Your program director plays a huge role at your radio station. One of those roles should never be to write your media kit. Your media kit is for clients and prospects to learn how your station’s audience can help their business grow. When PD’s write media kits, it comes out as pages about “you” (the station) and little about “them” (your client/prospect).
A page in your media kit for your on-air schedule and a page for your promotions/community involvement is all that is needed in regard to what’s happening on-air.
Your media kits shouldn’t read like programming promo. It’s about your audience, and how they can help clients/prospects. Remember, you are the marketing expert. All of your marketing materials should be produced by you, not the PD.
I came across this post from ManageSmarter.com over the weekend. Thought you’d find it interesting:
No matter the product or service, selling is a tough business. Having a thick skin, a great work ethic and an unflappable “can-do” attitude are among the most crucial traits needed to launch a successful selling career.
But your sales team also needs to know where the potential pitfalls are and how to avoid them. By discussing with team members the primary reasons why salespeople fail, you’re providing a roadmap for success that will help them throughout their careers.
“Whether your team consists of 1,000 salespeople or just one, the simple fact stands: Avalanches roll downhill,” says Keith Rosen, president of Profit Builders and author of Time Management for Sales Professionals and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cold Calling. “It starts from the top, and that’s why managers are 100% accountable for the success and failure of their sales teams.” Rosen suggest: Read More
I’m often asked to recommend software that can help Radio sales departments. In the past, we’ve heard of solutions from Wicks, Marketron, Radio 3k, Sales Force, RAB, Smartrate, InaBox, Radio Ink, and others.
But, we want to know what you use (or what have you used in the past)…and give us your opinion or review.
Just leave a reply/comment. We’ll reveal the results in an upcoming etip and RadioSalesBlog post.
While you head out to visit clients and prospects, here are some promotional ideas for November:
November will be Aviation History Month, Lung Cancer Awareness Month, MADD’s Tie One on For Safety Month, National Adoption Month, AIDS Awareness Month, Alzheimer’s Disease Month, and National Vegan Month.
Kids’ Goal Setting Week - November 15-19
National Family Week - November 18-24
National Men Make Dinner Day - November 1st
Sadie Hawkins Day - November 3rd
Daylight Savings Time ends - November 4th
General Election Day - November 6th
Veterans Day - November 11th
America Recycles Day - November 15th
Great American Smokeout Day - November 15th
Thanksgiving Day - November 22nd
National Salespersons’ Day - November 23rd
Black Friday - November 23rd
A great resource for managers (and sellers who will be managers one day) is Sales & Marketing Management magazine. I recently read a post I thought would interest those of you trying to solve one of the greatest challenges managers face…hiring superstars.
Mistake 1: Relying only on interviews to evaluate a candidate
Mistake 2: Using successful people as models
Mistake 3: Too many criteria
Mistake 4: Evaluating “personality” instead of job skills
Mistake 5: Using yourself as an example
Mistake 6: Failure to use statistically validated testing to predict job skills most critical to success
Mistake 7: Not researching the reasons that people fail
Mistake 8: Relying on general “good guy” criteria
Mistake 9: Bypassing the reference check
Click here to read the entire post.
Want to really turn-off an advertiser? Want to over-hype your sales presentation? Want to look like a marketing amateur…instead of a marketing pro? Then you should just keep on using those CAPS, Bold text, and exclamation points!!! in your sales presentations. It’s not that they can’t ever be used, but only do so sparingly (very sparingly). All this over-hype only makes your pitch less meaningful.
Sit in your prospect’s seat. If your sales points are truly compelling, they should speak for themselves without the embellishment of dramatic text and punctuation. Selling in today’s business environment has become more and more delicate. No one wants to be sold…we want to buy. And when you overuse bold text, CAPS, and exclamation points!!!, you’re screaming at your prospects…and who wants to be screamed at during a sales pitch?
I went to the optometrist today (all this computer time is getting to my eyes…though passing by 40 may have something to do with it as well). Anyhow, in our greeting he asked what I did for a living. When I was done telling him I ran a business that provided sales, marketing, and tech tools for Radio — he said, “I had a radio person in here earlier today.” Oh…do I love hearing that. So, I followed up with a few questions and here’s what I found out.
- He had been off Radio for at least a year.
- He had been using TV recently.
- He wanted back on Radio.
Here’s the lesson. If you have a client that has left Radio and gone to TV, print, or any other media; it may have nothing to do with the fact that he doesn’t like Radio anymore. It often just means he likes to mix things up. Often, when a client leaves us, we think they’re gone forever…they’re not. Keep in contact with advertisers. Don’t let them forget you’re there. Stay in touch with helpful information that can make you be seen as a marketing pro…not just a salesperson. Then, when they’re ready to get back in bed with Radio, you’ll be there to tuck them in again. Goodnight for now, TV.
In my previous post, I mentioned I was now using a new free Google service called, Google Apps to filter my salesimaging email through (to solve my spam problem…and it has). Yesterday it came time to figure out how to get that email onto my BlackBerry.
Option 1 is the easiest. There’s a sweet little Gmail application that goes right on your BlackBerry. You can bypass all the POP/SMTP stuff and get your email directly from this little application. Option 2 is to use the regular POP settings that Google Apps provides. You can get step-by-step instructions for each of these methods here: https://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=39374&query=blackberry&topic=&type
Remember though, none of this works until first you’ve got a Google, as well as Google Apps account (read my previous post).
Good luck and enjoy spam-free email on your desktop…and on your BlackBerry/mobile phone.
After spending too long buried in spam, my problem has been fixed thanks to Google. We set up Google POP accounts for each of our salesimaging email addresses to filter through. The Google spam filter is remarkable. It’s picked up 99% of spam and rarely catches a good message by mistake. Every few days, I log onto my Google email account and check the spam folder. There I see the hundreds of spam messages that used to make their way to my desktop inbox. A nice bonus is that you can set up the Google account so your emails come to your inbox, but also stay online in the Google inbox. This way if you ever accidentally delete or lose an email, you can login to your Google account and retrieve it (it can hold thousands and thousands and thousands of emails). Best of all…it’s free and still allows you to use your desktop email client just as you always have (Outlook, Entourage, Thunderbird, etc…).
Learn more here: https://www.google.com/a/
