WSJ: ESPN Considers Paying Carriers To Keep Customers Mobile

5-9-13

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that ESPN is considering a plan to pay wireless carriers for the mobile content used by subscribers. When users reach their data limit, they log off to avoid overage charges. That also means they will no longer see mobile ads being served up by companies like ESPN. The Journal says ESPN is discussing, with at least one carrier, subsidizing connectivity on behalf of users.

The company would pay a carrier to guarantee that people viewing ESPN mobile content wouldn't have that usage counted toward their monthly data caps. According to the Journal report, ESPN has received feedback from at least one big carrier that significant numbers of its mobile users reach their monthly cap before the end of the month, after which their usage drops off.

The ESPN digital brand is huge. According to the Journal, ESPN now has 45 million digital users, including about 16 million that access ESPN content exclusively from mobile devices. The mobile offerings include a website with news and streaming video, and a host of mobile apps, including WatchESPN which streams the live signals from ESPN's TV channels over the Web. ScoreCenter, its top mobile app, has been downloaded more than 40 million times. Over the last three years, ESPN's average users per day on mobile Web and apps has more than tripled, from 3.2 million in 2010 to more than 10.3 million so far this year.

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(SALES) Who Are Your Ideal Customers?

Is your sales funnel full of prospects that you are unlikely to close, or if you did win would turn out to be unprofitable? Why not identify who your ideal customers are and focus your time and resources where you?ll get the highest return. The closer a prospect is to your Ideal Customer Profile, the better the fit, the easier the sale. The further away you get from this ideal fit, the more problems are likely to occur at some point with the account. Increase your probability of success, by first identifying who to target.  

Ask yourself these questions in order to create your Ideal Customer Profile.

1. Who are my most satisfied clients? The only way to target an Ideal Customer is to have a clear picture of them. Make a list of the clients that not only use your product or service, but do so with passion. These are your advocates and will also be the ones that provide you with the most referrals.

2. Are they easy to work with? The difficult prospect can become the difficult client. Make certain you have shared values and your goals are aligned. As sales training consultants, we look for companies that place a high value on investing in their people. It?s important to our mutual success that the systems, and processes, we put in place will be supported.

3. Do they have the potential to be profitable? When I was selling radio, I called on a plastic surgeon that performed a myriad of services, but only wanted to promote blepharoplasty, eyelid surgery. This procedure, while not the most expensive in his repertoire, was the most profitable for his business.  Profitably was determined by how many customers chose it, the price point of the procedure, and how many procedures he could execute in a week. The doctor had identified his Ideal Customer Profile and marketed only to that individual?quite successfully.

4. Why do they buy from you? Ask your clients why they chose to do business with you over a competitor. Why do they continue to do business with you? What could you improve upon? Not only does this make perfect sense, your clients will be flattered to know that you care enough to ask and that you don?t take their business for granted.

5. How are they similar? Is there a category that consistently does well on your station?  Look for commonalities amongst your most satisfied customers, such as need, length of sales cycle, seasonality, size and industry. Study the core client demographics of age, gender, income level, and education. Don?t just look at your client base, but access those of your entire station.

6. Who were the key stakeholders involved? Each sale is unique, but more often than not you will deal with multiple stakeholders. Not everyone who wants to do business with you will have the authority to do business with you. Study a cross-section of your accounts and note which stakeholders you dealt with most effectively, and how this influenced your closing rate. These stakeholders could be anyone from HR to the CEO.

Now take all this information and create an Ideal Customer Profile ranking these criteria in order of importance. Use this ?Profile? to ask intelligent questions and qualify opportunities early on in the sales cycle, saving you time and focusing your efforts.

For more sales articles from Theresa Go HERE
You may also like sales articles from Sean Luce HERE

Theresa Merrill is the Director of Business Development for Anovick Associates. She has more than 20 years of sales and marketing experience in NY, Boston and Atlanta working for Katz Communications, CBS, Tribune and Cablevision and can be reached at 201.444.2991 or by e-mail merrill.theresa@gmail.com

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SALES - Are You Keeping Your Customers Satisfied?

1-25-2012

I worked for a media rep firm whose CEO was fond of saying ?our most valuable assets go down in the elevators every night.? As an employee I appreciated the sentiment; however, he was wrong. The customer is the most important asset of any organization. Period. You can?t underestimate the significance of customer satisfaction, especially in this digital age of the savvy consumer.

Remember when you were seeking the customer?s business?  Smart salespeople treat their clients as good, after the sale, as they did before. Selling and service are inseparable parts of the marketing function. Everyone talks about customer service, but few deliver on it. If you do, your customers will not only be satisfied, but loyal advocates.

It?s a relationship, stupid. How do you feel when someone takes you for granted?  Everyone wants to be appreciated. Show your client you care about THEM and not just their business. 

Don?t treat them all the same. Each customer is unique. Treat them in the way that best suits their personality and needs. When I encounter a problem and a customer service rep tells me ?if I do this for you, then I have to do it for everyone else?? I cringe then say ?No, you don?t and why should I care?? Think about it, how does that remark make me feel? Don?t ever make a customer feel like everyone else and don?t tell them why you can?t do something?solve their problems.

Ask and they will tell. Your clients will tell you what is important to them if you take the time to ask. Lack of communication is the biggest problem that plagues most doomed relationships whether they are personal or professional.

I switched dentists recently and was not satisfied with my first cleaning. When I shared this with the office manager, hygienist and dentist they all started talking about how they did cleanings, and were defensive. Finally the office manager asked what I wanted. No one else thought to do that. By asking a simple question, she addressed what would it take to satisfy me and salvaged the relationship.

Establish value. Anticipate your client?s needs by staying one step ahead of them. Follow their business through social media sites like LinkedIn. Introduce them to connections of yours that might benefit them. Keep them apprised of what the competition is doing. Establish yourself as a valuable resource beyond your product.

Make yourself available 24/7. My clients have my home, work and mobile number. If there is a problem, I want to be the one that handles it. Return calls, as soon as possible, always within 24 hours.

Be prompt in your follow-through. Don?t wait until the contract is up for renewal to follow-up with the client. Regularly schedule on-going reviews of your product?s performance. Use these as a way to gain more insight into their organization and look for ways to exceed their expectations.

Be consistent. A major part of building relationships is based on consistency. Doing what you say you are going to do and following through. Simple, but so often this falls off after the deal is sealed.

Help your client?s customers. Send relevant articles that would interest them and their customers. Provide value-added ideas not directly linked to your business. Make your clients look good. Offer up breakfast meetings where you share some expertise that would be valuable to their customers or co-workers. 

Have ownership. Don?t leave to others what you should be doing yourself. If someone else in your organization is providing a service, confirm and double-check that they do so. It?s your client, you?re getting the commission from this deal, don?t expect anyone else to care as much.

Remember it is easier to keep an account than it is to regain a new one. Satisfied customers will provide you with referrals and repeat business?take the time to earn their loyalty.

Theresa Merrill is the Director of Business Development for Anovick Associates. She has more than 20 years of sales and marketing experience in NY, Boston and Atlanta working for Katz Communications, CBS, Tribune and Cablevision and can be reached at 201.444.2991 or by e-mail merrill.theresa@gmail.com
For more article from Theresa GO HERE

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Ford Customers Not in Sync With Infotainment System

Ford Motor Company CEO Alan Mulally tells Automotive Age "that revised versions of the Sync and MyFord Touch infotainment systems will be simpler and more reliable. He says improvements are coming. The magazine reports the changes are aimed at avoiding glitches that have dogged the new technologies and hurt Ford's standings in quality and reliability studies. Mulally says "I think when they (consumers) see the new upgraded versions of it, they might change their mind." Some consumers were not buying a Ford if they were forced to take the vehicle with Sync and MyFord touch already installed.

Consumer Reports magazine said it won't recommend the 2011 Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX crossovers because of low test scores -- mainly the result of MyFord Touch and MyLincoln Touch technology. The magazine called the technology "a complicated distraction while driving." It said "first-time users might find it impossible to comprehend. The system did not always perform as promised." In a J.D. Power and Associates survey released in June that tracks problems reported during the first 90 days of ownership, the Ford brand fared worse than the industry average for the first time since the 2006 model year.

According to Automotive Age in 2011 Ford will send owners of vehicles with MyFord Touch or MyLincoln Touch a flash drive that they can use to install an upgrade without going to a dealership. But Mulally conceded that Ford "got feedback early" from consumers "very clearly that in some areas maybe it was a little too sophisticated with maybe a little too many options."

Read the entire AA article HERE

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Harris And Marketron Collaborate For Customers

Harris Corporation and Marketron have announced they are working together to provide media organizations with a combined view of advertisers, revenue, inventory and other data across various media assets. The collaboration brings two competing media software providers together to develop a consolidated business solution for customers working across multiple mediums.

The two companies say they are "integrating the Harris NetGain business intelligence and analysis system with Marketron?s Mediascape open ecosystem platform to provide clients analytics capabilities across multiple platforms.  The Mediascape integration also allows data from Harris? market-leading OSi-Traffic? system to fuel Marketron Insight Reporting for detailed transactional and operational level reporting.  This gives clients the freedom to choose best-in-class transactional systems, regardless of the provider, to manage their various inventory types, while enabling comprehensive insight and visibility across their entire cross-platform advertising business."

For more information visit http://www.marketron.com/  or http://www.harris.com/.

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Understand What Your Customers Are Going Through

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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