(By Loyd Ford) When it comes to revenue, if you are smart, you are looking for every edge. I don’t know who you could talk to that could give you greater insight than Jeffrey Wolinsky, the Director of Federal & National Sales, WTOP.
Maybe you know Jeffrey because he won the Sales Manager Of The Year from Radio Ink in 2013 or maybe you are aware of the fact that WTOP is the top revenue generator year after year after year and by tens and tens of millions of dollars. Don’t you want to know how they are doing that? They have a culture of design and performance at WTOP.
Here is some of what we heard on The Encouragers™ The Radio Rally™ podcast when he was our guest recently:
- You do not know what is going to happen (in sales) until you go out there and experience the action.
- One of the things that plagues sellers and sales managers is that sellers will come into the sales managers office and they think something rather than know something. I never want to go with what a seller thinks. The sales process is a collaborative where I want to know what will get the deal done rather than think. Guessing is for carnivals. Guessing is for games. I want to know. In business we base things on what we know.
- Today our jobs are much more than negotiating deals.
- My background is marketing and sales. Understanding how to market yourself and your clients and integrate that into sales. In making a deal, you want to know. In making ideas, I do want to know what you think, your creative ideas. But I don’t want to guess on what makes a deal get done.
- What is the function of a radio station and why do people do business with that radio station? It has nothing to do with radio. It has everything to do with what that business wants to get out of the radio station. In some cases, it’s selling cars. But it’s different for everyone. It has everything to do with solving business issues of the people it does business with.
- If (advertisers) give us a dollar, they want two, three, four, ten in return. They don’t care that we are WTOP and they don’t care who you are. This is business.
- You want to understand how the market works so you can be a better marketer and a better resource for your client. And understand how you can best create their experience with your organization so that their dollar invested can give back to them as much as possible. They will continue to be your client, as long as you deliver for them. Networking and relationships will only work as long as you are delivering a return on their investment. People may give you a chance once off of relationship. The second time there must be results.
- (Talking about culture with salespeople and growing them). Listening and understanding what puts people in a position where they are happy, confident and successful. The most successful people are those that are happy and confident. Creating that environment starts at the top.
- Every generation says, “It’s just so hard right now.” It will always be that way because that’s just the way the world works. People don’t just want to buy the same things over and over. They want to evolve. Styles change, new foods. People emotionally want to try new things. You have to make your organization creative enough where, even though what they are buying is still advertising, you have to make new energy. Constantly think about how people feel about your brand.
Jeffrey also shared that the days of (hard) selling are essentially over. This is a new era of being the resources, being an easy value to solve problems.
Bonuses For You:
What do local clients want? They don’t wake up and say, “Let’s advertise on the radio.” They say, “Let’s get more people into our business.” That starts as a resource to their business. Those resources can be a lot of things. Not just ads on radio.
Showing and proving value delivers results. That’s our business. You wrap that up in a bow and you have a client for life. To do that, they are going to continue to share with you what their challenges are, you’re going to share with them solutions to overcome those challenges, you’re going to target their audience, and you’re going to measure how your campaigns have gone. Over time, not everything is going to work, but if they see value in what you are doing, they will continue to give you the opportunity to help their business. They are not looking for friends; they are looking to help their business.
Radio stations cannot solely look at national advertisers to get to their goals.
If you look at what our license is from the FCC from when we turned the electricity on, part of that premise is “to serve the local community in terms of the programming we were delivering, but really the local community in terms of the business community is where I am focused right now.”
If I can help somebody’s business, they will continue to invest with us and revenue will take care of itself.
You should really hear for yourself what he says about storytelling, accountability and unlimiting sellers and local radio today.
Hear the full unedited interview by subscribing (free) to The Encouragers™ The Radio Rally™ podcast (Apple, Audible, Spotify or almost anywhere you get your podcasts).
Loyd Ford is president and chief strategic officer at Rainmaker Pathway Consulting Works (RPC). Reach Loyd at 864.448.4169 or [email protected].
