Article by Jim Carnegie from Radio Business Report

Ad sales have turned around and risen briskly for West Virginia Radio Corporation of Charleston, after the superduopoly’s sales force began to focus on one basic tenant - - professionalism.

Greg Murray (pictured), Director of Sales & Marketing for the seven-station cluster, told RBR that he took his cue from the pharmaceutical salespeople he had observed.

“They’re so well rehearsed. They’re well dressed. They have great premiums that they take to the doctors. They always have to have a plan of attack when they go in,” Murray said. “If one media company in our market took those principals and put them to use, imagine how much better off they would be than the competition - - so it’s kind of how we got started.”

West Virginia Radio Corp. (WVRC) reorganized management at its Charleston operation last August, putting one person - - Murray - - in charge of the entire sales force. To turn around declining sales, he set out to make his radio sales force as professional in appearance and preparation as the pharmaceutical salespeople who pitch drugs to doctors. He developed scripts for various scenarios - - to get appointments, to do a customer needs analysis, etc. and got his sales force to rehearse and use them. Murray said he wanted the WVRC sales reps to look sharp, go in prepared and sound professional.

“It’s amazing how much more respect you get from business people in the marketplace,” he noted. “Doctors are used to it. The local guy at the flower shop isn’t.”

In the beginning, Murray didn’t try to teach the old dogs new tricks, but focused on the new pups. “What was interesting was, we had nine people who’d been here for a while. We didn’t try to go out and change everything that they were doing overnight. You have the veterans and they have their way of doing things - - and so many of them are successful. What we tried to do was we brought in new people and those new people were the people that we really started from the ground up in terms of being scripted and doing business and marketing plans and being adamant about doing demo commercials and asking a lot of questions. We didn’t bother the veterans so much about it. We got all of our new people to do it,” he explained. ” What happened is that the new people started having so much success that the veterans started picking up on that. So then you end up with a staff where everybody is trying to do the same thing - - because they see that it works.”

What developed was that the new hires - - who didn’t know that advertisers don’t sign annual contracts - - started bringing in new business and signing long-term contracts with their clients. The veterans took notice and began working up business plans and pitching annual contracts to clients who’d never before made long-term commitments.

The result is that Murray expects total ad sales to be up 25% this year, with annual contract business running 33% ahead.

All this didn’t happen overnight. After starting the new approach last August, Murray said nothing much happened for the first couple of months - - and he began to worry that his staff might lose confidence in the plan and his leadership. But gradually those CNAs, business plans and demo commercials began to translate into real contracts and real dollars.

“All of a sudden you’re holding to some rate integrity and you’re doing some demo commercials. Before you know it it’s January and you realize that we are at a higher percentage for the year than we were by the middle of the year last year because you’ve built all of that long-term business,” he recalled.

More long-term business means tighter inventory and keeps upward pressure on rates. No more need to cut deals and offer specials to move inventory at the last minute. “Now you don’t have to worry about selling specials. Now you don’t have to worry about giving up your rates to the local car dealer who wants your spots at one-third of what they should be. You don’t have to take those deals anymore,” Murray said.

Long-term contracts are also a morale booster for the sales force. “It’s a lot easier to deal with a media sales job if you can look on the books and see that you already have business down seven months from now instead of looking three months from now and just seeing zeros down the column,” Murray noted.

Sure, the occasional advertisers who always insisted on chiseling rates resisted for a while. “Sooner or later they have to come back and do some advertising. And they pay the rate,” he noted. Meanwhile, the solid, long-term business being built was giving WVRC the strength to grow.

“The rates have gone up because we’ve booked longer-term business and because you’re going into months knowing that you’re going to hit your sales goal - - you don’t have to do all of the specials,” Murray explained. He noted that it also helps the lesser stations - - since not every station in a seven-station cluster can be a top biller. “They get the spill-over effect. When our Adult Contemporary station is sold out, all of a sudden our Oldies - - which reaches baby-boomers - - that starts to fill up, whereas that used to never fill up before.”

There’s also a positive impact on national sales, since Murray no longer has to take bad deals to fill up unsold inventory. He said he’s been surprised, now that he has the ability to say no, at how often a national or regional advertiser comes back and pays the higher rate.

Murray laughs that his expectations are now so high that he’s sometimes disappointed by results that would have been thrilling a year ago. “We’ve gone into half of our months this year already at goal,” he noted. Although WVRC hit its July goal on 7/6, he was disappointed that the rest of the month didn’t go gangbusters. “You become spoiled. You break records month after month and then you don’t break the record of the month before - - even though it was a five-week month - - and you’re disappointed. I guess that’s a good problem to have.”

Murray’s staff still rehearses their presentations every week - - meeting for lunch on Tuesdays. “I don’t make everybody come. I just make the people come who want to get the leads,” he noted. “If a business calls up and wants to ask for advertising, the person I want to send out to them is the person who’s been practicing the scripts and who’s been doing these things - - because I know that they are the ones who have the best opportunity to get long-term business from that advertiser, which will also make them more successful as well - - the rep and the advertiser.”

And businesses are calling up - - in addition to being tracked down by Murray’s sales reps. In addition to instilling a culture of professionalism on the sales staff, Murray has constructed a detailed website for advertisers and potential advertisers, and is promoting it with spots on all seven stations. He said calls from businesses interested in advertising have tripled since the website went up a couple of months ago, with some even emailing requests to be contacted by a sales representative.

Meanwhile, Murray still has his sales reps out prospecting for new business. Rather than the norm of just calling on businesses that are already advertising on other media, he tells the new reps not to think about people who are already advertising. “Don’t think about the retailers that you see over and over. Think about those contractors, think about the architect in town, the laser eye surgeons - - which wasn’t a big radio category a year and a half ago - - the paving companies. Those are the people who you are more likely to go in and make an impression on and get new dollars from.” As a result of that non-conventional approach, Murray says the new reps have had great success in bring in new non-traditional advertisers.

As part of the focus on professionalism, WVRC has encouraged its sales reps to study and pass RAB certification as a CRMC - - Certified Radio Marketing Specialist. “If they have been here over two years, they’ve gotten their CRMC,” Murray said. “We want them to get their CRMC because I remember how I felt when I got mine. I felt more professional because I had it.” Sales Imaging’s, Greg Murray is a Radio Ink Columnist, RAB Speaker, CRMC Diamond, and Microsoft Certified Specialist.

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