What a Difference Education Makes

The number one reason stations are not selling and keeping more direct accounts is that we are not educating our clients on how the radio process works, much less on how marketing and advertising is supposed to work or how to calculate return on advertising investment. Sadly, the average broadcast salesperson is not much more educated about marketing and advertising than the average client.

Ask your sellers how many of them have ever taken a marketing class. Usually, the number is no higher than 30 percent. Now ask those marketing students what they remember from that class. Usually, nobody can remember much. No wonder so many clients perceive us as "pests" just eager to make a sale instead of "resources". It's literally a case of the "blind leading the blind".

Because our sellers aren't well educated, they're not capable of telling clients a good, cohesive story about how their businesses could directly benefit from a good marketing, advertising and radio campaign. Let's examine the facts.

• Educated salespeople, who educate their clients first about marketing, then advertising, then their individual medium, always sell more than uneducated salespeople.



• Educated clients buy more than uneducated clients because they understand the benefit and result of teaching viewers and listeners who they are, what they do and how to get in touch with them.



• Uneducated clients are ignorant, not stupid. They are naturally suspicious of buying something they don't fully understand.



• Uneducated clients who are "sold" first and not educated often have unpleasant experiences with broadcast stations because they don't use them properly. They usually have no idea of the difference between a good spot and a bad spot. They have no concept of the importance of "owning" a day or daypart or program on your station. And, uneducated clients have unreasonable expectations of what broadcast advertising will or will not do for them.



• Uneducated clients usually have no logical basis for determining how much they should be spending with a broadcast station. Uneducated salespeople also in many cases, have no logical basis for determining how much the client should really be spending on their station. Instead, they'll create a budget for the client "out of thin air". Or, they don't question how the client came up with the budget that he is giving them. In either case, the client remains uneducated about how to calculate return on advertisement dollars spent.



• Uneducated clients may not be able to "see the forest for the trees". They may have marketing problems (Location, Pricing, Poorly conceived or packaged product or service, Distribution problems) that they can't recognize... problems so severe that even the best-conceived advertising program in the world could not help them. An Uneducated salesperson would probably overlook marketing problems, or might recognize them, but never address them, for fear of offending the client or blowing the sale.

Because the client correctly perceives that the radio salesperson really doesn't know what he's doing, the relationship becomes a case of the "tail wagging the dog". The client winds up writing or approving spots that don't work, placing schedules that are too thin or advertising products or services that are ill conceived, poorly priced or hard to get. He also has unreal expectations about the results of his campaign and when they don't come true he will say, "I tried radio and it didn't work."

The solution for this dilemma is to educate your salespeople as quickly as possible, so they can start educating their clients properly. You'll be amazed at how much more your people can sell when they and their clients are finally on the "same page".





Paul Weyland: 5450 Bee Cave Road, Suite 1-C, Austin, Texas 78746, 512-236-1222, paul@paulweyland.com
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