9-27-2013
Readers of a certain age will remember a young sales trainer who burst onto the scene with a seminar he called Radio Sales $101. It was basic training for the brand new radio sales rep and a refresher course for the slumping veteran.
Here?s the story you?ve never heard:
When Sarah McCann and I started our company, we sublet a couple of offices from a friend in Madison, Wisconsin?s Tenney Building. Our rent was $110 a month. Our little company was growing, however, and we needed a couple more offices. Sarah went looking for new space.
She found it. However, the new rent was going to be $800. I protested, which didn?t work as those of you who have negotiated with Sarah over the years have learned. She already had a plan.
?Chris, we are in First Realty?s building. They have a training room they use once a month. We can use it for free to hold seminars and you can travel less,? Sarah said.
?But what kind of seminar would we hold?? I asked.
?Radio has a lot of turnover. We could run a seminar for new people. I bet we could get people to drive a hundred miles or so,? one of us said. Don?t recall who.
?We could call it Radio Sales $101 with a dollar sign to communicate an entry level course and the price,? another one of us said.
And that?s how we birthed that little cash cow.
We held it once a month in Madison and that seminar paid our rent for the next four years. Even budget-conscious managers would invest $101 to train a new rep.
I also started travelling with it and ended up conducting that seminar nearly five hundred times. We advertised in Radio Only with a map of all the cities we would be visiting. We sent direct mail. We hired telephone sales reps to get the word out.
It was a little money machine. And all of your new favorite sales consultants and most of the sales writers in this magazine attended it or a later version. Yes, I?m old enough to have trained nearly all of my competitors. (You know who you are. It?s not as easy as it looks, is it?)
Now Radio Sales $101 had a 180-day money-back guarantee. One day, three women left the seminar at noon demanding their $101 back. I handed them $303 in cash and called Sarah to tell her. She called their manager and let him know that their salespeople had not liked the seminar and were coming back with the cash. But the three of them had conspired to grab the cash and go shopping that afternoon. When they got back to the radio station without their refunded money, they were quickly fired.
Another ?incident?
A manager called Sarah and said that one of his reps had turned in her resignation in the car on the way home from Radio Sales $101. ?Would you like a refund?? Sarah asked. ?No, she told me she didn?t want to work that hard. Spending $101 on her training saved me at least twelve grand. She might have held on for six months and then quit.?
Training makes successful people successful sooner, or it reveals which salespeople won?t make it, thus saving you salary and the station?s reputation.
Alas, I have had conversations at radio?s executive level and heard, ?We don?t like to invest a lot in our salespeople?s training unless we?re sure they?re going to make it. So we put them on the street for three to six months and then train them.?
Brilliant! Imagine telling that to the advertisers they?re calling on.
I urge you to think more like the manager who thanked me for revealing his salesperson?s lack of drive for a mere $101.
Get with somebody?s training program. Please, just not the old Jason Jennings video tapes on VHS. Playing VHS tapes or even having a VHS player in your radio station tells young people this isn?t the place to be. If you?re still playing my old cassettes on a boom box in your sales meetings, then you?re behind the curve. (And you know who you are.)
Whichever program you choose, it should impart the following three foundations:
1. Since 95 percent of your sales team did not plan on a career in sales, your training program has to install a repeatable selling system. The most important selling skill for new people to learn is approach and involvement of the prospect. Most untrained salespeople can?t open the sale properly or keep it open long enough to get it closed.
2. Since 97 percent of the audience members I?ve surveyed for the last 30 years don?t have a degree in advertising and/or marketing, your training program needs to impart a philosophy of advertising and do it quickly. Run-of-the mill radio reps spend 80 percent of their time talking about rates, ratings, and format. Your success strategy should be making sure your reps are spending 80 percent of their time talking about how to advertise and what to advertise.
3. Your training program has to show salespeople how to get results for your advertisers. It needs to get them to believe they can help advertisers build their businesses. Larry Wilson was on the panel of the Leadership Breakfast in Orlando a few weeks ago. He said that radio is going to be okay as long as it?s live and local and as long as we keep getting results for our advertisers. As long as we sell their stuff, they?ll keep buying our stuff. So, get them up to speed on what needs to be in a commercial to sell something. I know ?branding? is all the rage, but listeners buy shoes, cars, and hamburgers not shoe stores, car dealers, and hamburger stands.
So get with somebody?s program.
I know, you think you can do it yourself. But here?s the problem with that: You?re the manager. And all of the training you do is filtered through the ?boss? filter. You have power over them. You hammer them about collections or not making enough calls. Then, you put on your training hat and run a meeting. They see that you still have on your boss hat.
This is the same phenomenon as telling your kids something over and over again. Then, when they get back from college, they are talking about this amazing thing they learned about life from a new professor. Of course, it?s what you?ve been telling them for years. But you were wearing the Mom or Dad hat when you told them, so your wisdom didn?t get through to them.
Finally, think of doing sales training the way you would tell advertisers to run an advertising campaign. There would be a big grand opening. Then you would schedule big events like anniversary sales and holiday promotions. And, of course, you would have a weekly maintenance schedule. A business that?s open 52 weeks a year should be inviting its customers to do business with it 52 weeks a year. Radio stations that are on the air 52 weeks a year ought to be continually improving their salespeople. You should never start an advertising campaign, an exercise program, or a sales training initiative with the intention of ever stopping.
Chris Lytle is the founder of Sparque, Inc. This well-traveled speaker has conducted more than 2200 seminars on three continents. He?s the best-selling author of The Accidental Salesperson and The Accidental Sales Manager.
Reach Chris by e-mail chris.lytle@sparque.biz
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