Forget “Always Be Closing.” On NASBA’s Broadcast Advocate podcast, Maine Association of Broadcasters President and CEO Tim Moore hosted Local Broadcast Sales President Gary Moore and Vice President Eric Moore to discuss the new mantras for radio sales success.
Gary Moore said, “One of the things to keep in mind is that training should be your competitive advantage in getting new sellers or new individuals to be joining your station. Hiring is the opportunity for you to be able to address tomorrow’s revenue problems today by hiring correctly.”
Eric Moore added, “One of the things I see missing a lot is humility. We live in a culture that is all about me, and everything is about me. I need to have the humility to elevate them and respect them enough to talk about them and their business.”
“We promote Always Be Listening,” Gary stated. “Always be paying attention to what is going on in your customer’s business. The best sales manager I ever worked for was my mom. And she used to tell me when I was little, ‘Gary, you have two ears and you have one mouth. You should do twice as much listening as you do talking.'”
“The very first thing that I would always bring into any media company that I was at was how to understand the different styles of your customers and how to understand the different styles of your coworkers,” Gary said. “If you master those two pieces, you’re going to find you’re going to be able to excel and get more than your fair share of business.”
Turning to artificial intelligence, Moore said, “AI can become your friend. It’s like having an assistant.” He added, “I use an AI agent, which is called Grammarly. I pay for it myself, and I use it on emails I send out, everything I do.”
Eric Moore urged more caution. “Whenever you’re using AI to do something that’s going to be customer-facing, or it’s going to be prospect-facing, never copy and paste it. Nobody in real life, when they send emails, use those long dashes. It’s a dead giveaway.”
“Use [AI] for ideas. Use it for research. Use it for what questions should I ask. All those things are great. But when you’re going to use it in a way that connects with a customer, always rewrite it so that it’s in your language, so that it sounds like you, so that you’re the same person on email that you are when you go and talk to them in person.”
Closing out, Gary Moore said, “Objections are your friend.” He added, “Objections are your way, by the way, to a higher revenue sale. When you find out what their objections are, and you can overcome those objections and show them that your media company is focused on whatever their objections happen to be, it’s not a problem when they’re working with you.”
