Tag Archives: Advertisers

Take Responsibility for Sales

When sales organizations are not achieving their targets, they often point their fingers at individual salespeople. The three most common criticisms these organizations default to are:

1.) Our people don’t prospect enough; not enough cold calls.

2.) They don’t know how to handle objections.

3.) They don’t know how to close.

Of course, they do need to do more prospecting, learn to handle objections and increase the number of “asks” to increase their sales.

The two most common solutions these organizations pursue to achieve these objectives are:

1.) More training for the salespeople

2.) New sales compensation plans

Seldom do these failing organizations take responsibility and take a close look at themselves.

In addition to the two basic solutions prescribed here, the most successful organizations we see, ask themselves these important questions;

1.) What are we doing to warm up those cold calls for our account executives?

2.) What can our organization do to prevent objections rather than asking our salespeople to “handle” them?

3.) What can we do to reduce the need to exert closing pressure and encourage our prospects to enthusiastically buy?

Our SoundADvice radio e-marketing system is helping stations answer all three questions;

1.) SoundADvice creates trust and credibility for account executives with new prospects every week warming up those cold calls.

2.) SoundADvice educates advertisers on how to get a higher return on their advertising investment, minimizing objections.

3.) SoundADvice invites advertisers who are ready to buy, to make an appointment with your account executives FIRST.

Are you ready to take responsibility for your organization’s sales?

Click here to arrange a free online demo to discover what SoundADvice can do for your organization.

Your Most Valuable Radio Sales Lesson

This is a first! We don’t usually publish an ENS on Sales this time of year because of the low open rates during the holiday period. We’ve made an exception this week for two reasons:

1.) Roy Williams’ last Monday Morning Memo just before Christmas was so profound we wanted to bring it to your attention, and

2.) We’re assuming those who are picking up their emails during the holiday period are the industry’s movers and shakers.

So here is what Roy wrote in his final Monday Morning Memo just before Christmas:

“The thing that makes me look at the ground, shake my head and sigh is the dangerous myth of the Zero Moment of Truth. But then again, Google is the new Yellow Pages, so it shouldn’t surprise us that they’ve repackaged and renamed the old Yellow Pages scare tactic.The fundamental premise of the Zero Moment of Truth is that the customer is going to go online when they’re ready to purchase what you sell.I have no argument with that.But the dangerous, underlying assumption is that all contenders are equal during the Zero Moment of Truth. But that simply isn’t true.The company most likely to get the click, the call, and the sale is the company the customer has heard of and has good feelings about.The tortoise patiently wins the hearts of the people long before the race is begun. He says he’s ‘bonding with tomorrow’s customers’.‘Stupid tortoise,’ says the rabbit, ‘he still believes in branding.’Have you heard how that race turned out?

‘Knowledge is power’ is another dangerous myth.

It doesn’t matter what you know.
What matters is what you do with what you know.

So what are you going to do?”

-Roy Williams, Monday Morning Memo, December 18, 2017

You know Roy’s words of wisdom are true, but what are you doing to prove it to your local advertisers?

Our local TOMA, Top-of-Mind Awareness, surveys prove what you know to be true, and they open new advertisers’ doors and minds every week. Roy says, “I’ve long suggested that radio stations fund a TOMA study every two years. Few things are as valuable in the eyes of advertisers as these revealing market snapshots.”

Your local TOMA survey will:

1.) Prove your listeners prefer to click on the businesses they’ve heard of when they do their online search

2.) Prove the link between share of voice, share of mind and share of market

3.) Give your salespeople a powerful tool to capture new business appointments

But wait…there’s more! Click here to arrange an online demo of what our TOMA and SoundADvice radio e-marketing systems can do to increase your sales in the New Year.

Your Most Valuable Radio Sales Lesson

This is a first! We don’t usually publish an ENS on Sales this time of year because of the low open rates during the holiday period. We’ve made an exception this week for two reasons:

1.) Roy Williams’ last Monday Morning Memo just before Christmas was so profound we wanted to bring it to your attention, and

2.) We’re assuming those who are picking up their emails during the holiday period are the industry’s movers and shakers.

So here is what Roy wrote in his final Monday Morning Memo just before Christmas:

“The thing that makes me look at the ground, shake my head and sigh is the dangerous myth of the Zero Moment of Truth. But then again, Google is the new Yellow Pages, so it shouldn’t surprise us that they’ve repackaged and renamed the old Yellow Pages scare tactic.

The fundamental premise of the Zero Moment of Truth is that the customer is going to go online when they’re ready to purchase what you sell.

I have no argument with that.

But the dangerous, underlying assumption is that all contenders are equal during the Zero Moment of Truth. But that simply isn’t true.

The company most likely to get the click, the call, and the sale is the company the customer has heard of and has good feelings about.

The tortoise patiently wins the hearts of the people long before the race is begun. He says he’s ‘bonding with tomorrow’s customers’.

‘Stupid tortoise,’ says the rabbit, ‘he still believes in branding.’

Have you heard how that race turned out?

‘Knowledge is power’ is another dangerous myth.

It doesn’t matter what you know.
What matters is what you do with what you know.

So what are you going to do?”

-Roy Williams, Monday Morning Memo, December 18, 2017

You know Roy’s words of wisdom are true, but what are you doing to prove it to your local advertisers?

Our local TOMA, Top-of-Mind Awareness, surveys prove what you know to be true, and they open new advertisers’ doors and minds every week.

Roy says, “I’ve long suggested that radio stations fund a TOMA study every two years. Few things are as valuable in the eyes of advertisers as these revealing market snapshots.”

Your local TOMA survey will:

1.) Prove your listeners prefer to click on the businesses they’ve heard of when they do their online search

2.) Prove the link between share of voice, share of mind and share of market

3.) Give your salespeople a powerful tool to capture new business appointments

But wait…there’s more! Click here to arrange an online demo of what our TOMA and SoundADvice radio e-marketing systems can do to increase your sales in the New Year.

The Two Most Powerful Radio Sales Tools

Believe it or not, Google Analytics can be one of your most powerful radio sales tools.

We have all encountered advertisers who ‘surveyed’ their customers to learn how the customers found them, and we have been told very few credited radio with that discovery. The credit, more often than not, goes to the internet.

But here’s the solution; When that happens to you simply invite the advertiser to use Google Analytics to find out the most common words or phrases customers use to find them online. In spite of any investments they might have made in keywords or other SEO tactics, invariably the most common search words customers use to find a business is the NAME of the business if their advertising has been effective.

How can prospects search for a business by name if they have never heard of that business? Creating a pre-search name awareness and preference for their business has to be every advertisers’ primary goal.

As internet guru, Seth Godin proclaims, “It is better to be SOUGHT online than to be found.” If an advertiser is found online by accident, you can also bet that same search revealed all of their competitors too.

The other most powerful radio sales tool is our TOMA (Top-of-Mind-Awareness) surveys and sales training.

These local surveys consistently prove that proactive broadcast advertising is the best way to create pre-search name awareness. These surveys also prove how important top-of-mind-awareness is, and they uncover hundreds of new prospects for you to call on in your market.

The TOMA training we provide also provides a simple six-step process to use TOMA as a powerful radio sales tool.

Click here to arrange a free online demo of our TOMA research survey and training system.

How Unique is Your Market?

In last week’s BIA Kelsey Local Media Watch blog, they suggested, “It’s good to think of small markets as unique, rather than as reflections of the national advertising market.”

The article drew the conclusion that different media combinations work differently in every market. And while that may be true, I believe it missed one important variable when trying to rationalize the differences in advertisers’ media use from one market to another.

I suspect the difference has as much to do with the effectiveness of media sales forces in each market, as it does with the effectiveness of the various media in those markets.

The article failed to recognize the role of sales forces in telling their media’s story and capturing market share.

Here is a sample of the local market ad revenue differences they discussed:

Media Market A Share Market B Share Share Difference

Online 12.76% 19.60% 6.84%

Radio 11.43% 7.50% 3.93%

Print 9.96% 12.46% 2.44%

Direct Mail 0.47% 7.10% 6.63%

You can see that Radio captured 52.4% more share of ad dollars in Market A versus Market B, that’s huge! You’ll also note that the more successful radio market appears to do so at the expense of Online, Print and Direct mail in that market.

I haven’t named the markets, but I’m somewhat familiar with both and I suspect the radio sales forces in Market A are much more effective at selling radio’s strategic role in the new media landscape versus Market B. Radio sales execs in Market B obviously fight for station share of tight radio budgets thinking the other radio stations are their competitors rather than understanding how to sell a more dominant role for radio in a media mix.

Click here to arrange an online overview of how our SoundADvice and TOMA Research can educate clients, and train radio account executives, on why radio deserves a larger share of advertising budgets in your market.

When sales organizations are not achieving their targets, they often point their fingers at individual salespeople. The three most common criticisms these organizations default to are:

1.) Our people don’t prospect enough; not enough cold calls.

2.) They don’t know how to handle objections.

3.) They don’t know how to close.

Of course, they do need to do more prospecting, learn to handle objections and increase the number of “asks” to increase their sales.

The two most common solutions these organizations pursue to achieve these objectives are:

1.) More training for the salespeople

2.) New sales compensation plans

Seldom do these failing organizations take responsibility and take a close look at themselves.

In addition to the two basic solutions prescribed here, the most successful organizations we see, ask themselves these important questions;

1.) What are we doing to warm up those cold calls for our account executives?

2.) What can our organization do to prevent objections rather than asking our salespeople to “handle” them?

3.) What can we do to reduce the need to exert closing pressure and encourage our prospects to enthusiastically buy?

Our SoundADvice radio e-marketing system is helping stations answer all three questions;

1.) SoundADvice creates trust and credibility for account executives with new prospects every week warming up those cold calls.

2.) SoundADvice educates advertisers on how to get a higher return on their advertising investment, minimizing objections.

3.) SoundADvice invites advertisers who are ready to buy, to make an appointment with your account executives FIRST.

Are you ready to take responsibility for your organization’s sales?

Click here to arrange a free online demo to discover what SoundADvice can do for your organization.

This is a first! We don’t usually publish an ENS on Sales this time of year because of the low open rates during the holiday period. We’ve made an exception this week for two reasons:

1.) Roy Williams’ last Monday Morning Memo just before Christmas was so profound we wanted to bring it to your attention, and

2.) We’re assuming those who are picking up their emails during the holiday period are the industry’s movers and shakers.

So here is what Roy wrote in his final Monday Morning Memo just before Christmas:

‘Knowledge is power’ is another dangerous myth.

It doesn’t matter what you know. What matters is what you do with what you know.

So what are you going to do?”

-Roy Williams, Monday Morning Memo, December 18, 2017

This is a first! We don’t usually publish an ENS on Sales this time of year because of the low open rates during the holiday period. We’ve made an exception this week for two reasons:

1.) Roy Williams’ last Monday Morning Memo just before Christmas was so profound we wanted to bring it to your attention, and

2.) We’re assuming those who are picking up their emails during the holiday period are the industry’s movers and shakers.

So here is what Roy wrote in his final Monday Morning Memo just before Christmas:

The company most likely to get the click, the call, and the sale is the company the customer has heard of and has good feelings about.

The tortoise patiently wins the hearts of the people long before the race is begun. He says he’s ‘bonding with tomorrow’s customers’.

‘Stupid tortoise,’ says the rabbit, ‘he still believes in branding.’

Have you heard how that race turned out?

‘Knowledge is power’ is another dangerous myth.

It doesn’t matter what you know. What matters is what you do with what you know.

So what are you going to do?”

-Roy Williams, Monday Morning Memo, December 18, 2017

You know Roy’s words of wisdom are true, but what are you doing to prove it to your local advertisers?

Our local TOMA, Top-of-Mind Awareness, surveys prove what you know to be true, and they open new advertisers’ doors and minds every week.

Roy says, “I’ve long suggested that radio stations fund a TOMA study every two years. Few things are as valuable in the eyes of advertisers as these revealing market snapshots.”

Your local TOMA survey will:

1.) Prove your listeners prefer to click on the businesses they’ve heard of when they do their online search

2.) Prove the link between share of voice, share of mind and share of market

3.) Give your salespeople a powerful tool to capture new business appointments

But wait…there’s more! Click here to arrange an online demo of what our TOMA and SoundADvice radio e-marketing systems can do to increase your sales in the New Year.

Click here to arrange an online overview of how our SoundADvice and TOMA Research can educate clients, and train radio account executives, on why radio deserves a larger share of advertising budgets in your market.

It doesn’t matter what you know.
What matters is what you do with what you know.

It doesn’t matter what you know.
What matters is what you do with what you know.