(By Lisa Thal) As 2018 ends, we need to ask ourselves the following question: “How was my year?” Were you happy with your performance? Did you exceed your revenue expectations for the year? If you grew your business and beat the market growth, then congratulations! If you fell short of budget expectations, ask yourself what you could do differently to improve your performance. Now is the time to get real with yourself and up your game, because in sales, we must compete at a high level every day to win the business.
Below are five steps to up your game and crush your budget expectations!
1. Set a benchmark for new business meetings. How many new meetings do you need to set each week? There are thousands of companies in need of our expertise to help them grow their business. Challenge yourself to set one more meeting a week! How are your conversions in the new meetings? I recommend tracking your success. Each call gives you an opportunity to improve your effectiveness.
2. Determine a valid business reason. Become the leader and set the standard in your market with how you approach companies. What did you discover as an opportunity for the client prior to calling them? We need to understand each client’s customer journey and provide them with strategic solutions to solve their largest issues.
3. Come prepared with creative campaigns. Do you present creative campaigns with every proposal? I encourage you to take the time and meet with your production team and program director to create better ways to use radio to connect companies to consumers.
Radio is the best at telling their story. Is there an opportunity to have your on-air talent endorse or become an ambassador for your client? Our on-air talent has tremendous trust and daily exchanges with our listeners. They have the platform for the largest referral program any client could create. This is a critical part of our marketing campaign, positioning our client’s brand into our listeners’ minds. Great creative is memorable and creates an emotional connection to the consumer.
4. Solidify your relationship with the client. Find a way to deepen your connection with your client. How is your followup with your clients? Do you have a strategy to stay connected after the sale? Discover how each client wants to connect. Find a way to further connect them to your station. Invite them to the station to meet the on-air talent, the programming and promotions teams, the sales support and the traffic department. In doing so, you are letting them know how many people are working on their behalf.
5. Own your day. You determine what gets accomplished each day and whether or not you move your business forward. You are in control of how you plan your day, and this takes focus and balance. For example, what does your calendar look like each day? Does it look meaningful or meaningless? I recommend breaking your day into sections and sticking to it by scheduling the sections on your calendar. Try to follow these tips!
E-mails. Don’t fall into the trap of responding each time you receive one. Schedule three 30-minute blocks throughout the day to respond.
Phone calls. Schedule time during your day to return phone calls. You may need to return urgent calls right away on occasion, but all other calls should happen within two 20-minute blocks during the day.
New meetings. Your goal should be to meet with one new customer each day. This can be an introduction from one of your current clients or a new prospect you are targeting.
Current clients. Make a list of your current billing clients and schedule some time to meet with them each month. Each day we should be meeting with one of our current clients. These meetings should be focused on their current campaign, updating the creative, or sharing research you discovered that could improve their business. Invite your client to lunch or a happy hour to meet the on-air talent. We take for granted how cool it is for our clients to meet them. They are rock stars!
Today is the day. Get rid of the excuses and up your game!
For more ideas on how to grow your revenue, visit www.threewordmeetings.com.
Lisa Thal is the general sales manager for Hubbard Interactive Cincinnati. She’s also the author of Three Word Meetings: A Simple Strategy to Engage, Inspire and Empower Your Team. Get it on Amazon.com.
