Do You Fear Great Creative?

Do You Fear Great Creative?

          Some misguided radio account executives fear counseling their key clients to pay for outsourced creative. They believe that every dollar invested in creative is a dollar they lose from their airtime budget.
          The opposite is true. Once clients have invested in great creative, creative that works, they invest MORE on radio, not less!
          Many radio stations do have excellent creative resources in house. The problem is the same writer is often saddled with writing commercials for four or five competing car dealerships or furniture stores.
          Couple that potential conflict of interest with the fact that same writer writes hundreds of commercials each month, and the likelihood that they’ll knock the ball out of the part every time is dramatically diminished.
          Great creative ultimately results in happier clients and bigger broadcast orders. The myth that radio advertisers should use ‘free’ creative has caused more advertisers to conclude “radio doesn’t work” more than any other factor.
          When presenting to local business owners, focusing on the creative instead of your station, achieves a number of objectives;
 
1.) Customer Focus Your media presentation is all about you, the commercial message is about the client….which do you think is more interesting to the client?
 
2.) Differentiation  Advertisers with increasing media choices and a growing list of competitors know they need a message that clearly differentiates them from those competitors.
 
3.) Results     Your prospects can buy spots and space anywhere, and most of them are weary of every media’s claim to be ‘number one’. They want results, and need help crafting messages that will create those results, regardless which media they buy.
          Are you looking for a proven creative outsource for your key accounts? We often work with, and recommend, Jeffrey Hedquist of Hedquist Productions. Jeffrey can be reached at  [email protected]

Widdle Wabbit Lesson

Widdle Wabbit

          A precious little girl walked into a pet shop and asked the owner in the sweetest little lisp, between two missing teeth, “Excuthe me Mither, do you sthell widdle wabbits?”
          As the shopkeeper’s heart melted, he got down on his knees to be on the little girl’s level and started his pitch, “Do you want a widdle white wabbit or a thoft and fuwwy, bwack wabbit, or maybe one like that cute widdle bwown wabbit over there?”
          The little girl put her hands on her knees, leaned forward towards the pet shop owner, and looking him in the eye said, “I don’t think it weally mattows to my python.”
          In sales, we often misinterpret or don’t take the time to explore the motivation behind our prospects’ questions or decisions. We assume we know what the client wants and jump in with our pitch without asking one of the most powerful words in sales…. “why?”
          Had the pet shop owner taken the time to learn why the little girl was asking about wabbits, he probably would not have positioned them as “thoft, fuwwy, or cute”….neither the little girl nor the python cared about those features.
          Do you take the time to uncover why your prospects really make the decisions they make? You may be surprised, and change your presentation accordingly, if you dig a little deeper before you start your presentation.
          The Huthwaite study of more than 60,000 business-to-business sales calls revealed that the ability to ask deep probing questions was the single most important attribute of top performing sales people.
          But most of us ask the same boring questions as our competitors.
           I recently had one client say to me, “If I have one more media rep ask me who my target audience is, I’m going to scream! I want to deal with professionals who understand who my target is and can ask more intelligent questions.”
 
P.S. Click here if you would like me to call you to discuss what our Questioning Skills sales training workshop can do for your team.

Recession Lesson

Recession Lesson

           The recession is not over!
          Now that I have your attention, I’m going to ask you to tell yourself this every day… “The recession is not over. The recession is not over.”
          Many of the stations I work with learned some valuable lessons during the recession that helped them build revenue increases even though their competitors experienced losses.
          Now that the automotive industry is picking up steam and we appear to be on the road to recovery, I’m afraid we’ll go back to our fat and lazy ways and forget those lessons.
          Instead of falling back into ‘order-taking’, let’s keep selling as if we are in recession so that those orders take us to never before achieved revenue heights!
          Most of you know the psychology behind the four minute mile. Until Roger Bannister achieved it, it was thought it could not be done.
          Since he broke that record, it has been broken numerous times and the record is now 17 seconds better than the four minute mile.
          Many stations have broken records and proven there is more business out there, even during tough times. Let’s not turn the clock back.
          Let’s take those lessons into the new economy to continue breaking records.
          Those lessons?
1.) Look beyond top-line sales reports. Your top ‘biller’ is not necessarily your top seller. Many top billers didn’t make the cut when their dependence on order-taking, and heritage or entitlement accounts caught up with them. 
2.) Leverage your websites. You can now offer one-stop shopping, leveraging the pictures, promotions, details and fine print you can publish on your website to dramatically increase your airtime buy.
3.) Print is dead. Your clients no longer need to pay lumberjacks, truck drivers, paper mills, printing press operators, postal workers or carrier boys to produce and deliver their messages. The internet has freed up former print budgets for you!
4.) Local is reliable. Stations that have learned to reduce their dependency on agencies and ratings actually grew their sales in tough times! Less than 10% of the businesses in your market currently use radio. There’s lots of room for growth. Once you teach those businesses how to get a return on their investment with radio, you’ll have friends (clients) for life.
5.) We’re in a knowledge economy. Busy multi-tasking business owners are looking for someone they can trust to direct their advertising buys. Media sales people who continue to learn the new media landscape and how to produce measurable results for their clients will continue to break revenue records.
 
          The economic downturn forced many of us to become physically and mentally fit. Let’s stay in shape to continue breaking revenue records in the new economy!

Buffleheads and Geese

Buffleheads and Geese

           We have the luxury of operating ENS Media Inc. from our waterfront home on Lake Simcoe, although I’m on the road all over the continent as much as I am in the ‘office’.
          Sometimes amidst airport security checks and eating alone in restaurants,I forget to stop and smell the roses. Yesterday I was sitting in my ‘office’ watching the buffleheads and geese playing in front of my dock while I coached a client on the phone on how to increase her revenues.      
          When I got off of the phone, it struck me how fortunate I was to be able to enjoy watching nature and still do business at the same time. I took a few minutes to write down all of the reasons that airport security checks and boring restaurant meals really don’t matter.
          While others fight rush hour traffic to get to their offices, I’m often answering emails and helping clients while I sit in front of my fireplace over my morning cup of coffee.
          When you have the daily pressures of expense budgets to cut, increased competition and revenue budgets to achieve, it can be difficult for you to stop and smell the roses, or as in my case, watch the buffleheads and geese.
          But your health, general wellbeing and your productivity depend upon you occasionally taking time to revisit all of the positives your career has to offer.
          And those of us in the business of selling advertising do have one of the most satisfying careers in the world.
          I was reading earlier this week that many economists, for example, are pointing to advertising as one of the key influencers in restoring consumer confidence, consumer spending and our economic recovery.
          Wow!  That has to be pretty satisfying, knowing what we do can actually spur the economy and create more employment!
          But our careers offer much more than that.
          Those of us on commission have virtually unlimited incomes. And while sometimes our incomes might take a hit with economic declines, those of us who are good at it will never be unemployed.
          We learn something new about advertising and about our clients’ businesses every day, and our world is changing so fast there is no time to get bored.
          What we do isn’t dangerous or life threatening and it’s exhilarating and rewarding to watch our creative ideas reach fruition and help grow our clients’ businesses.
          Why not take time to make a list of all of the things you like about your advertising sales career…. your own buffleheads and geese? Then refer to that list the next time you are frustrated by traffic jams or difficult targets.

Crack the Category

Play ‘Crack the Category’

         
          I was talking to a station manager the other day who is experiencing double digit sales increases.
          When the president of his company visited the market to learn the secret to their success, the station manager said, “Did you see that little fruit market on the way here? They’re on the air. Did you notice the hot dog vendor at the car wash on the corner? They’re on the air!”
          This station is actually having inventory problems!
          Stations that are counting on the traditional retail categories, car dealers and furniture stores, are not cutting it today. There are 62 registered businesses in your market for every 1,000 market population, and we estimate that 50 of those 62 are prospects.
          That means in a market of 150,000 people, you have 7,500 prospects. Our research reveals that 82%, approximately 5,600, of those business owners cannot recall having seen a radio rep!
          I’m a little hawkish when stations talk about business being tough in the face of the research we’ve done and the successes we’re having. There is lots of room for growth, in any economy, once we start calling on new categories.
          And here is the beauty of breaking a new category;
1.) It’s all about share of voice. When a new category advertises on your station, by virtue of being new they have the dominant share of voice and share of mind with your audience. New categories always get high returns on their investment.
2.) Once your new advertiser starts to steal market share, their competitors follow suit and advertise too. I have one station that had no recruitment advertising four years ago and they now have more than $300,000 a year in recruitment advertising. I have another who had no law firms a couple of years ago and they now have four law firms on air with 52-week campaigns.
          Cracking new categories is more difficult than selling known radio advertisers. As long as no competitors in the category advertise, everyone in the category captures their ‘fair share’ of the market by default, and everyone is relatively happy.
          To open that new category door, start with a valid business reason for your first call. Some information about their market, an article from one of their trade journals about the power of branding…..anything that positions you as an expert who wants to help them grow their business.
          Why not do yourself and our entire industry a favor? Run a new category sales contest for your team. I’ll guarantee you that three years from now you’ll have multiple competitors from every category you crack!