Tag Archives: ratings
What I learned About Sales from a Programming Consultant
George Johns, a programming consultant I worked with a number of years ago, told me he could always tell how a station’s ratings would fare in the next book by asking the local program director one simple two-word question.
George maintained that he could call any program director and ask, “What’s new?” If the answer was a ho-hum “We’re doing the same thing we did last year”, he could predict a ho-hum book…. or worse!
On the other hand, if the program director’s enthusiastic response talked about all of the new initiatives and promotions they were launching, George could accurately predict a great book.
You know that ‘new’ is one of the five most powerful words in marketing. But did you know your salespeople need something new to talk about on the street to keep their enthusiasm and passion at a fever pitch?
Ever since George passed that powerful bellwether on to me, I’ve used it successfully in sales. I make a point of having something ‘new’ to engage salespeople at every sales meeting, every week.
Our local TOMA (Top-of-Mind-Awareness) surveys and SoundADvice radio e-marketing system could be the something new necessary to revitalize your sales force in 2018 and beyond.
Click here to arrange an online overview of these proven radio sales systems.
More Local Revenue in 2017
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Your clients and prospects are being ‘cold-called’ by more and more traditional and digital salespeople every day. They’ve seen gimmicks like sending half a lottery ticket and promising to deliver the other half if they make an appointment. Or how about the old claiming to have a great idea for the advertiser even though the caller doesn’t know the advertiser’s objectives. They’ve also been called about ‘special packages’ or ‘limited time offers.’ Then of course there’s the traditional, “I’m calling to make an appointment to learn more about your business…”. There is no better way to capture an appointment than to tell your prospect you want to share the results of a local marketing study that revealed competitive information about their business, and their competitors’ businesses. Our TOMA (top of mind awareness) surveys are proven to open more doors for radio and TV sellers. In his Monday Morning Memo, Roy Williams wrote, “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.” Here’s how a Top-of-Mind Awareness (TOMA) Survey can help you capture more 52-week business in 2017 and beyond. 8 Things a TOMA Survey Can Do for You 1. Our local TOMA surveys consistently prove that creating Top-of-Mind Awareness is the domain of intrusive broadcast media. Strong broadcast advertisers will always have higher TOMA scores than advertisers who rely on print or digital to brand their businesses. 2. Your TOMA surveys will always prove that the best way to ensure consumers click on a business when they search online is to create a pre-need TOMA and preference for the business with intrusive broadcast advertising. 3. It’s much more powerful to make an appointment to talk about your prospects’ ratings and their competitor’s ratings than trying to get an appointment to talk about your ratings. 4. If you have done local Top-of-Mind-Awareness surveys in the past, your survey can prove that businesses that began using radio/TV after your last survey actually increased their Share-of-Mind score. 5. The most important findings will be uncovering ‘open’ categories. Categories with no strong TOMA leader are very easy, and very inexpensive, for new radio/TV advertisers to capture the dominant Share-of-Mind and Share-of-Market. 6. In most cases, if a generalist leads the category and there is a relatively high ‘no answer’ score, the generalist has won by default and a specialist can quickly and efficiently become the category leader. For example, if Home Depot leads the windows and doors category, or the flooring category, advertisers who specialize in those categories, and use intrusive broadcast as a pillar of their promotion, can quickly capture Share-of-Mind and Share-of-Market While the Home Depots of the world have to divide their budget to cover dozens of categories, a specialist can dedicate their entire budget to their category. 7. Your survey will also prove that the only SURE way to be found online is when prospects search for a business by name because many businesses have fierce online SEO competition for first-page positioning if consumers search the category generically. 8. Our Selling With TOMA Surveys sales training will teach your team how to prove the vital link between Share-of-Voice, Share-of-Mind, and Share-of-Market and sell more 52-week advertisers for you. Click here to inquire about facilitating a local TOMA Survey and TOMA Sales Training in your market. |
WORDS THAT SELL
Our friends in digital media have been much more effective at harnessing the power of words than we have.
While we had ‘ratings’, they introduced ‘big data’ making our mere ratings seem pitifully small.
While we merely ‘reach’ people, our digital friends claimed to ‘engage’ them. Can you see the difference? I learned very early in my career that simply ‘reaching’ an audience did not necessarily mean you influenced that audience. ‘Engaging’ people just seems like such an endearing term compared to merely reaching them.
While we only had audiences, which the dictionary defines as spectators, listeners or viewers, they claimed to have ‘followers.’ The dictionary defines followers as ‘devotees or admirers of another person or a group.’
You have a myriad of sales tools available at your fingertips today, but in the end, all of those tools resort to the use of words; from PowerPoint to ratings, and from prospecting to presenting, it’s the effective and sometimes subtle use of words that ultimately make the sale.
Yet those of us in traditional communications are surprisingly ineffective at using the most relevant words when attempting to persuade, convince or sell.
At ENS Media, we critique hundreds of sales presentations every month to help our clients create more effective presentations, and we still see the careless or lazy use of words in most of those presentations.
For example, many presentations refer to ‘costs’ or paying a ‘price.’ The best presentations position your rates as “an investment” not a cost. Most entrepreneurs like to invest, while most are trying to reduce costs.
We still see presentations trying to sell ‘spots.’ Spots are something that have no perceived value, and in fact, we send our clothes to the cleaners to remove spots. There is much more perceived value in selling messages, commercials or announcements, than in spots.
And we still see way too much use of “we or I,” in presentations versus “you or your”. It’s much more effective to say “Your campaign will reach 100,000 of your prospects” than to say “we reach 100,000 listeners.”