really more about listening than it is about talking.

Those with the curse more often engage in product 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 sales people 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;

1.) Earn the right to ask questions by learning something about the prospect’s business before you make a call.

2.) Prepare with open ended questions that encourage the prospect to express their views and feelings.

3.) 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?")

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

5.) Use the language and needs you hear the customer express when you make your presentation.

6.) Make certain that every benefit you present relates to a need you heard the prospect express.

There is a lot more money to be made being interested than there is in being interesting. So why not shut up and make some money!

According to a recent survey, nearly half of all small and medium sized businesses are run by boomers who will retire within the next decade. Most of those businesses will transfer control within the next five years.

What are you doing to pre-sell the next-in-line leaders of those businesses?

Often with change in management, comes change for change’s sake. The time to build those relationships and position your station’s strengths with those successors is now. When they get the nod, they will remember who by-passed them and who invited their input on advertising decisions.

The odds are that the next owner/manager will be younger and much more internet savvy than their aging predecessor. You need to understand their digital bias, and be able to articulate why radio is the perfect partner for their favored online marketing tools.

Click here for a no-obligation demo of how our ‘Winning in the New Media Economy’ workshops provide the tools and training for you to clearly position radio as a key player in the new media mix.

I admit I’ve always been a glass half-full kind of guy. But I’m really tired of the negative rhetoric I hear every day.

I received an email this week from a sales trainer who said "Let’s face the facts. We’re currently in the toughest economic times we have experienced since the Great Depression of 1933."

First of all, it’s not a ‘fact’. And just because everyone keeps saying so, doesn’t make it so. We have had several recessions worse than this one since 1933. Here are the facts:

Unemployment in the last recession peaked in 2009 at 10.0%. Post Great Depression unemployment rates peaked above that 10% figure in both 1937 and 1982.

The U.S. Gross Domestic Product was down 5.1% at the peak of the 2009 recession. Two recessions since 1933 saw shrinkages far worse than that, and in fact the 1945 recession saw GDP slip by 12.7%!

The first recorded recession in North America was in 1797 when the Bank of England teetered on insolvency due to the costs of the French Revolutionary Wars spilling into North America. Since that time, we’ve learned to live through 47 recessions….an average of one every 4.5 years.

Here are the ‘facts’ as I see them from my glasshalf-full perspective. It seems that advertising and training budgets are the first to come under the knife during ‘tough times.’ Yet I’ve managed to weather 7 recessions during my career.

I’m totally fed up with distorted ‘facts’ and negative thoughts which breed negative outcomes. Those planning for tough times in 2013 will inevitably experience tough times in 2013.

Noted management expert, Peter F. Drucker, said "The best way to predict the future is to create it."

What kind of future are you creating as you plan for 2013? You’ve heard me say it before, but "Our problem isn’t that we aim too high and miss our targets, it’s that we aim too low and hit our targets."

I, for one, plan to fill the rest of my glass in 2013. Even if it doesn’t get filled to over-flowing, it will be exhilarating to try!

At age 71, famed Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts has contracted a masseuse to help him deal with his back pain during the Stones’ upcoming live performances.
Why do you suppose he puts himself through this back pain at his age? Does he really need the money from more concerts? Of course not.
Being a Rolling Stone is part of who he is, and doing concerts is not a job, it’s what drives him. And noted Rolling Stone guitarist, Keith Richards, after more than fifty years of playing guitar says he’s still learning to play guitar. Wow…still learning after 50 years!
Lately I’ve noticed a disturbing trend is radio sales. In the last two weeks alone, I’ve heard more than a dozen sales managers confidentially referring to their salespeople as "lazy" or as one kinder gentler manager put it "they’re reluctant to do the work."
I see and hear about radio salespeople who have "jobs." They get up and "go to work" because they have to, not because they want to. If you call what we do "work" you’re in the wrong business.
Singer-songwriter Kenny Rogers once said, "Find something you love doing, that people will pay you to do, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life."
Charlie Watts is motivated to endure back pain doing what he loves, and Keith is motivated to keep on learning new licks even though he’s already renowned as one of the best guitar players in the world.
And, I don’t believe front man Mick Jagger has to employ all kinds of incentives or motivational tactics to get the team to hit the road. They do it from sheer inner motivation.
Managers who try to motivate salespeople who do not already have an inner motivation are climbing an insurmountable mountain. In fact, managers cannot motivate people to perform. Managers can only create an environment in which self-motivated people tap into their inner motivation and reach for the stars…always learning, always doing what others said couldn’t be done.
If you have people on your team who are "lazy" or "reluctant" to go the extra mile, you have to ask yourself two questions:

1.) Do you have the right people on board? Or should you be offering some of them the opportunity to seek a new career?
2.) If you do have the right people on board, what are you doing to create an environment within which they can tap into their inner motivation?

The Stones don’t tour just for the money; the money is simply a measure of appreciation and recognition. In sales, and in concerts, the big check is not the goal; it’s only the report card. The big check says how much you are appreciated and how much your customers (fans) love you.
Recognition and appreciation, in radio sales and in rock concerts, have to be part of the success formula. Without cheers and applause, there is no jumping enthusiastically into the show.
Poking and prodding the unmotivated, a.k.a. "lazy," employee simply creates resistance. Here’s the bottom line: Behaviors which get rewarded and recognized get repeated.
You know what behaviors are required to succeed in this business. When you start to recognize and appreciate small improvements in those behaviors, rather than focusing on what is not being done, you’ll be surprised how "ambitious" your team can become.
Wayne Ens is the president of ENS Media Inc. and producer of SoundADvice, the radio e-marketing system and advertiser seminar that is persuading local advertisers across North America to drop their print advertising in favor of a radio-Internet media mix. He can be reached at [email protected]

My business partner blasted me last week for telling one of our employees something in confidence. I respect my partner, so I reflected upon their critique that I was too trusting. I thought back upon my 42 years in business and realized that trust is a two way street.

People don’t trust you until you trust them. I’ve heard the old used car dealer quip that "buyers are liars" and I know what kind of trust most people have in those same dealers.

One time in ten, trusting someone comes back and bites me. The other nine times, trusting people and achieving their reciprocal trust, pays back huge dividends.

I can accept failing one time out of ten!

Besides, it’s just less stressful trusting people than playing Chicken Little and being a skeptic.