If you have the word ‘agent’ or ‘representative’ in your job title, you could be on the verge of extinction.

Remember the days before Expedia and Travelocity?  You had to call a ‘Travel Agent’ to make your plans and book your vacations. The internet has changed the way people buy.

Programmatic buying and being able to book advertising on a wide range of new media via the internet are leading many advertisers away from investing their valuable time talking to media sales representatives.

The only way to ensure your clients will continue to do business with you is to deliver more value than simply selling space or spots.

Noted sales trainer, Jeffrey Gitomer, made it clear to one sales rep that simply ‘touching base’ no longer cuts it.  Jeffrey said, “Dude, you’re going to lose all of your customers if you fail to reach them with a message of value every week.”

The litmus test of the value you deliver is simple; do your clients and prospects actually thank you for your service and look forward to the value you deliver over and above the spots you sell?

Our SoundADvice member stations receive thank you notes for the value they deliver like this one received last week in Grand Junction, Colorado;

Hi Maggie,

One of the consequences of a busy mentality is that appreciation is too often ignored or is not expressed appropriately for the many good deeds of people who serve others.
 

I want to express my deepest appreciation for your Sound Advice communiqué that you send on a regular basis. I want you to know that I read your emails and enjoy the quality of the content.
 

Thank you.

As John Wooden (UCLA coach) once said, “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”

Keeping us informed of new marketing and reminding us of existing marketing strategies is a big job and your efforts have not gone unnoticed.

Happy New Year!

Gary

If you aren’t currently receiving thank you letters or emails like this, you need to ask yourself these 4 questions about every client on your list, every month;

1. 1.    What is the last message of value I delivered to this account?
2. 2.    When?
3. 3.    What is the next message of value I’m planning to deliver to this client?
4. 4.    When?

And, if the answer to questions 2 or 4 is longer than 30 days away, you are about to be one of those representatives who loses the business.

Many stations try to deliver a message of value by aggregating content from other newsletters, but our SoundADvice radio e-marketing system delivers all original content, that reinforces the value of radio in the new media landscape and trains your account executives how to deliver more value on every call.

Contact [email protected] for a free demo of how the SoundADvice system can help you sell more radio campaigns.

The most successful radio account executives help their clients mine new opportunities to increase their sales.

Imagine the relationship-building power of alerting your clients to an opportunity to make a $2,800 sale to nearly 80% of the adults in your market!

According to IRS data, 80% of tax filers will receive a tax refund each year, averaging more than $2,800 per person. In a household with two working people that’s more than $5,000 in ‘found money’.

You can help your clients now by planning a campaign to capture some of that windfall!

You might even build a campaign that allows consumers to buy now and pay when the refund arrives or lay away now until it arrives.

Oh, and don’t forget the campaigns for the accountants and tax preparation people who might be able to help consumers get even bigger refunds.

P.S. Our SoundADvice Radio e-marketing system positions you as a partner and hero with your clients and prospects with marketing tips like this every week!  Contact [email protected] to get an overview of how SoundADvice can increase your sales.

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 if you want to build a sustainable business.
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 salespeople 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 media salespeople and was encouraged to see the tone changing to attract the kind of account executives that 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 increased competition 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 SoundADvice radio e-marketing system helps radio account executives grow stronger advertiser relationships and increase their local-direct sales. Contact  [email protected] to arrange a free demo of how SoundADvice can work for you.

There is a classic marketing tale about a major shopping center that experienced a failure in the elevators that took shoppers to their main floor.

It was costing them thousands of dollars a minute in lost sales.

The mall manager was panicking. She had called several service companies, but none of them seemed to be able to fix the problem.

Finally, she called somebody who was able to fix the problem in 60 seconds flat by simply pressing a few buttons…. then he invoiced her a whopping $10,000 fee “for services rendered”!

The outraged mall manager asked the service man, “How can you charge $10,000 for pushing a couple of buttons and one minute’s work?”

The service man replied by re-writing the invoice to say, “service charge for pressing buttons; $1.  Investment for knowing which buttons to press; $9,999”.

Do your customers understand the value of the knowledge you deliver in your value bundle?

In virtually every field, it is knowledge which allows you to ‘press the right buttons’.

Nowhere is ‘knowledge’ more important than in the rapidly-changing field of marketing and advertising.

The next time your prospect questions why your spot rate is $100 compared to the competitor’s spot rate of $90, you might suggest that your actual spot rate is only $20, the other $80 is for your expertise in capturing higher returns on their advertising investment.

I’ve solved the flat radio revenue puzzle!

For some time now I’ve been pondering why major market radio is crying the blues, but many small and medium sized markets are doing just fine, thank you.

Of course, soft major market revenues have a huge statistical impact on total radio revenues across the country, creating the impression the entire industry is hurting.

And this perception can actually cause complacency in the smaller markets that begin to believe that modest increases are a win when compared to flat national averages.

At the risk of offending some, I can tell you one of the reasons major market revenue growth pales compared to many small and medium sized markets.

For years, major market stations have been selling against radio. You know that’s true. Available major market radio budgets were so lucrative, that stations were content just selling against other stations…fighting for share of available radio dollars rather than generating new radio dollars or bigger radio budgets.

Some even measured their success by share of radio budget, rather than share of larger marketing budgets.

Now those same stations are opting to increase their sales by fighting for share of growing digital budgets. However fighting for share inevitably puts downward pressure on rates, and does not contribute to the health of our industry.

Small and medium sized markets have had no huge radio budgets from which to divvy up share. They’ve had to sell radio to advertisers who had no radio budgets and had no intention of using radio.

Imagine that, selling radio against other media instead of selling against radio. What a concept!

For those not yet ready to sell more radio, and who are content to pick up some left-over crumbs from digital budgets, I have a warning. My friends in digital media pure-plays are discovering, particularly in the last 3 to 6 months, that the digital media platform has become so crowded and confusing they are beginning to experience extreme downward pressure on rates, causing profits to sink faster than the Titanic.

Don’t misunderstand me. I think it makes perfect sense to capitalize on the relationships we have with radio advertisers to skim a share of their digital budgets as well.

Ultimately, we need more radio advertisers from which to leverage those relationships in order to sell more digital, more special events and sponsorships.

If your stations are eager to sell more radio, we should talk.

Reply to this ENS on Sales email and we’ll make an appointment to discuss how we can help you sell more radio.