Author Archives: admin

Your Sales Culture

Your 2009 Sales Culture

          You can learn a great deal about the way a company does business by reading their help wanted ads. I saw an ad last week seeking an Account Executive for a station that required “a carnivore, not a grazer.”
          I have the good fortune of working with media companies across North America, and I can tell you from what I’ve observed, I’ll take the grazer over the carnivore any day… especially in this economy!
          The dictionary defines carnivore as “a predator who attacks, kills and devours its prey” How many renewals will you get out of prey that has been killed?
          The grazer, however “feeds on organisms which when eaten are not killed and continue to grow.”
          Your prospects and clients can spot sales people who are out for the kill versus those who want to help them grow. I think you know which they prefer to do business with.
          As I wrote this ENS on Sales I checked several recruiting ads for radio and TV sales people and was encouraged to see the tone changing to attract the kind of candidates your customers want to do business with.
          I saw phrases like;

· Creativity and marketing smarts to develop profitable campaigns

· Driven to help our customers succeed

· Nurture a business by creating profitable solutions

· Develop long term relationships

The stations I’ve seen that continue to grow in spite of a weakening economy are the ones that recruit and train with a view to creating successful campaigns for their clients rather than those that focus on hard-sell closing techniques or this month’s budget.

Our selling in the Silver Lining Economy sales workshop is helping hundreds of media sales reps sell more in a tough economy. Want to sell more now? Contact [email protected].

Crisis Beneficiaries

Crisis Beneficiaries

I know it sounds cliché, but problems really are opportunities in disguise. The trick is to learn how to uncover and capture the opportunities in this economy.

Last week I sat on a plane beside a building contractor headed for Arkansas. I opened the conversation with, “I guess things are a little slow for your business right now?”

“No”, he said, “this economy has created all kinds of new opportunities.”

Looking for more ammunition for our seminars I inquired about those ‘opportunities’.

“I’m on my way to a plant in Arkansas right now that is doubling its staff and building a huge addition,” he said.

He went on to explain the factory that was booming made frozen waffles, pancakes and pastries. He said that people with large families were going to restaurants less and opting to prepare convenient low cost meals at home. The frozen waffle factory couldn’t keep up with new-found demand.

Sometimes it’s alternative products or services that capture opportunities in the face of adversity, and sometimes it’s simply developing new marketing strategies to capture the silver lining in the economic clouds.

R.L. Polk, the Michigan based automotive marketing consultants, reported that although overall vehicle sales in January, 2009 were down 37%, Hyundai’s sales jumped 14%!

Hyundai’s marketing strategy tapped into the uncertainties weighing on consumer spending. Their ‘Assurance Program’ simply offered to let buyers return their new Hyundai cars within one year if they get laid off.

It is often fear rather than reality that holds back consumer spending.

Hyundai’s offer wasn’t about discounts and rebates, it was about letting buyers sleep at night.

Our Winning in the Silver Lining Economy seminar helps advertisers and media salespeople, understand how to uncover opportunities like these and more.

The last seminar we facilitated resulted in 18 new clients coming on air for the host stations.

To learn more, or to schedule our Winning in the Silver Lining Economy seminar in your market, contact [email protected] .

Two Broadcasting Champions

Two Broadcasting Champions

Today’s ENS on Sales is not a sales or management ‘tip’, but rather is a ‘tip’ of the hat to two special people in our industry.

It’s a ‘thank you’ to two friends of the industry, and personal friends of mine, Eric Rhoads and Howard Christensen. Both began their careers as broadcasters and became servants to the broadcasting industry as publishers of influential broadcasting magazines.

What I respect most about Howard and Eric is their integrity. Both are still broadcasters at heart and are hands-on publishers serving an industry they passionately support.

In many of my ENS on Sales we talk about attaining success via a customer-focus. Eric and Howard exemplify this philosophy, understanding the broadcasters they serve and being broadcasters first, publishers second.

Howard Christensen is the publisher of Broadcast Dialogue in Canada. Once a popular newscaster at Canada’s largest radio station, Howard recognized a need for more up-to-date news and information about the people and issues affecting the Canadian Broadcast industry.

He began Canada’s first weekly newsletter about our industry, called Broadcast Dialogue, as a simple faxed newsletter.

Broadcast Dialogue now publishes important news about the people and events in the Canadian industry in a weekly email newsletter, as well as an enjoyable monthly magazine.

Eric Rhoades once owned a radio station and his love of the industry has never waned. Eric is truly a visionary when it comes to publishing leading edge articles in his bi-monthly Radio Ink magazine and through the educational industry conferences he organizes, including his annual Convergence Conference, the trend-forecasting Radio Forecast, his Hispanic Radio Conference and others.

If more broadcasters followed some of the ideals and philosophies espoused by Eric, our industry would be in much better shape today.

Sure, as a publisher serving the radio industry, Eric has a vested interest in proliferating a healthy industry. But when you meet Eric in person, you soon realize his sincerity of intent extends far beyond the viability of his daily online newsletter, his conferences or his bi-monthly magazine.

Eric lives and breaths radio, and the industry owes him a great deal for his insights and service

Howard and Eric; two ‘former’ broadcasters who became publishers, but who never really left broadcasting at all. Unlike other trade magazine publishers who look for niches to profit from, both became publishers as a result of a need they identified for communications within their beloved industries and they found a way to profit from filling that need. In my opinion, both are ‘non-broadcasters’ who deserve places in the Broadcast Hall of Fame.

Let’s all hope they continue to profit from their insights and leadership in our industry.

P.S. Do you subscribe to Radio Ink or Broadcast Dialogue?

What Makes a Great Idea?

A couple of weeks ago I offered a free copy of my book, 101 Ways To Get Luckier, (In Advertising Sales), to readers of ENS on Sales who sent their successful ideas to me.

It was a very interesting exercise for me. We received some great ideas, and some not so great. But here’s the point; they all sold!!

It seems it doesn’t matter whether I or anyone else believes your ideas are good. The passion and conviction that comes with developing ideas seems to carry them through to fruition and they SELL!

And if they sell, they are good ideas. The fact the idea motivated an advertiser to come on board with you makes any idea a good idea.

If your idea motivates someone who might not have otherwise advertised, to advertise, it’s a great idea.

And if you use that sale to go the extra mile in super-serving the advertiser, you, your station, and your client will benefit.

P.S. And aren’t your ideas more fun to sell than station rankers?

Building the Revenues You Deserve

Building the Revenues You Deserve

I’m a believer that we get what we deserve in life. And in sales, we get the kinds of revenues we deserve.

I recently read an article in a trade magazine where the contributing writer suggested the way to increase sales was to offer, “buy two spots, get one free.”

Wow, why didn’t I think of that? We just walk up to a prospect who is cutting expenses and desperate for more sales and tell them if they buy spots they don’t want, we’ll give them more spots they don’t want, for free.

Clients who don’t see advertising as a solution to soft sales and who are looking for ways to cut costs or increase sales are not going to be enticed to buy unless you offer a solution to their problems.

Admittedly, businesses that are already planning to buy advertising would like to see you diminish the value of your product. But those who have decided to cut back won’t reverse that decision simply because we’ve offered more of what they don’t want, for less.

We do get the revenues we deserve. Peddling station inventory, station promotions, station features and station specials will not generate the revenues you deserve. Focusing on building campaigns to solve the customer’s problems will generate the revenues you deserve.

‘Spots’ or online offerings are not your most valuable inventory. Customer focused ideas are your most valuable inventory. Spots and websites are merely a medium for carrying messages, and contrary to what Marshall McLuhan might have said, the message is more important than the medium.

It’s what you say in your spots or online features that creates value for your clients.

I do admit there are some sales people who are not capable of developing advertising solutions to client problems, but who can sell station packages and features. More often than not, your package peddlers are leaving money on the table. And with their focus on your pricing or packages instead of the client’s campaigns, their attrition rates will be higher.

Some advice for the managers of those sales people who are not capable of building customer focused solutions:

1.) Don’t hire any more of them. Look for people who can develop profitable marketing ideas. They won’t need to ‘sell’ their ideas because clients will buy them. Clients prefer buying to being sold.

2.) Keep your package sellers focused on transactional customers who only buy packages. Don’t let high revenue-potential prospects who want solutions to their problems end up on the account lists of these people.

3.) Don’t give up! Keep training and coaching your package peddlers to develop customer focused solutions. Eventually the light will come on and they will become customer focused account executives who will start generating the revenues you deserve.

Bag More Sales

It’s hard to come up with new ways to promote a sale these days. But advertisers must stand out from the crowd to make their events a success.

I recently saw a newspaper campaign for Office Max where instead of running the usual flyers or coupons with everyone else, they inserted a plain brown bag with this message printed on it, “Bring this bag to our store from January 4-10 and save 15% on everything that fits in it.”

The bag certainly stood out from all of the look-alike colored flyers and coupons that fell out of the paper.

This would be the perfect idea for a radio station remote, and a lot less costly than printing and inserting a bag in the paper.

Simply run a remote inviting everyone to come to your broadcast booth to get their free bag with all the savings your listeners can carry!

Your advertiser will credit you for every ‘bag’ sale, whether the ‘bag people’ were attracted by you or not, and the idea is unusual enough to stand out.

There are some added benefits:

1.) Your listeners will feel like they got something for nothing (the bag) PLUS the savings, courtesy of you.

2.) Shoppers get to choose which merchandise they want to save on.

3.) Your advertiser has the flexibility to choose the size of bag you distribute

Got a hot idea you’d like to share with other stations? Send it to [email protected]. If we use your idea in ENS on Sales, we’ll send you a free copy of my book, 101 Ways to Get Luckier (in ad sales).

Search Engine Optimization

Do You Have an SEO Package?

Local marketers today have a dizzying menu of new and traditional media to choose from.

The new media bandwagon is a trendy and exciting place to be. Virtually every business has a website today. Websites can post more up to date information and they are cheaper and more accessible than old-fashioned print ads or brochures.

Many businesses hire Search Engine Optimizers, consultants who try to get their webpage to come up on the first page of an online search. Others invest in expensive new software or try to manipulate search engine preference through carefully selected words or phrases to help them appear among the first in their category on Google or Yahoo.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) takes many forms, but is based upon the premise that the earlier a site is presented in search results, or the higher it

‘ranks’, the more searchers will visit that site.

The problem with SEO, is that while a business is trying to get their webpage to come up in the top ten, so are their competitors…it’s a never ending battle.

Amidst all of the glamour and hype for new media, we need to step back for a moment and help our advertisers exercise a little common sense.

Although the technology may be more glamorous, or bewildering, than old yellow directories, or static brochures, the basic human interaction with online directories, websites, searches and ads is really no different.

Like the old yellow directories in the phone book, people search the web for three basic reasons:

1.) To look up a business they already have in mind to learn more about them or find their contact information or address.

2.) To find a business in a category where no marketer has effectively established their brand and the consumer could not think of a business in that category.

3.) To ‘shop’ the sites in search of the cheapest price or more information.

Intrusive media, like radio or TV, can be the most effective SEO in all three cases:

1.) Creative intrusive campaigns will create an awareness and preference for a particular business and negate the need for a generic search long before a need arises.

2.) Open categories, categories where most consumers have no awareness of or preference for a particular business, are prime categories where intrusive media can easily and inexpensively create a dominant share of mind and share of market for businesses which aim to be that category’s leader.

3.) When prices are virtually comparable, intrusive branding and awareness can be the tie-breaker for your advertisers over their competitors.

Advertisers who rely upon ‘the luck of the draw’ or the premise of first up is first bought are tickling themselves to hear themselves laugh.

Even if a search ranks your site early today, it is a very simple matter for surfers to find and click on your competitor’s sites as well. And generic category searches inevitably reveal a long list of competitors to the web surfer.

Smart marketers today use an integrated media approach, rather than putting all of their eggs in the passive media or online basket.

You need to present your SEO package to every business in your market. Your Search Engine Optimization campaign will persuade consumers to:

1.) Not surf the category, i.e. ‘furniture stores’ , but rather search a particular business name, like NameTown Furniture Mart, thereby minimizing the risk of a search revealing your advertisers’ competitors.

2.) Have a conscious or subconscious preference for your advertisers’ businesses if they do search the category and find a list of competitors.