Every day is a battle on the rough and tumble streets of make-a-sale-every-day America. Competition is increasing, consumers are more selective and your advertisers are smarter. Your clients understand the cost per customer, the cost per lead has increased since the last recession so they need to focus on what works for them. No more spray and pray as they used to say. It's your job to understand what they are going through, present them with an opportunity to bring more people through their doors and deliver to them the R.O.I. they should expect from a seasoned sales rep.
To do that you need to focus on more than just your typical sales training information. Those cassette tapes sitting in the sales office are outdated. For crying out loud...they are cassette tapes. You need to do more than read the client's newspaper ad. You need to do more than walk the client's store. You need to do more than ask the client for five minutes of his time. He doesn't have five minutes to hear your tired old pitch about why your cume, your ranker and how many listeners you have 30 minutes away from his location. Chances are somebody else is selling widgets just like him all over town. He wants bodies through the door. He wants them yesterday and he wants you to deliver them. How are you going to do that?
Ed Hess is a best-selling author and a professor of business administration at the University of Florida. His most recent work focused on entrepreneurs and how they successfully, or unsuccessfully, grow their business. He interviewed 54 CEO's of high growth companies. I had an opportunity to interview Hess and asked him to focus on how a business owner thinks, their challenges, what they need to succeed and how radio can help. A very interesting quote from Hess: "people like to do business with nice people." Simple enough. Let's get to it. To listen to that interview, GO HERE. You can also download the interview as a Podcast from iTunes right onto your phone and listen to it in the car on your way to your next call. You do know how to download a podcast don't you?
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