After sending last week’s SoundManagement about the teacher’s sell and the importance of a frequency of three, a Regional Sales Manager made an astute observation.
          Talking to a co-worker she discussed how ‘annoying’ it was that she had to tell her staff everything three times as well. By mistake, she sent me a message about the teacher’s sell that simply said, “That’s annoying”.
          When I responded asking what was annoying and asking if she wanted to cancel SoundManagement, she explained she had hit reply by accident, and that the message was meant to go to her co-worker in reference to having to communicate messages three times to staff.
          Two valuable lessons were learned.

Lesson 1: Sales people are people too! That’s not wrong, it’s just normal. They need repetition before they get your message.
If it’s important, cover it in a sales meeting (that’s once), send a memo or email (that’s twice) and be sure to discuss it at your one-on-one coaching session (that’s three times).

Lesson 2: A lesson I’ve personally learned the hard way…always, always, always double-check and re-read your emails before you hit send. 

P.S. The embarrassed Regional Sales Manager and I had a good laugh about the error, and she made it clear she wants to continue to receive SoundManagement. If you know someone who might like to receive this free weekly service please forward their email address to us.

          You often tell your clients that “repetition sells.” In fact, you probably tell them their message needs to be heard three times before their prospects can capture and retain their selling proposition.

          To many advertisers, this statement just sounds like we’re trying to sell more spots.  Here’s a common sense way to make your point.

Tell your prospects and advertisers about, ‘the teacher’s sell’.

          Teachers know that students have to get the message three times in a seven day window or they won’t pass the test.

          The tried and proven teaching formula is;

·        Tell them what you’re going to tell them (that’s once)

·        Then tell them (that’s twice)

·        Then tell them what you’ve told them (that’s three times!)

Challenge your clients to ask a teacher if this is the formula they use to ensure their message is heard and retained. They’ll get the point about the importance of a frequency of three.

The problem with many sales contests is they reward results rather than behaviors, activities or effort. These sales contests are often weighted in favor of the rep with ‘the best list’.
Your commission or bonus structure already rewards results. Try running a sales contest where the account executive who gets the most ‘no’s’ wins first prize and the account executive who gets the most yeses wins second prize.
Here is a little secret…..the person who wins first prize will also likely win second prize!

Here are some of the advantages of my ‘most no’s’ contest.

1-     Your clients sign off on the qualifying presentation with a brief explanation why they said no. Armed with this knowledge you can overcome that objection and/or uncover a flaw in your presentation.

2-     Our ‘most no’s’ contest circumvents reps pre-judging accounts or not presenting because they assume the client will say no. Some of these calls may result in a surprise sale.

3-     At the end of your ‘most no’s’ drive, your account reps will have overcome the call reluctance caused by the fear of rejection…after all they’re rewarded for rejections.

4-     Each presentation they make will be better than the one before. Practice makes perfect.

Behaviors which get rewarded get repeated. You know the behaviors which inevitably leads to more sales. Start rewarding the behaviors or activities you want to see more of and the sales will follow!   
If you know another sales manager, or general manager who would benefit form receiving these free weekly tips, click here to forward their address.

Your news director knows your audience can not relate to the American national debt at a whopping eight trillion dollars. In fact, most people don’t even know how many zeros to put behind the eight to write $8,000,000,000,000.00.
But it sure hits home when he says, “The American national debt is approaching nearly $3,000 for every man woman and child living in the U.S.A.”
Your large audience estimates can be equally baffling or meaningless to your prospects.
I went on a call with a radio rep, calling on a wood flooring company last week and detected the client was not relating to the station’s, ‘70,000 listeners.’

 We broke down the numbers in some terms the flooring guy could relate to.
“Yes, we have more than 70,000 listeners, but we know that only 30,000 of them are home owners.” Cutting our number in less than half and only talking about ‘home owners’ seemed to take us a rung up the trust ladder.
Then we went on to say, “Our goal is to have only 1.5% of those home owners shop at your location. Does that sound realistic?”
We then suggested he should close one third of that 1.5%. In other words, we only targeted half of one percent of our homeowners to buy from him over the next 12 months.
We then asked if a $300 cost of sale ($45,000 ad campaign divided by 150 sales) against a $10,000 sale was realistic.
I think you know the answer. Who wouldn’t invest $300 to make a $10,000 sale.
Encourage your sales people to get off of the big numbers or “number-one” bandwagon and you’ll be amazed how the client’s trust will escalate when you talk in numbers relevant to them.

We had such an overwhelming response to last week’s note about our Station Marketing Audits, that I thought I’d share two of our key findings with my SoundManagement readers, no charge!
1.  Our mystery shoppers push hard for low rates.
We have discovered your  competitors are not pricing themselves as low as your clients or your sales people would have you believe.
It seems clients feel they have a vested interest in telling you they can buy the competition cheaper. It’s a negotiating tactic for some.
It also appears some sales professionals find it easier to sell their sales manager on a low rate than it is to sell the client on the right rate.
2.  Our team makes it very clear when they ask for presentations from you and your competitors that they are only agents, they are NOT the decision maker.
In virtually every audit more than 80% of the media, (that’s all media including radio, print, billboards, TV, coupon envelopes, online and transit) never try to reach the decision maker.
It is incumbent upon you to find a Valid Business Reason to contact the decision maker if you want to increase your closing ratios.  
Our SoundAdvice system gives your clients a new Valid Business Contact every week.  For more information on SoundAdvice, click here