(By Rick Fink) All too often in media sales, the conversations with clients or prospects are about our industry, our stations, our formats, our coverage areas, our demographics, our promotions! With any sales training at all, we know that our focus should be on the client.
The real information, the good stuff, and where you build credibility with your client, is when you start to ask questions that they have never been asked before.
The questions that go deeper than normal and touch their emotional hot buttons; questions about their hopes and dreams, questions about what keeps them up at night, questions about them and their customers, questions that, frankly, make them feel like you really care about them and their business. Ultimately, questions confirm you are a professional and not just another media rep looking for a quick sale.
When radio doesn’t work, the overwhelming reason is that the message is bad. If you only ask the same boring, surface-level questions, you’ll only have the same answers as every other rep.
Once you start learning how to ask deeper questions, then and only then will you get deeper answers. Deeper answers help create better ads and ad campaigns. Better ads equal better results for your clients, and better results equal happier clients and longer-term contracts for you and your stations!
One of the best compliments you will ever get from a client or prospect is when they say, “You’re different than the other media reps. You ask some really great questions!”
Start asking Deeper Questions and start getting Deeper Answers!
Rick Fink from ENS Media can be reached at 605-310-2062 or [email protected]. Read Rick’s Radio Ink archives here.