Tag Archives: testimonials
Become the Expert!
Your prospects and customers prefer to do business with people they feel they can trust and that can bring value to their business. But, how do you gain the credibility to be known as the expert?
There are several different ways to build “Cred”, but here are a few ideas:
One – Testimonials. It’s one thing for you to tell a prospective client that you know what you’re talking about; it’s another thing to have someone else tell them. If you have testimonials, use them! You should do what you ask clients and prospects to do every day, and that is to market yourself. Put a portfolio together that talks about you, who you have worked with, what you have done, what you do to get better, and include testimonials. Then hand them out as a resume. After all, you are applying for a job to handle their advertising!
Two – Start writing and get published. There are hundreds of magazines, blogs, E-zines that are starving for good material. Contact them and offer to write articles. Or, you could write your very own weekly or monthly newsletter/blog and send it to your customers and prospects. It doesn’t have to be long, just good! Write it and they will read it!
Lastly, and this one might scare the “Glossophobia” out of you (Fear of Public Speaking), but it’s very powerful and will establish your credentials as an expert. It’s public speaking!!!
The most important thing to remember about public speaking… it’s easier when you are speaking on something you are passionate about. What part of what you do are you the most passionate about? Speak to that and it’ll be much easier.
Becoming known as an “expert” takes extra effort, hard work, and moving outside of your comfort zone. If this weren’t true, everyone would be an “expert”.
If you would like help with becoming known as an expert, contact us to learn more about ENS Media’s SoundADvice program which is designed to brand your marketing reps and your station as advertising experts!
P.S. Rick will be at Radio Show in Orlando this week, so if you’re there, give him a call at 605-310-2062 and let him know. He’d love to meet as many readers of ENS on Sales as possible.
Why Don’t You Believe in Advertising?
How long would I have to listen to your station before I heard a promotion for Facebook? … “Follow us on Facebook, see the details on our Facebook page”.
Radio advertising works. Facebook has probably been promoted on radio millions of times across the land and look how successful they’ve been.
Now, how long would a business owner have to listen to your station to hear another business owner’s testimonial about the power of radio, or a great spot for a recent piece of research proclaiming radio’s steadfast reach in spite of the growth of digital media and traditional media fragmentation?
Maybe you’re one of those advertisers who finds advertising to promote radio, “hard to measure”… nay-nay!
Every time we persuade one of our station clients to begin running great advertiser testimonials, or pro radio spots, their phones ring with leads… how much ‘measurement’ do you need?
Can you imagine the impact over time if every station in the country ran creative pro-radio campaigns? Or don’t you believe radio works?
I, for one, know it works. When will you start to reap the benefits of promoting radio advertising on air?
By the way, I’m sure you’ll find the cost of advertising on your own station, quite reasonable… LOL.
Job One For Sales Managers
As a sales manager, the list of activities, tasks, and paperwork you face everyday is daunting.
But there is only one job, your toughest job, that will dictate your success.
That job is selling your sellers.
They’re beat up on the street every day. They’re being told everything from your rates are too high, to nobody listens to radio anymore, and from the economy is tough to radio doesn’t work. And you know repetition sells.
Over time, your account executives can begin to believe all of the advertiser excuses for not investing with them and lose confidence in radio.
It’s your job to counter balance all of those negatives and never quit selling your sellers.
You had to sell them on a career in radio sales, and the merits of your company when you recruited them, and you have to keep selling them every day.
A few things you can do to sell your sellers:
- Create internal systems and venues, online, in sales meetings and more, to share sales success stories.
- Celebrate EVERY order… without exception.
- Capture and use advertiser testimonials on air, online, in sales meetings and in presentations.
- Actively search for and distribute good news on the economy, business, your market and radio.
- Recognize the contributions to your success from every department… not just sales.
- Negatives should be shared one on one, behind closed doors, positives need to be shouted throughout the building.
- Last, but not least, when launching new systems, packages, programs or initiatives, focus on the benefits from your customers’ point of view, not just from the station’s vantage point.
My favorite Henry Ford quote is, “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you are right!”
The best sales managers have cultivated the art of helping their sales people ‘think they can’ every day.
All of the training, systems and tactics in the world will not produce more than the enthusiasm and confidence you can build.
Making Radio Tangible
The dictionary defines ‘tangible’ as; ‘able to be perceived by a sense of touch‘.
Radio is only an intangible if you let it become so. And if the only ‘tangible’ your clients receive from your station is an invoice, you’re headed for trouble.
At cutback time, the media with the most tangibles in your clients’ files often wins and escapes the knife! How thick is your client’s file of your tangibles?
Radio is only an intangible if you let it become so. And if the only ‘tangible’ your clients receive from your station is an invoice, you’re headed for trouble.
At cutback time, the media with the most tangibles in your clients’ files often wins and escapes the knife! How thick is your client’s file of your tangibles?
- Do they have a presentation on file that clearly outlines what you proposed to do for them and how you would achieve their objectives?
- Have you delivered trade articles about marketing your customers’ categories?
- What about wrap-up reports with testimonials from their customers, a summary of what you delivered, and of course, an outline of how you over-delivered?
- Does your client’s file include all of the scripts you’ve delivered, audio copies of their commercials and proofs of performance?
- Do they see your station-logoed swag every day, or do you make your presentations against a backdrop of your competitor’s swag?
- Do you conduct post-campaign analysis and deliver written summaries of those analyses?
- What about regular helpful tips and branding tools like our SoundADvice, complete with your photo and station logos?
- Have you used your cell phone to forward pictures of their customers lined up at a successful event or remote?
At cutback time, the media with the most tangibles in the advertiser’s files wins! Don’t let the newspaper tear-sheets, or the billboard tent-cards and photos ‘out-tangible’ what you do, and certainly, don’t let an invoice be the only tangible advertisers receive from you!