Tag Archives: Motivation

Get Better Every Day

I’m sure that, like me, your dad at some point in life said to you, “I don’t care if you dig ditches for a living, just be the best ditch digger there is!”

At the time, I’m not sure that statement had a lot of impact on me, but much later in life a quote by Mark Twain did, “A man who can read but doesn’t isn’t any wiser than the man who can’t”.

Through unscientific research, that is observing people and doing self-analyzation of why some people are more successful than others, I can tell you that the most successful people in media sales are those that have the discipline to learn their trade and are either consciously or unconsciously focused and determined to get better every day. They have the knowledge, ability, and a deep-down desire to help others.

For some, this is a built-in personality trait. As managers, you’ll be lucky to have one or two of these “Type A” personalities on your team, but for the others, it needs to be taught. They need to be motivated to be better. They need someone to show them and prove to them that it is worth the effort.

This is where management comes in. Leaders Lead! Are you reading books and articles on marketing and advertising, business, leadership, motivation? Are you devoting part of your day to getting better? If not, Start! Make sure they know that you are doing what you ask them to do. Leaders lead by example.

Getting better every day doesn’t mean hours and hours of reading and research. Just 15-minutes a day can mean the difference between mediocrity and being Great!

If the radio industry could rewrite history, the main thing that it should do (or should have done) is train our sellers better. It starts with motivating them to be better. It starts with having the desire to Get Better Every Day!

P.S. Want to Get Better? I suggest reading the book, RESTORING the SOUL of BUSINESS: Staying HUMAN in the Age of Data, by Rishad Tobaccowala. (I gave it 5+ stars. One of, if not the best, books I have ever read on management, leadership, and business.)

If you or your team has the desire and is looking to get better, I’d like to visit with you about sharing the knowledge I’ve learned over my 30+ years of radio sales and management which helped me guide one of the largest billing small-market radio stations in America. Click here to arrange a call.

If You Never Fail, You’re Not Trying Hard Enough!

I believe the best salespeople are competitive by nature. Whether they are competing against themselves to increase their numbers, or helping their clients to be more competitive.  Competition gets their adrenaline flowing.

Strategically-designed sales contests can be just what the doctor ordered to jump start your best salespeople. But interestingly, most sales contests are counter-productive as they reward something beyond the salesperson’s control.
Many industries suffer from incentivizing the wrong things. For example, oil company executives can receive huge bonuses when oil prices go up, but receive no such bonuses for making the best of a bad situation when oil prices drop, even though oil prices are really beyond their control.
While your account executives have influence over whether a client says yes or no, they have no actual control over those decisions. What they do control, and what should be rewarded, is the quantity and quality of their presentations.
Here is the thing. Try running a sales contest where the person who gets the most no’s wins first prize and the person who gets the most yesses wins second prize. I can virtually guarantee you that the person who wins first prize, will also win second prize, because the number of successes we achieve is always in direct proportion to the number of times we fail.
Of course to qualify as a no, the client must explain and sign off on why they said no, which in itself is a valuable learning exercise.

 

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