Everyone wants sellers who know how important it is to really know thy customers, how to prospect well, have great consistency, and know how to close. A sales manager gets a good number of these, and his or her life gets a lot easier, right?
Don’t kid yourself; the strongest radio salespeople are not selling “radio.” They sell solutions.
They know listening is better than talking. They are clever observers. They are opportunistic, and they fundamentally understand they are in the business of service. If you begin everything you do with service in mind, your path to higher revenue will be easier.
The power that great radio sellers have always been excellent with their use of creativity to show advertisers what they’ve not seen before or what they have never heard before.
Think about it; no one wants old fish, and they don’t want faded retread ideas either.
Advertisers see the same old stuff day in and day out; what they want is fresh, unique, creative and focused on solving their problems.
Yet most “salespeople” bring them a tired version of whatever they have already seen over and over before.
Again.
This is why you should ask yourself, “Why be average?”
These excellent sellers know that advertisers will never question what something costs if they see they are receiving more value than what they are paying.
They have to see it. Show it to them.
If you haven’t shown an advertiser’s value in a meaningful way, you will struggle. Great sellers don’t struggle because they build that value long before they sell it. The sellers that will excel going forward don’t remove their focus on what they want, but their outward focus is on what advertisers want and need right now.
Radio’s long-term sustainable advantages are not related to price. It’s related to relationships, connections, the mobility of our listeners, and the power of our creativity on-air to influence. That’s the story.
Human nature is that you will pick apart the things in this article and say, “So what?” I encourage you instead to read and re-read and re-read every sentence in this article. It’s not that many words. I ask you to learn, practice, and become sharper at each of the qualities in this article, and you will watch your sales rise in ways you’ve never seen before.
