Salespeople often talk about the importance of establishing great customer relationships, but often drive a wedge between themselves and their ‘internal customers.’
What’s an internal customer?
An internal customer is anyone in your station who can have an impact upon your sales and your advertisers. It’s the creative, production, programming, promotions and traffic people whom you depend upon to deliver the promises and the results that you promised your external customers.
One of the most common disrupters to harmonious internal customer relationships is deadlines that are too tight, or worse yet, deadlines that are not adhered to.
I hate to say it, but with few exceptions, there are no “emergency” broadcast orders.
Broadcast entities are not a hospital or accident scene, and no one dies if the order starts Tuesday instead of Monday.
Our ’emergencies’ are self-created when we don’t educate the client about the necessity of our deadlines, or when we’re just plain negligent and simply wait until the deadline to get our butts in gear.
Short or missed deadlines increase your margin for error, show a total lack of respect for the work of others. If you can’t say ‘no’ to late orders you are not really an account ‘manager’ at all.
Some clients will push the envelope as far as you have educated them that they can get away with. The irony is, they’ll get better creative, fewer errors, and better results if you managed their campaigns further in advance.
The most productive sales forces I see across the continent are the ones where sales is not a ‘department’ but is a harmonious part of the entire station team where everyone has fun and fosters respect for each other.
As we near the Christmas season, I’m reminded of stations I’ve seen where traffic and production people had to work late into the afternoon of Christmas Eve to process ‘late’ orders, while the sales people are out doing their last-minute shopping.
If you are one of those stations, I can promise you your sales are suffering because you’re fighting an uphill battle with your internal customers all year long. On the other hand, creating longer, firmer, deadlines will produce better internal customer relationships, which in turn produce better campaigns, better results and merrier Christmases and happier weekends for everyone.
There is no denying that experience can be a great teacher. But all too often we promote our best ‘experienced’ sales people to sales managers with no management training or safety net. It’s not fair to the newly appointed manager, to their staffs, nor to the company.
Having a successful track record in sales enables the newly appointed manager to capture the respect and credibility necessary to lead; that’s a good thing. But the skill sets she/he acquired as a sales person do not necessarily equip them to be great managers.
I’ve had the heart-breaking experience of seeing dedicated passionate sales leaders crash and burn in management roles. Not because they didn’t have the work ethic, desire, intelligence or integrity to succeed, but simply because they were given the title, an office, and told “good luck”!
And it can be intimidating for a new manager saddled with a truckload of new tasks to ask for coaching or training for fear they might appear weak or incompetent in their new role.
I do admire the intent of companies that prefer to promote from within.
If you do promote from within and want to see your candidate succeed, consider doing two things;
1.) Hire a management coach to confidentially mentor their growth.
2.) Invest in management training to ensure their continued success.
To not do so is unfair to your new manager, their staffs, your customers and your company.
Allan Waters, the founder of what was once one of Canada’s most successful broadcast empires said, “Our problem is not that we aim too high and miss our targets. Our problem is that we aim too low and hit our targets.”
With all the ‘bad news’ facing broadcasters today, it’s easy to get sucked into a negative-thinking trap.
We hear about the enormous debt burdens resulting from broadcast consolidation, and radio that once was branded as ‘live and local’ is now often voice-tracked with little local content to appeal to consumers.
Advertising’s share of marketing budgets continues to shrink, as does traditional media’s share of that shrinking share. Online shopping is hurting many of our traditional retail advertisers, and broadcast radio is no longer the only audio media choice our advertisers have.
And misery appears to love company. When we see fellow broadcasters with flat or faltering sales, we tell ourselves it’s okay to aim low and hit our targets.
The list of problems we face goes on and on, but I’m still from the Allan Waters school of broadcasting…our problem is we aim too low!
It’s pretty easy to fall into a ‘woe is me’ way of thinking, but virtually every business and every media is experiencing disruption, fragmentation, low-price competition, and various other problems that could be described as a crisis.
I believe the Chinese understand how to manage and succeed during an alleged crisis. They spell crisis with these two symbols.
The symbol on the left stands for ‘danger’, and there is danger in every crisis. But what makes the difference when they spell crisis is the symbol on the right. It stands for ‘opportunity.’
You have probably heard the old cliché, “Problems were merely opportunities in disguise.” That attitude contributed to ENS Media having our most successful year ever during the 08-09 recession. Our Selling in Tough Times program helped many broadcasters experience revenue gains far above the ‘norm’.
As you plan for 2018, will your ‘tough times’ target become a self-fulfilling prophecy, or will you break from the fray and capture the opportunities brought about by disruption and change?
Do your sales people have the tools and training to open those new opportunities?
As you plan for 2018 and beyond, don’t let your stations make the same mistake as Luigi made in this tale of Luigi’s Hot Dog Stand.
Luigi worked hard at his road-side hot dog stand all his life so he could send his son to college. He used only the finest ingredients, stayed open long hours, advertised consistently, and sold the greatest hot dogs for miles around.
Business was booming. He had to buy a bigger oven, add to his parking lot, and increase his food orders to fill demand.
His hard work and investments paid off, and his son came home from college with a business degree.
“Father, haven’t you heard?” he said upon his return. “Times are getting tough. You are going to have to cut back on your expenses because there is a recession on the way” he said. “You’re going to have to buy cheaper ingredients, turn the power off on your sign earlier each evening, and cut your advertising to prepare for the weakening economy.”
Luigi thought, “Well, my son’s been to college. He ought to know. Maybe business is going to slow down”.
So, Luigi started buying the cheapest ingredients he could find, he cut the power to his signs and cancelled all his advertising. And alas, his son was right. Hot dog sales began to plummet almost overnight. “You were right son,” Luigi said to the boy. “We certainly are heading for a recession!”
Let’s aim higher, not lower, as we plan for 2018.
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