“If you get something for nothing, that’s what it’s worth”. I’m not sure who said this, but you can believe it is the perception of your clients.
          So when you offer “value-added” in the form of a “free promotion”, it is imperative that you assign a value to every element in the promotion to prevent it from being perceived as being of little or no value.
 Here are some examples:
          Contest Administration   Your clients know the man-hours and production costs that go into printing posters, ballots or other promotional materials.  However, the man-hours involved in contacting winners, fending off losers, and coordinating prizes also have a value. Always put a rate on contest administration in the “Promotional Value” page of your presentation. 
           Promos or Liners  First of all, don’t diminish their value by using industry jargon. A promo is a “pre-produced promotional message” promoting the event, contest or promotion and a liner is a “live,on-air mention”. Because promos and liners are not “hard-sell” there is a huge tune-in and awareness factor attached to them.
          Live Prime-Time Winner Announcements  Your live on-air winner phone call is definitely foreground programming, capturing the attention and the hearts of your listeners. While you can’t “buy” that kind of promotion, it definitely is worth a great deal more than a typical paid commercial.
          Visuals  Estimate how many eye-balls are going to see your promotional material and assigna value to the exposure, even if it’s only five cents per exposure. How much is the value per exposure plus the production hard cost of those materials?
          Exclusivity  If you offer the client  promotional or category exclusivity assign a value to that benefit.
          Partnering  Place an actual value on partnering with your listener’s favorite radio station. It’s definitely theclosest thing to a personal endorsement and worthy of an endorsement fee.
You can always get a client to agree to the values you place on the various promotional elements when they know they are not actually carving a check for those features.
          By placing and publishing a value for each element of your “value added” and getting the client to agree to the value of each element, you can avoid the perception that what they just received for nothing was not really worth nothing.
          In fact, you should make it clear that it’s not really “free” but rather that it is contingent upon the terms and conditions of their cash buy.

I was shocked the other day when I was reading an article comparing the strengths and weaknesses of the various media when the author suggested “Radio rates are the most flexible of all media because their sales people are perceived to be poorly trained in negotiating skills”.

           While it’s not my intent to give a course on negotiating skills in this short memo, I would like to dispel the myth that it is the buyer who holds all of the cards, or power, in a negotiation.

1. The Power of Attitude. You and your people must develop the attitude that “We’re expensive, proud of it, and worth every penny!”

2. The Power of Preparation. You need to anticipate, up front, what the client might ask for, how far you are willing to negotiate and under what terms. For every concession you plan, plan a concession that you will ask of the buyer in return.

3. The Power of Expertise. Know your product, your market and your client. James Schlinkert, the former CEO of Olivetti Corp, was famous for his assertion that, “You need to establish yourself, not the buyer, as the expert to make a major sale”.

4. The Power of Filling a Customer Need. When you understand the customer’s needs and, your unique ability at filling those needs, the negotiation quickly turns to BOTH parties actively seeking a win-win solution.

5. Last, but certainly not least, the Power of the word “No”. Know when to say “no” and, when to walk. You will not only gain the client’s respect, but you will be able to move on to make more efficient use of your time. Know when to leave transactional clients behind.

Do you have the courage to uncover what your clients or prospects perceive to be your biggest weakness?
            If you do, opening by admitting these weaknesses in your next meeting can be a very powerful strategy.

As I consult various media and their clients across North America, I have had the privilege over the past several years to meet and interview some of the most successful locally-operated businesses on the continent.
          And in my quest to find their common denominator for success I’ve discovered it’s fairly obvious but also rare.
            Some of you may remember the Old England Dan and John Ford Coley song “Love Is The Answer”……it really is!
            In my quest to find that mysterious difference between successful people and their less successful counterparts, the only common denominator I could identify was love……love in five key areas.
1.       Love your customers. Today, selling is simply serving. I’ve discovered that it is difficult to muster the dedication and enthusiasm it takes to passionately serve others unless you genuinely care about others. If you have an account that you just can’t learn to love, trade them with one of your peers for another account. I can guarantee you if you don’t like a particular customer, they sense it and you are leaving money on the table.
2.       Love yourself. It’s been said that selling is a, “transference of confidence”. If you do not care enough about yourself to hone your physical and mental well-being, you will not exude the confidence necessary to instill customer confidence in you. This is not to be confused with having a huge ego, it simply means you need to care about yourself before others can believe you care about them.
3.       Love what you’re selling. If you do not love what you are selling, please do yourself, your company, your customers and your family a favor and seek another career. You won’t be happy and neither will those around you.
4.       Love the company and the people you are working with. If you don’t, you will find fault in them and use their faults as an excuse for your failure.  And if the people you are working with are employees, the way you treat THEM will reflect directly upon the way they treat your customers.  
5.       Love home and family. Virtually every successful person I have interviewed talks about the need for “balance” in your life.  Without “balance”, there is a real danger of becoming a workaholic if the other four “loves” I’ve identified are in place. Plan at least one activity a day, even if it’s a phone call home when you’re on the road, to keep your home life happy and healthy.   

Many of you have had the pleasure of joking with my Office Manager, Angela, who also happens to be my wife. Once one of BMW Canada’s top sales people, Angela always maintained, “Until I can get a prospect to laugh, I know I have not broken the ice”.
           Nothing is better than the creative and appropriate use of humor to reduce stress and build solid customer rapport.
          According to Peter Warnok, a Professor at the University of Florida, “Humor is no longer considered a frivolous pursuit, as research in the behavioral, social and medical sciences has revealed a significant relationship between stress reduction, productivity and a healthy immune system”.
          Warnok asserts that “Humor can loosen fixed positions in the mind”…..sounds like the definition of “selling”, doesn’t it?
          I have always maintained a file of cartoons and jokes organized by the objectives or points they make. For example, I’ve got a file of jokes about advertising, one about salespeople and one on the economy. Each makes a point that I can draw from when approaching a difficult or stressful situation.
          John Wanamaker’s quip, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don’t know which half” still makes a popular point today, more than 80 years after his death.
           Building your own humor arsenal can help you to get prospects to see things your way. But use humor judiciously.
        Professor Warnok has actually developed a “Degrees of Risk” model for the use of humor with “Laughing at self” at the low-risk end of the scale. Being only five foot six, I’ll often tell “short jokes” or being Canadian I’ll often make fun of my use of the word “eh?” when working with my American client’s. 
            My friend Steve McGavran of TOMA Research often uses low-risk humor to ease the tension during a cold call when he’s challenged  with, “What are you selling today?”, to which he replies, “Not much, and my boss isn’t very happy with me either.”
            At the higher end of Warnok’s risk scale are thing like “Practical jokes” and “spontaneous humor”. In other words, the humor should be at your expense, not the clients, and it should be well thought-out and planned, not spontaneous.
            So here are a few tips for effectively using humor to loosen the reins of your prospect’s minds;
1. Build a file of cartoons and jokes by topic
2. Make yourself, NOT the client, the object of your humor.
3. Prepare and plan the productive use of humor.
4. Play safe…never use sex, politics, race or religion to get a laugh.
Like Angela says, “Until you’ve made ‘em laugh, you probably haven’t broken the ice”.