Tag Archives: Competitors
How to Walk In Your Customer’s Shoes
Most coaching and sales training programs highlight the importance of empathy in establishing solid customer relationships. Empathy is defined as “the capacity to participate in the thoughts or feelings of another”, or put more simply, “the ability to walk in another person’s shoes”.
But management guru Peter Drucker says, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”. So how do you measure your empathy in an effort to take it to a higher level?
We recommend you use the Empathy Index to measure and improve your empathy.
Quite simply, review every oral or written presentation or communication to calculate your Empathy Index. Count the number of words or phrases that talk about your customer, and divide that figure by the number of times you’ve talked about yourself or your stations.
The figure is your Empathy Index, and your Empathy Index goals should be a minimum 1.5. In other words, you should be talking about your prospects a minimum of one and one-half times for every time you talk about how great you or your products are.
Don’t be discouraged if your first few attempts reveal a negative Empathy Index. It’s normal for salespeople who are excited about what they’re selling to talk too much about themselves, their ideas, and their products.
Improving your Empathy Index over time will strengthen your advertiser relationships in a world where your competitors continue to babble on about themselves and their offerings without empathy.
WOW! A Must-Read for 2018!
We have all seen the data from radio vested-interest groups like Nielsen or RAB about radio’s continued importance in the new media landscape and that’s great stuff.
That story is even more powerful when it comes from our competitors.
Yesterday’s ‘eMarketer Daily’ newsletter, described as “a daily briefing on digital marketing and media trends,” told two powerful stories for radio;
1.Consumers spend more time with non-digital radio than they do with social networks
2.They suggest that ad budgets should be allocated proportionate to time spent with media.
You have to copy, read and present their pro-radio stance from this link;
https://www.emarketer.com/content/six-surprising-facts-about-the-way-we-spend-our-time-with-media?ecid=NL1001
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.
Choosing to Win!
Fragmentation and competition — they can destroy your business, or make it stronger. The choice is yours.
McDonald’s didn’t pack up their bag and go home when the Burger Kings, Wendy’s, Harvey’s and a long list of other competitors sprung up to eat their lunch (no pun intended)
And the auto industry’s ‘Big Three,’ Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, rose to the challenge to build better cars when dozens of manufacturers from Germany, Japan, and other countries began exporting their products to our shores.
In fact, General Motors continues to consistently be among the top three automakers in global sales.
You’ll hear and read a lot of doom and gloom about radio and TV as the number of new competitors we face mushrooms every day. By the way, those same new competitors are facing more new competitors every day, too.
So the choice is yours. You can make excuses for lack-luster sales, or you can choose to stand out in the crowd by being the best that you can be.
According to the Kauffman Foundation’s Index of Start Up Activity, small business growth is on the upswing. New and existing small businesses are looking for a star media professional like you to guide them through the confusing array of advertising and media choices they have and to improve their ROI (Return on Investment).
While many of the purveyors of new media are still selling their ‘platforms’ you can stand out in the crowd by selling results.
The choice is yours. You can be a shooting media star, or be a falling star. I don’t see why anyone would choose the latter.