Prepare yourself: we are about to expose the truth about radio sales, what really happens, and how much money is left on the table.
Humans in general seek to avoid work and will often spend more time and effort avoiding it than if they just put in the actual work. This is an epidemic among people who will sometimes tell you they work all the time. As owners, market managers, and sales managers, understanding this and planning for it will help you more than you can imagine. Just don’t buy the idea that everything will be okay.
Many owners, market managers, and sales managers avoid properly training sellers, but a larger number than you and I would expect also focus on everything but the sales problem often.
- Be clever and empower your sellers to avoid slippery human behavior by managing their human nature and incentivizing them to do the internal work to make their incomes rise.
- Make sure your sellers understand the high value of prepping for the coming week each week so their days are packed with “Time Spent Selling.”
- Make sure your sellers understand you see them as the stars in your work universe. That respect will go a long way as will staying on top of their fundamental activities that produce results: Setting high and growing goals for prospecting on a weekly basis – prioritizing relationship development – Completing more CNAs (customer needs analysis) – Visiting more customers and new customers with full in-person proposals showing them things they have never seen before, never heard before and that address their problems, needs and fears.
What you incentivize is exactly what will get done and what you don’t properly incentivize will remain a problem and grow. If you have a problem that is unresolved, you haven’t figured in a clever enough incentive.
Owners, market managers, and sales managers who continue to manage sales recruitment the way they always have, who don’t change their game to meet new times, new buyers, new situations – including how many times prospects are seeing their salespeople, will have sales that go stale and flitter away in the winds of their future.
Sales requires more sales prep for 2026, more work on telling local radio’s story, more prospecting for 2026, and more relationship development for 2026. We all know that the new modern internet era has changed the game, but the thing that hasn’t changed is human behavior. Humans will always want to see something they haven’t seen before, something they haven’t heard before, and it is our job to deliver that or someone else will.
Individual seller activity levels determine sales more than any other factor. Take that to the bank. Sales management and leadership are responsible for giving sellers purpose, encouraging them and making sure they have the tools and understand and can tell the compelling story of local radio now. Making sure that “Time Spent Selling” is a premium where you work is essential. If sellers are not in front of their customers, they are doing less productive work. You may not like it, but it is also leadership’s responsibility to keep the spotlight on individual seller activity levels and the prep necessary to consistently wow new prospects and current clients.
The truth is that it doesn’t matter what you’ve heard; prospects need to see professional salespeople more often. Especially since COVID, the salesperson talk has been that it’s okay to not go see advertisers. Do that, and others will develop relationships that used to belong to you, and you won’t create enough new business either.
Sellers often think taking shortcuts cheats their employer, but it always cheats the seller. Most sellers think that if their day is packed, they are good. It’s not about your busy day. It’s about your level of prep and your ambition to follow through and execute the strategy. A salesperson’s income isn’t based on sales the way they think it is – it’s based upon their activity level and their commitment to truly build and serve others and ask questions until they uncover the core fears, needs, and desires of clients with money.
There will always be problems and naysayers. You know what to do with them? Fix them both. You know how.
- Problems = So What. Just keep going.
- Naysayers = These are the wrong people on your bus.
Sales is a team sport just like everything else: Strategy, incentives, and good culture drive performance.
If you are anywhere in the chain of responsibility in generating higher sales in 2026, avoiding these truths any longer WILL result in the loss of so much revenue it will make you sad. But your story can also be the opposite (a world of embarrassing riches).
You can say some of these are not true. That’s your right, but 2026 is here and managing these facts with a lean into the future is the way to win the new year.
