Read the Newspaper?

Read the Newspaper?

I was visiting my daughter and son-in-law yesterday when I asked if I could borrow a newspaper.My son-in-law said, "This is the 21st Century, old man. We’re environmentally conscious and we certainly don’t waste money on newspapers." He then said, "Here, you can borrow my iPad." I did, and I can tell you that bloody fly never knew what hit it! His iPad really made an impact, but I’m not sure it will work as well as a newspaper to line their bird cage. I still can’t believe my son-in-law thought I wanted to read the paper.
Who does that anymore?

When It Feels Like Christmas

When It Feels Like Christmas

You know, "the early bird gets the worm." You probably also can guess what date you can expect Christmas this year.
Yet many media account executives will be panicked and running around like frantic last-minute Christmas shoppers, trying to pick up the crumbs left by more professional account executives who captured their prospects’ Christmas budgets while they were still in the planning stages.
I can still recall my rookie days when I called on my prospects with our newly-released ‘Christmas package’ only to hear, "Sorry, we gave our entire budget to the newspaper just last week."
While it might no longer be "the newspaper", you can bet there are countless traditional and new media reps who will be pounding the pavement around mid-October in the hopes of capturing lucrative Christmas advertising dollars.
If you want your competitors to hear you’ve already captured their prospects’ Christmas budgets, you need to begin planning your Christmas sales meeting NOW.
I know it’s hard to think Christmas when thermometers are at their peak, but Christmas advertising is like Christmas shopping….it’s all about mood and awareness.
A properly planned Christmas sales meeting can put your sales team in the mood to be the early bird, to be the first in the door to talk to their prospects about the important Christmas selling season.
You need to plan now, for your Christmas sales meeting the first week after Labor Day. And it needs to feel like Christmas!
Here are some of the tactics we encourage the stations we consult to utilize during their early-September Christmas sales meeting;

  • Hold it off-premise. And like Christmas gifts, make it a surprise. Forewarn your team you are holding a special off-premise sales meeting right after Labor Day, but don’t let them know the theme.
  • Surprise your attendees with Christmas music, seasonal décor, and of course, wrap up your meeting with a traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings.
  • While your team is at the sales meeting, have someone back at the office post the appropriate notices, packages, and visuals to maintain their Christmas focus upon their return.
  • Identify the most high potential Christmas prospects and categories, traditional and non-traditional, complete with category research, and some sample Christmas campaigns.
  • While I’m not a fan of `packages,’ I’m well aware that there are clients, and some radio sales people, who need packages to motivate them. If you’re releasing station Christmas packages do so at this meeting, and gift wrap each package as your gift to the team.
  • Get in the spirit. Ask your creative and production people to keep it a secret, and produce something that will bring a laugh. Last year, one of our clients Creative Directors produced a custom version of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’, poking fun at each of the sales reps by name.
  • Recognition and incentives should be part of your Christmas Sales Meeting. Posting a results board where each sales person can proudly post each Christmas sale for all to see can keep the Christmas spirit and momentum moving forward.
  • And don’t forget how empty your logs can be in January February. When preparing your Christmas packages, try to include schedules for January clear-outs and February sales in those packages.
  • Many stations offer discounts during those cold winter months. Extrapolating those discounts over four months, November through February can make your Christmas package more appealing to those hard-to-please transactional buyers, without effectively reducing your average rate of return over that period. For example, if you discount your $100 rate to $80 in January/February, offering a $90 rate across the board, can be appealing. It’s also easier to sell your Christmas/New Year’s Greetings as part of the overall Christmas presentation, than to try to sell it last minute, independent of the overall campaign.
  • Sell, sell, sell. Look for data and research with positive spending indicators about the pending 2012 Christmas selling season. This data will bolster sales rep confidence, and also be great ammunition in your client presentations.
  • Most stations have a great personality on board who’d love to poke fun at the sales reps. Have them show up at your meeting dressed as Santa. They can present a personalized gag gift to each account executive to further that Christmas spirit.
  • Be creative, have fun, and make money!

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Merry Christmas to all, and to all a great year!!

 

When the Truth Hurts

When the Truth Hurts
I pay strict attention to every detail on voice mail, email and any form of communication. In part, I do this to understand more about the personality style of the person I’m communicating with in the absence of body language and other face-to-face personal style clues.
But I often wonder about executive assistants or voice mails and emails that send the wrong signal.
For example, when I place a phone call to someone at 3:30 in the afternoon and the receptionist says "I’m sorry, he’s still out for lunch" I think a better signal could have been sent.
Or when I call at 10:15 in the morning and the voice on the phone says, "Mr. Jones has not come in yet today," I wonder, is he in a meeting, or simply tardy.
Even though both of these replies might be the truth, wouldn’t it be better to simply say the person I’m trying to reach "is unavailable right now"? Do I need to know that they take extended lunches or arrive late for business?
And then there’s the out-of-office email reply on July 23 that says "I’m away on vacation until June 29th"…are they really away until next June or have they not checked their email since last month?
In Search of Excellence author, Tom Peters, said "Sometimes when I see the impact of ‘little things’ on an organization, I conclude there are no ‘little things’."
Is it time to revisit the way you and your staff handle messages?

What Is Your Market Share?

 

What Is Your Market Share?
 
In a recent survey of local advertisers we asked what questions local business owners would ask of a marketing consultant. One of their questions was, “How do I measure my market share?”
A very important question indeed, particularly when you consider the doubling effect of market share. You see, local advertising generally does not affect market size, but it dramatically affects the advertiser’s market share.
Advertising won’t make more people buy cars or get a haircut; however, it can persuade the marketplace to buy from you instead of your competitor.
The ‘doubling effect’ occurs when your advertising persuades a customer who usually buys from a competitor to switch and buy from you. For example, if I had my hair cut at the same shop the first week of every month but switched to your salon this month, the net difference between your business and your competitor’s would be two haircuts, not one. That is one your competitor lost plus one you gained, making a net difference between each salon two haircuts, not just one.
And because advertising generally does not increase market size, its real measure is market share. Your overall market may be down 10%, but if you’re only down 2% you’re doing something right….your market share is actually up!
The answer to, “How do I measure my market share?” is not quite as simple. In larger ticket or larger volume operations the data is usually readily available through government or industry association statistics. But for smaller businesses or niche markets, it’s a little tougher to measure.
In our Seven Ways to Estimate Market Share, method number one is to, “Talk to your suppliers.” They generally have a good handle on who is buying what and can often give you a pretty good idea how your industry is doing overall and what your share might be. Those with integrity won’t tell you how a specific competitor stacks up, but they will share with you an estimate of your share.

 

Click here for me to deliver our free Seven Ways to Estimate Your Market Share.

The Nicest Lie

The Nicest Lie

If you are working with the real decision-maker in an organization and they turn down your proposal because "it’s not in the budget", you’ve just been lied to!

Business owners often find it easier to turn you down by blaming their budget rather than your station, your idea, your audience or your price.
 

You often use the same escape tactic. When a clerk approaches you in a furniture store and asks, "Can I help you?" you’ve learned it’s easy to get rid of them by simply saying "No thank you, we’re just looking." ‘Just looking’ is a nice lie. No one takes time out of their busy schedule to ‘just look’ at furniture if they have no intent or money to buy.

Here is how I know that "it’s not in the budget" is a courteous lie if you are dealing with the real decision maker:
 

1.) Who makes the budget? The real decision maker! It is their budget and they can change or add to that budget whenever they want to.
2.) Business owners by definition, make investments with the expectation of getting a return on their investment….that’s what they do for a living. When you are told "it’s not in the budget" they’re really telling you, "You have not convinced me I will get a significant return on my investment."

 

Your job is to uncover the reason they feel that way and return with a better customer-focused presentation that does convince the business owner she will get a return on her investment.
NOTE: If the person you are presenting to really cannot change or increase the ad budget, they are not the decision-maker, only the budget-allocator.