Sales & Marketing

All Broadcast Associations are here to serve their members. We often need to react to what’s happening in our industry by providing new services that will help radio and television broadcasters navigate through concerns. In my recent visits with stations in Missouri, nearly every general manager voiced a common area of need; more sales people and good sales managers to lead them. The strength of a sales team and the revenue it produces is often dependent on the strength of its managers. This has led the Missouri Broadcasters Association to begin planning for an on-going sales manager training for our members. Stations must be able to attract good sales managers in order to hire good sales people. What does a good sales manager want in their place of employment?

There is a fire that burns inside of me to help improve the community that I live in. I want to help make a difference in it. And while every single one of us can day in and day out by our actions and the way we carry ourselves I realized that perhaps by using sports marketing as a tool and the sports talk radio station I work at as a platform I could create even greater change. And not just that but I thought perhaps I could deliver some opportunities to my clients that would help their businesses, help our community, and help my relationships with them. This struck me as a win win.

How long is the to-do list today? It probably includes that you are going to hit your budget for the month, call one hundred prospects, offer them all great ideas, work on strategy with your great current accounts, and turn in all of the paperwork your manager is asking you to do. All of the sudden the day is over and you feel that you didn’t achieve your goals. Overwhelmed and frustrated the drive home begins and you think to yourself: If only I can get it all done tomorrow. We can’t and we won’t. We need to instead focus in on doing the three most important things that you need to get done that day that will have a BIG impact on what you are trying to get done at your media outlet.

Both Kantar Media and Rentrak conducted analyses that provide individual ratings of the Super Bowl commercials

Recognize your talent and ask the world of them. The top sales people on your team can smash budgets and move relationships from dead to remarkable in a few short months. Don’t hold them down but rather build them up and let them grow. Great sales managers and outstanding leaders of the future will not manage by fear or negativity in this industry. Rather they will recognize the true talents and do everything they can in their power to let them grow, both for themselves and for their companies.

While it may appear to be to some I don’t believe that marketing is convincing someone they need what you have. Marketing is about being a human and letting people know that. Marketing is about letting people know about the unbelievable product, venture, idea, or business that you have. Nothing more, nothing less. I think we fall into a realm of confusion at times about what it really is. Marketing is not convincing others that they need you. If you need to work so hard and so tirelessly on your marketing to convince people to buy something you have it’s not the right product.

In a sign of the times, the 4A’s just recently announced that they will no longer publish their “Television Production Cost Survey.” The survey originated in 1987 and the last published report represented the twenty-fifth year of this continuing project. For those twenty-five years, the report provided the industry with a method of benchmarking the industry average cost of producing television commercials, providing data including:

It’s been over eight years since I entered the brave new world of radio sales. Being a young pup at the age of 22 I remember

In the 1970’s and 80’s, the company I worked for employed a programming consultant for our major market AM radio station. He was considered a top consultant in the industry at the time, with many years of experience advising the top stations in the country. Similar to other top consultants of the day, he was very precise on music selection and rotation. His strategies on music programming however, were based exclusively on his experience and perspective. For years, (when the competition among radio stations was much less than after the popularity of FM Radio exploded,) he helped many stations achieve great success. Predictably, he became quite confident that he was expert in knowing what audiences wanted from a radio station; in fact, he became quite cocky and inflexible in his direction to stations. This hubris almost destroyed our station. Here’s the critical lesson we learned that is especially relevant today for radio sales departments.

We would all prefer in a perfect world that every single one of our clients would be open to sitting down and having a true conversation about their marketing strategy. Telling us exactly who they wish to target, in what time frame, and what we can provide for them both from a marketing side and an advertising side to reach those goals. We also wish all of our clients paid their bills after 30 days so we didn’t have to track them down, the ones who year after year ask for so many extra free spots that maybe one of these years they will ask for a few less, and the ones who are so hard to deal with due to their grumpiness would suddenly become your best friend like a few of the clients that you have. It’s not going to happen…and you can’t change all of them, and you can’t be everything to your clients!

For broadcasters who worry about advertisers complaining that their advertising “just isn’t working” on your station, here are some simple fixes you can suggest: