Tag Archives: Sales

What you know, not what you sell

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Sales trainer Chris Lytel points to a Wall Street Journal interview with Ram Charan, a business professor turned consultant and author (What the Customer Wants You to Know).

“It has become very hard to differentiate yourself in the eyes of the customer, for business to business sales. So salespeople should not sell the product anymore. They should find out what the customer needs, which will be a combination of products and services and thought leadership.”

“In the old game, one person could do the selling. In the new game, you need a team from your company. The reason you need a team is the solution you’re going to create is going to come form different parts of your company. That means salespeople have to be good leaders, to lead their team, and also persuade the customer team. Because customers also buy in teams.”

Thought leadership. Interesting concept. Increasingly, our “network radio” sales reps are finding that their clients want more than 30 second spots. I suppose you could say they always wanted more than spots… they wanted the sales or mind-share those “spots” could bring.

These days, it’s rare that the prospect doesn’t bring up the subject of the web as part of their marketing strategy. Knowing a little something about blogging and podcasting has been very useful.

Google yourself

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Why? This from Seth Godin…

If you’re a salesperson, your prospects already do.
If you’re looking for a job, your prospective employers already do.
If you’ve got a job, your co-workers already do.

What do they see? Do you know?

…and this from Mindy McAdams (Teaching Online Journalism)…

“If you’re a journalist — or a journalism student who hopes to enter the field — this should concern you. First, what results do you get when you Google yourself (first name, last name, no quotation marks)? Most important, what are the top two or three links? I hope they do not go to pages about you that make you look like an idiot, a sex fiend, or a drunk.”

They both offer suggestions on how to improve your Google juice.

1,000 $100 advertisers

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“Newspapers are losing their own core market because they didn’t understand the scale of the internet. They still thought mass when they should have realized that small is the new big. That is, online, newspapers still threw their lot in with the big advertisers who had been the only ones who could afford their mass products. They didn’t see the mass of potential spending in a new population of small, local advertisers who never could afford to advertise in newspapers but who now could afford to buy targeted, efficient, inexpensive ads online.”

“Even the online sales teams at newspaper companies didn’t how now to sell small; they were — as I once put it in a meeting — putting all their effort into saving the old $100,000 advertiser and saw getting 1,000 $100 advertisers as a distraction. The new-media divisions had already become big and old.” — Buzz Machine

Jeff Jarvis goes on to offer suggestions on how newspapers can generate new, local dollars online:

“Start a new company that makes small, local advertising its sole focus. That means they need to set up automated systems to accept and place highly targeted local ads and directories. That means they need to come up with new means of selling without on-the-street sales staffs: outbound phone sales, direct response, even local sales network (instead of citizen journalists, citizen sales people), making aggressive use of the promotional power of the newspaper while you still have it. That means they need to have lots of targeted local content without large editorial staffs.”

Most sales organizations with which I am familiar are just not wired for this. The math just doesn’t work. It will be interesting to see which traditional media companies are able to make their sales machine work in a New Online World.

“Things we were told about online that were wrong.”

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Steve Safran at Lost Remote takes a look back at some of the responses to his suggestions regarding the web. These bring back a lot of memories:

  • Nobody will break news on their site before the story airs
  • Newspapers won’t put much news online because it will cannibalize sales
  • Nobody will buy web advertising
  • Only young people use the web, and they don’t want news
  • The bubble has burst – there’s no future in the web now
  • There is no need to hire a web-only salesperson
  • News websites will never “blog” or have anything to do with blogging
  • Social networking tools don’t belong on news sites
  • The networks will never send programming directly to the audience and ignore the locals
  • People won’t watch video online because the quality is not high enough
  • People won’t watch video on an iPod because the picture is not big enough
  • Viewers won’t upload video and pictures because it’s too hard to do

The Dip: Knowing when to quit, and when to stick

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The Dip

“Every new project (or job, or hobby, or company) starts out exciting and fun. Then it gets harder and less fun, until it hits a low point-really hard, and not much fun at all. And then you find yourself asking if the goal is even worth the hassle. Maybe you’re in a Dip — a temporary setback that will get better if you keep pushing. But maybe it’s really a Cul-de-Sac, which will never get better, no matter how hard you try.

What really sets superstars apart from everyone else is the ability to escape dead ends quickly, while staying focused and motivated when it really counts.

Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt — until they commit to beating the right Dip for the right reasons.

Losers, on the other hand, fall into two basic traps. Either they fail to stick out the Dip-they get to the moment of truth and then give up — or they never even find the right Dip to conquer.” [Squidoo]

I don’t blame Mr. Godin for wanting to make a buck, but this little “book” (about 70 tiny pages) should have been an eBook. Which I probably would not have bought, so… there you go.

But it brought back some memories.

It only took me about 3 months (in 1970) to decide I did not want to be a lawyer. I quit and I quit early. I then spent about a year as a Postal Inspector before calling it quits. I remember my boss urging me to stick it out.

I’m a Seth fan and found The Dip worth the hour it took to read. A few quotes after the jump.

Continue reading →

Google will sell ads on Clear Channel

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Google has broken into radio with a multi-year advertising sales agreement with the largest U.S. broadcaster, Clear Channel Radio. Clear Channel said it has agreed for Google to sell a guaranteed portion of the 30-second spots available on its 675 radio stations in top U.S. markets, in a bid to expand the universe of local radio advertisers to Google’s online buyers.

A Clear Channel executive said Google has access to less than 5% of the radio broadcaster’s overall inventory of advertising air time. The U.S. radio industry generates $20 billion in annual sales. [USAToday]

Taking the Imus story to the big screen

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Aging white radio personality (Bill Murrary) gets fired for racist remark. His career appears to be over until he’s hired by the owner (Bernie Mac) of a struggling, urban (Detroit?) radio station. Seems the radio personality saved the station owner’s life in the jungles of Viet Nam.

The station manager (Queen Latifah) doesn’t like the idea at all but the program director (Jack Black) –a white man who longs to be black– sees big ratings.

The local minister/activist (Eddie Murphy) keeps the heat on to get rid of “this loud-mouthed saltine!”

The station sales manager (Regina King) sees nothing but angry advertisers but soon finds herself falling in love with the repentant Murray character.

As with all my movie ideas, I have no third act, but know Kay will come through as she always does. I guess I need a title, too. Maybe, “What’d I say?”

Google Audio looking better to radio groups

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“Google is finding some friends. There are plenty of critics of Google’s foray into radio — but we’re slowly seeing some group heads come out and say there may be a place for the Internet giant in radio sales. Regent tested the service in two markets and CEO Bill Stakelin says they sold “a tremendous amount of inventory” and the results “far exceeded our expectations.” He says the issue that remains to be worked out is pricing.

While Emmis CEO Jeff Smulyan says “if Google has the advertiser that we’re never going to call on at rates that make sense … then it’s business that we want to take.” Smulyan says Google’s efforts are especially welcome in “transactional” markets like New York and L.A. where radio has done a “marginal job” at attracting new advertisers.

Meanwhile — Border Media Partners CEO Tom Castro says many folks are focusing on HD and streaming. But the real technological breakthrough will come on the sales side. Castro says “it’s not very sexy — but it’s where we are going to make a lot of money in the future.” — INSIDE RADIO report from the Kagan Radio-TV Summit:

Google Audio will raise ad rates

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That’s the prediction of Google Audio national director of sales Drew Hilles tells Inside Radio “Our main goal is to draw new advertisers to radio” and when they do that’ll put pressure on inventory and result in higher rates for all buyers. The onetime CBS Radio exec says “our goal is to raise rates” and return the sector to double-digit growth. He says one way they help preserve a station’s rate card integrity is by allowing buyers to pick markets — but not individual stations. And Hilles says “stations have control of the throttle of how much of the inventory they open up or not.” Hilles says Google is working to attract some of its existing 100,000 advertisers who have found radio too tough to buy. Hilles says what attracts them is the “more Googley way” they sell radio that affords buyers more accountability and trackability. Google says “a large amount” of the advertisers are new to radio. [INISIDE RADIO]

Isn’t this called “Public Access Television?”

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A small television station in Santa Rosa, CA (KFTY-TV) has canceled its nightly newscasts…fired most of its editorial staff… and is soliciting programming from locals — from independent filmmakers to teachers and politicians. According to station managers, the newscast wasn’t a hit with advertisers. Media execs nationwide are watching to see if the the Clear Channel property can make money from citizen-generated stories that will begin airing within a few months.

Gutsy or stupid…time will tell. Hard to imagine how bad things would have to be (ratings, sales, etc) before this would seem like a viable option.