Building the Revenues You Deserve
I’m a believer that we get what we deserve in life. And in sales, we get the kinds of revenues we deserve.
I recently read an article in a trade magazine where the contributing writer suggested the way to increase sales was to offer, “buy two spots, get one free.”
Wow, why didn’t I think of that? We just walk up to a prospect who is cutting expenses and desperate for more sales and tell them if they buy spots they don’t want, we’ll give them more spots they don’t want, for free.
Clients who don’t see advertising as a solution to soft sales and who are looking for ways to cut costs or increase sales are not going to be enticed to buy unless you offer a solution to their problems.
Admittedly, businesses that are already planning to buy advertising would like to see you diminish the value of your product. But those who have decided to cut back won’t reverse that decision simply because we’ve offered more of what they don’t want, for less.
We do get the revenues we deserve. Peddling station inventory, station promotions, station features and station specials will not generate the revenues you deserve. Focusing on building campaigns to solve the customer’s problems will generate the revenues you deserve.
‘Spots’ or online offerings are not your most valuable inventory. Customer focused ideas are your most valuable inventory. Spots and websites are merely a medium for carrying messages, and contrary to what Marshall McLuhan might have said, the message is more important than the medium.
It’s what you say in your spots or online features that creates value for your clients.
I do admit there are some sales people who are not capable of developing advertising solutions to client problems, but who can sell station packages and features. More often than not, your package peddlers are leaving money on the table. And with their focus on your pricing or packages instead of the client’s campaigns, their attrition rates will be higher.
Some advice for the managers of those sales people who are not capable of building customer focused solutions:
1.) Don’t hire any more of them. Look for people who can develop profitable marketing ideas. They won’t need to ‘sell’ their ideas because clients will buy them. Clients prefer buying to being sold.
2.) Keep your package sellers focused on transactional customers who only buy packages. Don’t let high revenue-potential prospects who want solutions to their problems end up on the account lists of these people.
3.) Don’t give up! Keep training and coaching your package peddlers to develop customer focused solutions. Eventually the light will come on and they will become customer focused account executives who will start generating the revenues you deserve.
Bag More Sales
It’s hard to come up with new ways to promote a sale these days. But advertisers must stand out from the crowd to make their events a success.
I recently saw a newspaper campaign for Office Max where instead of running the usual flyers or coupons with everyone else, they inserted a plain brown bag with this message printed on it, “Bring this bag to our store from January 4-10 and save 15% on everything that fits in it.”
The bag certainly stood out from all of the look-alike colored flyers and coupons that fell out of the paper.
This would be the perfect idea for a radio station remote, and a lot less costly than printing and inserting a bag in the paper.
Simply run a remote inviting everyone to come to your broadcast booth to get their free bag with all the savings your listeners can carry!
Your advertiser will credit you for every ‘bag’ sale, whether the ‘bag people’ were attracted by you or not, and the idea is unusual enough to stand out.
There are some added benefits:
1.) Your listeners will feel like they got something for nothing (the bag) PLUS the savings, courtesy of you.
2.) Shoppers get to choose which merchandise they want to save on.
3.) Your advertiser has the flexibility to choose the size of bag you distribute
Got a hot idea you’d like to share with other stations? Send it to [email protected]. If we use your idea in ENS on Sales, we’ll send you a free copy of my book, 101 Ways to Get Luckier (in ad sales).