For generations, too many people in the radio business have believed that we sell air. Maybe some sellers do that, but the great sellers solve problems. In their sales jobs, they don’t act as sellers first. They act as detectives.
They fundamentally understand the saying you’ve heard mostly at management seminars: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Everything starts with math. Where are you going today? Who are you seeing today?
Who are your strong relationships?
How are you consistently building new relationships?
How many times are you building toward resolving problems and closing clients?
Relationship-building skills are essential for radio sellers. Being able to build a bridge between yourself and prospects gives a seller an edge that is worth as much as putting a deal in front of them.
Relationship skills are what they call “soft skills.” Once you learn to be excellent with soft skills, you will find growing revenue to be much easier.
Here are eight keys to learning to be an excellent relationship builder:
- Active Listening. We talk about this all the time, but without active listening skills you simply miss essential elements that will help you identify critical problems, come up with solutions to those problems and close a sale.
- Observation. This is where being a detective comes into play. No matter where you are in the development of your relationship, observation should be something you continuously practice. Many things are simply not spoken; become good at observation and you will uncover things other sellers won’t.
- Empathy. Can you put yourself in another persons’ shoes? Do you know how your client feels? The better able you are to get in touch with what others think, the better seller you will become.
- Questioning. Oh, this is a big one, right? Practice asking questions in a wide variety of settings and under different conditions. This is a way to learn to think: Always ask questions. Always be interested in the answers.
- Building the energy and connection between you and the prospect. Creating a positive connection with decision-makers is critical as a top-flight seller.
- Communication. This isn’t just about communicating an idea. It’s about communicating ideas faster, making complex ideas seem simple and focusing on making it easy to talk with you. This builds trust and trust is essential to any “deal.”
- Collaboration. Learn how to become highly skilled at collaboration. This is perhaps the most critical overlooked skill that sellers need to be good at because knowing how to do this well will help potential clients make the choice to buy. In fact, doing this one well means the client will think it is only their idea. Not yours.
- Creativity & Critical Thinking. Situations change rapidly in sales, but the more flexible and creative you are, the more weapons you will have to overcome objections, redirect clients and help them see your vision for solving the problems they must solve today.
Do you know why mature sellers are often the highest achievers? It’s because they’ve had the most time with a wider variety of what you can face in sales, they have the emotional intelligence to stay focused on the prize: Solving the problem for the client. They can manage their own emotions during tensions in the sales process and be sensitive to what the prospect or client is experiencing. Believe me, advertisers experience too much of people just trying to sell them something.
The final choice: You can choose to be a seller like every other seller or to become a local brand known for caring about clients and doing the homework to deliver exceptional, creative options to clients they cannot unsee. Most sellers think they may be selling a brand or brands, but they don’t think of themselves as a brand.
Brand is trust though. So, if you can become a known and valued brand in your market for advertisers, what is that worth?
To brand up, make sure you go the extra miles needed to have a strong field of networking, be deliberately active in the business community to the point of becoming widely known and make sure your brand stands for something important. To do this, you will need to do much more than the other sellers on your team in person, online, in social media and in texts, email and Zoom. Ultimately, you want to be the first person everyone calls when they have a problem.
Make Sure You Understand The Math
Finally, no one does it exceptionally without good, solid math. Every day, every week, every month and every quarter, you should have active goals that require you to stretch to reach higher. Those goals should always involve innovating so you can spend more “time spent selling.” If you want to be the winning salesperson in your market across time, you simply must work to consistently elevate your CNAs and your active presentations so you can support growing revenue with every step you take.
Let others focus on transactions. The math behind effectively pushing the number of presentations you make per week, month and quarter and how to increase your closing ratio are more critical to your efforts than anything else. That takes building.
Want to make more money? Believe it or not, you are in charge of that. Not your boss. Not your company. You. If you want to be the best, it all begins with your ability to build better relationships rapidly and to become important to a larger circle of decision-makers.
