3-5-2014
I can?t believe that it?s 2014 and I still need to say this. But here goes: Cut the size of your account lists down to 50 and then cut them down some more.
As a young sales manager, I read an article in Harvard Business Review that said, ?If a salesperson is calling on more than 50 prospects and customers, that salesperson has a hunting license instead of an account list.?
I took it to heart and slashed account lists to 50 and ultimately to 35 or less.
Sales went up. And salespeople were happy about it.
Fortunately, I had also learned about the 80/20 Rule. And since I am very analytical by nature, I decided to see where 80 percent of the billing came from on each list. What the salespeople and I discovered together was that 80 percent of their billing came from eight to 14 advertisers. In some cases, it took 20 or 30 more advertisers to get the last 20 percent of the billing for a given month.
?Look how hard you?re working to get the last 20 percent of your sales,? I said. ?What you need to do is get eight to 14 more advertisers just like those top billing accounts and your sales will go up 60 percent. But that?s in a perfect world. So keep 10 seasonal accounts and 40 accounts you really want to work. If you do a needs analysis and a written presentation with spec spots and you don?t make a sale, you can give up that account and draft another from the list of unassigned accounts.?
That freed up good accounts for new salespeople to call on and got the rest of the team focused on doing a better job on making customer-focused presentations to the clients they had chosen to keep.
I said this to a new client the other day and got a lot of pushback. ?We may be able to get the lists down to 75 to 100, but never 50,? said one member of the executive team.
Sales managers fear rebellion if they start pulling accounts from salespeople who believe that the accounts belong to them instead of the radio station. When turnover occurs, accounts are often handed off to the remaining reps to ?handle? until the new salesperson gets hired.
However, the veterans get used to that billing and don?t want to give it up. Meanwhile, they haven?t been prospecting for new business because you?re paying them commission on billing that the person who left walked away from.
Sound familiar?
So the salespeople who stick around make good money while the station or cluster falls short of its goals month after month. Even worse, many ?top billers? are no longer the best salespeople on the team. They are just people who managed to stick around long enough to get a good list and sit on it. They scream like crazy if you try to reallocate their accounts. Meanwhile the new person is calling on what I call ?The Charles Darwin Account List.? This is the list that is created when the sales manager announces that there is a new salesperson starting Monday and it?s time for the salespeople to give up accounts so that the new salesperson has a ?list? to work with.
At that point, the salespeople rid themselves of the market?s poorest, rudest, and hardest-to-sell prospects. Only the fittest salespeople can survive on that list, which is why the bottom sellers are always turning over.
This has been going on in radio stations for the 40 years I?ve been around the business, and unless you take action it will go on for the next 40 years.
One action I recommend is taking your sales team through my Account List Management System to determine what?s really going on. First you do an 80/20 analysis. Then you break out the billing into seven components:
1. Number of advertisers on the air
2. Number, and total dollars, of new advertisers sold
3. Number, and total dollars, of advertisers renewed
4. Number, and total dollars, of seasonal or flight advertisers
5. Number, and total dollars, of committed advertisers (on contract)
6. Average dollar per advertiser
7. Total billing
It?s a simple form and filling it out may be the best 45-minutes your salespeople ever spend because it opens their eyes to the what?s really happening and what to do with that information.
If you?re interested in learning more tools like this, consider signing up for The Radio Sales Success Expander. We have two more live sessions left. The first two sessions are available for on-demand viewing.
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
Add a Comment Send This Story To A Friend
