Are you looking for a way to add a little spark to your sales team? Try this. 
At your next sales meeting, start a round table discussion on, “What I like most about my career in advertising sales.”
          Keep gathering input and documenting the answers on a flip chart or dry-erase board until you come up with the Top Ten Reasons why we enjoy our careers.
          In the day to day grind of trying to make budget, hearing clients who say advertising doesn’t work, and getting bogged down in paper work, we often forget about the buzz we got from our first day on the job.
You’ll inevitably get answers like:
Helping clients succeed
The opportunity to be creative
Working with interesting people
Being my own boss or managing my own account list
Not tied to a desk
Prestige in the community
Unlimited earning potential
Continuous learning curve
The thrill of making the sale
Never get bored
          It is common to take our blessings for granted after a while, and developing a Top Ten Reasons Why We Have a Great Career helps everyone to reflect upon how fortunate we are to be in this exciting and stimulating business.

Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitudes and actions.” – Harold Geneen, Chairman, ITT Corp.

          I have never directly discussed the role of attitude in the more than 500 SOUNDManagement tips I have written. That’s because it is so painfully obvious that the phrase, “positive attitude” has almost become cliché.
          Sitting on the plane on my way back to Lagoon City last week, I was pondering what creates my most successful clients, in an effort to replicate those successes.
          Is it the amount of time I dedicate to them? Certain concepts, ideas or programs we initiate? Or is it systems, procedures or discipline? Do external factors, ratings or other market conditions play an over-whelming role in success or failure?
          I would like to tell you that I concluded it is ENS Media Inc.’s consulting and training that was the single most powerful contributor to my clients’ success, but that’s not magic the answer either.
          I have studied enough success cases that I can state unequivocally that the single largest contributing factor to any of my clients’ successes is positive mental attitude.
          I have always taken pride in being a glass-half-full kind of guy, but even I was shocked to re-discover the over-powering role that attitude plays in the success of my clients.
          All of the other things I do as a consultant, from achieving buy-in, to implementing training, and from introducing systems to having more fun on the job, only happen if my clients consistently encourage positive attitudes from their staffs.
          I sincerely hope I have not bored you by stating this obvious and common observation, but it has made such an overwhelming contribution to my clients’ successes that I felt compelled to remind you about the power of positive thinking. (After all, who knows better than us that repetition sells!)
          We know about this powerful phenomenon, but in the face of increased competition, you need a plan that helps you to focus on the positives every day. I’m going to suggest that you mark four things to do in your palm-pilot or day-timer every day;
1. Uncover and promote a positive about your company.
2. Uncover and utilize a positive about yourself.
3. Uncover and promote a positive about your market. 
4. Uncover and promote a positive about your staff or peers.
         Henry Ford probably said it best when he said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you are right!”

One of the most self-serving things you can do is to educate someone else.
In the process of educating someone else, here is what you will achieve for yourself:
1.     You will learn more about the subject matter. As you research and prepare to pass on your knowledge, you will actually update and enhance your knowledge of the topic.
2.     You will improve your self-confidence. Inevitably, you will surprise yourself at how much you already know as you teach someone else.
3.     You will elevate your image as a professional. There is a certain amount of respect and recognition that is given to anyone who teaches us something.
4.     Everyone you teach will either become a client or give you a referral.
Two of the most effective teaching platforms will actually help you to market yourself:
1.     Write a regular column or news letter about your areas of expertise.
2.     Speak to business groups and schools about your areas of expertise.
Both speaking and writing require a great deal of discipline and up-front effort…….. researching, designing, personalizing and creating your material takes more time than actually delivering it. 
But you will never regret the effort. 
As you plan your career path, make room to aggressively seek out writing or speaking platforms to help you grow from helping others grow.
“Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater”
                                                                                                                   -Gail Godwin-          

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as difficult to sleep after.” –Anne Morrow Lindbergh –

          One way to avoid the boredom of weekly sales meetings and to break down the barriers between programming and sales is to invite your program director to speak at the first meeting of each month.

          Their mission? Simply tell us, ‘What’s new?’ and ‘Why we’re doing what we do on air.’

          This exercise not only brings programming and sales together in a common goal, it also gives your programmer the opportunity to showcase their expertise and build confidence among the sales people in the station’s programming strategy.

          A programming consultant I worked with years ago, told me he could predict how a station was going to do in the next ratings simply by calling all of his program directors on the phone and asking them, ‘What’s new?’

          If the response was ‘same old, same old’, he knew the station was headed for trouble. On the other hand, he said that if he couldn’t get the programmer off the phone because he was so excited about the new programming initiatives he was implementing, the consultant knew he had a winner on his hands.

          Sales people are often the last to know what’s happening on air, and often are never told why we do what we do. Bringing them into the fold with regular communication can really bolster their confidence and make them feel like part of the team…….and visa-versa.

          Each programmer’s guest appearance in your meetings should also include a question and answer session.

P.S. Some programmers are hesitant to tip their hand to the sales people for competitive or alleged confidentiality reasons. In my experience, this paranoia is never justified. If your competitors are going to have a knee-jerk reaction to every rumor they hear about your strategy, they are already doomed.

                   In The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, and its follow-up book, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, Jack Trout writes about the importance of “exclusivity”, of “creating your own category” and of “owning a word”.

                   But many product and service categories today are already owned by someone. Home Depot might own building supplies in your market, and Coke probably owns colas.

                   If you look in the Yellow Pages under restaurants, for example, you will probably see someone already claims steaks, another claims seafood, another claims pizza, someone probably claims home-cooked burgers and yet another claims Chinese or Italian cuisine.

                   Here is a tip that will help you to uncover a category your clients can own on your airwaves.

                   Look for an experiential category to own instead of a product or service category. By choosing an experience to own, rather than a product or service, your clients can actually broaden their target audience.

                   In restaurants, for example, who owns the “romance” category in your market? Probably no-one. In the romance category, you have the ability to offer steaks, seafood, Italian or Chinese.

                   Who owns the “private business luncheons” category in your market? Or the “served in less than 10 minutes” category?

                   Does someone own fun and parties?

                   By choosing an experiential category which no one owns in the minds of your audience, your client has the opportunity to become a market leader. Wal-Mart, for example, doesn’t own a product or service category, they own an experience….low prices. Michelin doesn’t own tires, they own safety. Another tire manufacturer, Pirelli, owns performance…again, an experience, not a product or service.

                   That does not mean if you promote the romance category that the only time people will go to your restaurant is on a first date, Valentines Day or on their anniversary. It just means your restaurant now has a chance to stand for something and to be remembered. In today’s advertising maze, it is no longer adequate to just “keep your name in front of the public”. You have to stand for something to be remembered.

                   If you can help your client to discover a unique experience they can own, you will help their advertising to work harder for them and assure yourself of more renewals.

                    As always, your unique experiential offering must actually be delivered by the client, not just advertised.