Tag Archives: Radio Sales

The Knight’s Code

A medieval knight is standing guard outside the gates of a village. Armor on. Sword ready. Watching the road… making sure nothing dangerous reaches the people inside.

Knights lived by a code…

Protect the innocent. Defend those who cannot defend themselves.

Now before anyone starts ordering chainmail for the sales department… let’s bring this into your world. Because the best reps operate by a code too.

Protect Your Clients

Business owners get “attacked” constantly. Digital agencies. SEO companies. Social media “gurus.” New platforms promising magical results.

Most business owners don’t fully understand everything they’re being sold. They just know they need customers.

That’s where YOU come in.

A good rep isn’t just trying to sell airtime. You’re there to help them wade through what’s valuable and what’s just another pitch. You’re there to help them see the bigger picture of how to truly grow a strong local business.

Yes, Local SEO is valuable – but not to the tune of thousands of dollars a month.

Display and Search marketing may have their place, but they need to be part of a larger strategy and not consume more of the budget than necessary.

Social media can help local businesses stay in front of current customers and even potential ones… but it’s not how they become top of mind in their community.

Print and outdoor media can remind people of the Radio or TV ads they’ve heard or seen in the blink of an eye (Roy H. Williams calls it “anchoring”)… but visual-only media doesn’t come close to branding a business like the power of Sound.

Keep a Sharp Edge on Your Blade

Marketing knowledge is one very sharp edge of your sword.

Never stop learning.

When you become more than just another radio salesperson, your value to your client skyrockets.

Be real with your clients. Be brutally honest. The same goes for your prospects. The client you land with a song and dance—or with nothing but rankings and numbers—will usually be a temporary client.

But if you educate them from the start about what truly makes a business a household word in their community… you can have a client for life.

It means doing your homework—researching their category, watching their competitors, and bringing them ideas and information that might help their business… even if it has nothing to do with advertising.

When a business owner realizes you operate that way… something important happens.

You stop being a vendor. You become someone they trust. And when that trust forms, the relationship gets a lot stronger. Business owners are constantly asking themselves whether you’re just there to sell something… or actually help them grow.

Protect Their Results

Protecting your clients also means protecting the quality of what goes on the air.

Bad ads waste money. Great ads build businesses (and keeps them).

That’s why the best reps spend time helping create ads that are memorable, emotional, and effective. Ads that don’t blend into the background. Ads that are unexpected and can’t be ignored.

Because creative is the biggest driver of advertising success. The #1 skill you could sharpen as a radio salesperson that gives you a major edge up on any other media rep in the area… is copywriting. Period.

#2 would be to increase your overall marketing knowledge.

Yes, it takes a certain skill or quality to “get” a sale. But what will make you, your radio group, and your clients more money is by creating better ads.

Be the Knight

When you’re the “knight” who protects and defends your clients…

You won’t need to chase renewals or wonder if they’ll renew. You’ll already know.

You don’t have to have all the answers, but you should become the person your clients never hesitate to call when they have a question about marketing or growing their business.

Want to receive Ens On Sales weekly e-newsletter? CLICK HERE and enter your email address. Don’t like it? You can unsubscribe any time.

13 Revealing Questions That Win Trust with Your Radio Clients (and Better Radio Ads)

Ever wonder why some people seem to win clients for life – while others can’t get a call back? Well, it’s not because they have a slicker pitch or a better-looking proposal.

It’s because they ask better questions.

What’s the best way to get a new client and keep an existing one?
Earn their trust.
Earn their trust.
Earn their trust.

There are many ways to do that… but one of the best is by asking revealing questions – the kind that go beyond surface-level chit-chat.

When you ask better questions, you send a signal to the business owner’s brain that says, “This person actually gets it. They’re not just here to sell me something – they’re here to make it work.”

And there’s a bonus: better questions give you better answers.
Those answers become the building blocks of smarter ad strategies – the kind that separate your clients from their competition, fill your notebook with fresh ad ideas, and deepen your understanding of how to truly help them succeed.

Try asking questions like these:

What’s the most revealing comment you’ve ever heard from a customer?
Do people ever get your business confused with a competitor?
What’s harder today in running your business versus 5 years ago?
Have you noticed any change in your customers versus 5 years ago?
What’s one thing about your business that people don’t know?
What was the best year you ever had… and why was it such a good year?
Have you ever thought that the money you spend on advertising could be more effective?
What’s one thing that your top competitor does that you think brings them new customers?
What’s happened in your industry in the last 3 years to make things more difficult for you?
What do you see happening in your industry over the NEXT 3 years?
When you buy advertising, what are a couple of reasons for choosing which media you’ll use?
What’s your biggest grossing product or service?
What’s your most profitable product or service?

Coming up with better questions just takes practice. Take 45 minutes, undisturbed, and write down ten of your own revealing questions. Then, go through them again and make them better. Keep your list handy. Then, you can customize each question for any business you have in mind.

You might have clients who’ve been with you for years and you’ve never asked them questions like this. Schedule a meeting purely to learn more – not to sell. When you do, they’ll see you differently. They’ll trust you even more.

Anyone can sell an ad.
But only the ones who ask revealing questions become trusted advisors.

You’ll become the rep they look forward to talking to.

Are You Scarce?

There’s a simple law: no one buys anything unless it produces more value than it costs.

That law applies to sneakers, vacations, and yes… to you – Mr. or Ms. Salesperson.

Clients don’t buy from you because you “need to make monthly numbers.” They buy because you deliver more value than the next. And in a world of look-alike proposals and cookie-cutter ads, how do you make sure you’re seen as valuable? Why pick you and not someone else?

One word: scarcity.

When something is scarce, it becomes precious. Gasoline is necessary, but it’s cheap compared to bourbon that’s been aging in a barrel for 20 years. A plain hamburger is easy to get, but people will wait an hour in line for the one legendary burger joint in town. Front-row seats at a sold-out stadium? Scarce. The bleachers at a minor league game? Not so much.

The same is true in our business. A rep who’s easy to replace gets treated like tap water. A rep who’s hard to replace gets treated like single-barrel whiskey.

How do you become scarce?

Bring insights, not just packages.
Anyone can quote rates or flaunt the latest rankings. Few can connect marketing dots, explain how creative is the biggest factor in ROI, or show how top-of-funnel radio makes every other tactic stronger.
Write ads that don’t sound like every other ad (or like ads at all).
Generalities are wallpaper. Specifics are sticky. Dig deep, use stories, and create copy that competitors can’t duplicate.
Ask sharper questions.
Scarcity comes from perspective. If you uncover something about a business that the owner hasn’t articulated before, you become indispensable.
Invest in creative thinking.
Big ideas are harder to come by than cheap rates. If you bring them, you instantly set yourself apart. Sometimes all it takes is a quiet room and a few thinking caps (don’t forget you have a team who can help).
Genuinely care about your clients’ success.
Business owners want someone who cares about their success, not just their spend. That genuine care can’t be faked.

Scarcity creates value

The market pays more for what is rare and hard to replace. If you want your career to command “front-row ticket” energy instead of “cheap-seat” treatment, stop being interchangeable. Create value in ways your competition won’t – or can’t.

Anyone can sell advertising (or try). Not everyone can become scarce.

Are You Targeting?

We review hundreds of radio sales presentations every month to help stations increase their closing ratios and, their average sale. But lately we’ve noticed a huge common shortcoming.

Virtually every presentation sells radio’s ability to ‘target.’ But there is virtually no discussion about targeting the advertiser’s message!

We see station clusters that run the same message for a car dealer on their station that targets males 18-34, as they run on their station that targets women 25-54.

What are they thinking? It appears to me that they aren’t…(thinking, that is).

The internet and e-marketing have increased your advertisers’ awareness of the value of targeting, and they understand that effective targeting goes beyond reaching the right audience, it’s more about saying the right thing to that audience.

Now I’ve heard the argument that it’s too expensive for a station to produce separate targeted messages for each station in their cluster. But if you don’t target your ads, your digital competitors will!

ENS on Sales

Marketing & Motivational Consultants