(By Loyd Ford) University of Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban announced his retirement at the end of this past college football season. He’s considered one of the greatest college coaches of all time, winning seven national championships and eleven SEC titles. What made Coach Saban great wasn’t just his prowess to make calls on the field, but his long-term vision for his players and his belief in human nature.
I submit that football is the last remaining killer ratings generator for live television because of the infinite entertainment choices competing for people’s attention now.
You yourself are likely doing a job that incorporates what two or three others might have done separately just ten or fifteen years ago. In today’s highly distracted world, you often face deadlines with your time running out and client situations where you run out of creative ideas to haul in a whale.
That’s loss of revenue. And everyone likes more revenue.
We spend a lot of our time talking about helping sellers spend more TSS (Time Spent Selling). To us, that is best judged as more sales activity known to lead to buying decisions in your favor. A big part of what we recommend is consistent encouragement. In fact, we’re known for encouragement. However, encouragement can be misunderstood if you don’t consistently use it with its twin: Accountability.
Encouragement is not the lack of accountability.
Personal accountability is critical and important if you are a radio seller or a sales manager. We all know this, but we are also human. We all deal with our human nature.
I do a lot of thinking about how difficult sales is for so many. Uncovering important needs from advertisers who sometimes don’t know themselves is challenging. Other times they may try to hide what they worry about from you. In fact, there are so many things that can get in the way of a good sale, but the toughest challenge most of us face is our own selves.
Our own human nature. The temptation to take the shortcut. It happens more than we would like ever to admit and it happens to radio sellers a lot.
Let’s bring it back to Coach Saban. Here’s what he once said on the subject of human nature:
“It all starts with who you are. You know, I always tell our players… who you are is more important than what you do. How high you jump, how fast you run. Because who you are is…your character and your character is an accumulation of your thoughts, your habits, and your priorities on a day-to-day basis. Because those three things determine the choices you make, and the choices you make make you who you are. Good guy, bad guy, hard-working, lazy, responsible, irresponsible and it takes a certain amount of discipline to do what you’re supposed to do, when you’re supposed to do it, the way it’s supposed to get done.”
Brace Yourself With An Open Mind
Everyone is focused on what you sell. The touchdown. The quick score.
This may be hard to wrap your brain around, but I will ask you to consider beginning to focus more on the process, the activity that when done with consistency can only result in raised sales results. It’s tempting to focus on “who sold the most this week,” but your long-term results may accelerate more by focusing on the activities that consistently produce more sales rather than actual sales that drop into your lap or the lap of your hot seller this week. After all, anyone can get lucky in a week.
When you use encouragement and accountability together with your sellers focused on sales activities that lead to higher production, you may find that your whole sales team can and will produce higher consistent results in 2024.
Loyd Ford is president and chief strategic officer at Rainmaker Pathway Consulting Works (RPC). They help local radio with ratings and revenue. Reach him anytime at 864.448.4169 or [email protected]. Read Loyd’s Radio Ink archives here.
