According to an article in the January 1, 2013 issue of MediaPost, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers concede that a full two thirds of media consumption is now spent with radio or TV.

The newspaper folk’s Annual World Press Trends report says "People are spending an increasing amount of time with digital services, with overall media consumption levels increasing to in excess of 400 minutes a day."

The newspaper funded report admits "Two-thirds of this time is spent with TV or radio, during which people regularly do other things at the same time."

I guess it’s pretty hard to read the newspaper while driving your car or searching on Google!

P.S. ENS Media’s ‘Winning in the new Media Economy’ sales training and advertiser seminars are successfully converting former print advertisers to a radio/TV and online media-mix every day. We still have a few dates left in 2013. Email [email protected] to inquire about booking your Winning in the New Media Economy system to increase your sales in 2013 and beyond.

Every once in a while I meet a sales person who proudly proclaims, "I’ve got the gift of gab." In sales, that ‘gift’ is more aptly described as ‘the curse of chatter.’

Successful sales professionals know that sales is really more about listening than it is about talking.

Those with the curse more often engage in product feature speak than they do in providing customer-focused solutions or opportunities.

Customers don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care….and caring is demonstrated by listening.

Listening is by far the most important and difficult skill a sales professional can learn and practice. The sales people who annoy and alienate prospects the most are those who claim to be good listeners but follow every customer objection with a "yah, but….."

There is no room for the word ‘but’ in a good listener’s vocabulary.

To be a professional listener you need to;

1.) Earn the right to ask questions by learning something about the prospect’s business before you make a call.

2.) Prepare with open ended questions that encourage the prospect to express their views and feelings.

3.) Demonstrate you are listening by taking notes. (Always ask permission to take notes. "Your input is important to me, do you mind if I take a few notes?")

4.) Paraphrase and summarize what you hear. Don’t start a debate.

5.) Use the language and needs you hear the customer express when you make your presentation.

6.) Make certain that every benefit you present relates to a need you heard the prospect express.

There is a lot more money to be made being interested than there is in being interesting. So why not shut up and make some money!

According to a recent survey, nearly half of all small and medium sized businesses are run by boomers who will retire within the next decade. Most of those businesses will transfer control within the next five years.

What are you doing to pre-sell the next-in-line leaders of those businesses?

Often with change in management, comes change for change’s sake. The time to build those relationships and position your station’s strengths with those successors is now. When they get the nod, they will remember who by-passed them and who invited their input on advertising decisions.

The odds are that the next owner/manager will be younger and much more internet savvy than their aging predecessor. You need to understand their digital bias, and be able to articulate why radio is the perfect partner for their favored online marketing tools.

Click here for a no-obligation demo of how our ‘Winning in the New Media Economy’ workshops provide the tools and training for you to clearly position radio as a key player in the new media mix.

I admit I’ve always been a glass half-full kind of guy. But I’m really tired of the negative rhetoric I hear every day.

I received an email this week from a sales trainer who said "Let’s face the facts. We’re currently in the toughest economic times we have experienced since the Great Depression of 1933."

First of all, it’s not a ‘fact’. And just because everyone keeps saying so, doesn’t make it so. We have had several recessions worse than this one since 1933. Here are the facts:

Unemployment in the last recession peaked in 2009 at 10.0%. Post Great Depression unemployment rates peaked above that 10% figure in both 1937 and 1982.

The U.S. Gross Domestic Product was down 5.1% at the peak of the 2009 recession. Two recessions since 1933 saw shrinkages far worse than that, and in fact the 1945 recession saw GDP slip by 12.7%!

The first recorded recession in North America was in 1797 when the Bank of England teetered on insolvency due to the costs of the French Revolutionary Wars spilling into North America. Since that time, we’ve learned to live through 47 recessions….an average of one every 4.5 years.

Here are the ‘facts’ as I see them from my glasshalf-full perspective. It seems that advertising and training budgets are the first to come under the knife during ‘tough times.’ Yet I’ve managed to weather 7 recessions during my career.

I’m totally fed up with distorted ‘facts’ and negative thoughts which breed negative outcomes. Those planning for tough times in 2013 will inevitably experience tough times in 2013.

Noted management expert, Peter F. Drucker, said "The best way to predict the future is to create it."

What kind of future are you creating as you plan for 2013? You’ve heard me say it before, but "Our problem isn’t that we aim too high and miss our targets, it’s that we aim too low and hit our targets."

I, for one, plan to fill the rest of my glass in 2013. Even if it doesn’t get filled to over-flowing, it will be exhilarating to try!