Coping with Agency Cutbacks

Weapons of Mass Seduction

How to Make Big Money in Local Broadcast Sales

January 10, 2007 - Vol 2/Issue 1

In this Issue
	Why You Tube is Getting Your Budget The Quickest Path to Success in Local Broadcast Sales The Weyland Whitepaper Blog New This Year--Chamber of Commerce Seminars

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	The Weyland Whitepaper Blog Weyland's Website Tools for Top Billers

Dear Paul,

Welcome back to work. Paul Weyland Communication Strategies wishes you the best of luck in meeting or exceeding all of your budgets in 2007. Want to be a hero this year? Want to really make your boss, his or her boss and your significant other very happy this year? Then you'll either have to learn a better way to suck up OR simply sell more long-term local direct business at rate card with no bonus spots, no free promotions or free remotes. Pull that off and you'll be rich and so successful that you will never have to sacrifice another Saturday tolerating remote broadcast pigs and free balloons and popcorn for the kids. You'll never have to fake another sales forecast. Your clients will become friends for life and you will reside in their Circle of Trust. You won't have to worry about getting fired. You won't need to waste time looking for another job. You'll be the sharpest tool in the shed and win every contest. And just think of the things you could buy with all of the money you'll make. Houses, cars, jewelry, clothes, shoes, vacations and even liquor. Local direct business is the best way to get where you want to be. Paul Weyland Communication Strategies exists to help you increase local direct revenues faster. We have all of the tools you need including seminars, training systems, CDs and software to make selling long-term local direct easy and fun. I hope we see each other this year. Ask your Sales Manager, General Manager, Vice President of Sales, CEO or State Broadcast Association Executive Director when Paul Weyland is coming to your town. If they don't know me refer them to www.paulweyland.com . If they refuse to go to the site have a temper tantrum, the same way you would if somebody was trying to steal one of your accounts. Hold your breath and stomp your feet. Whine until they go to the website. Ultimately they'll be glad they went there and you'll look SMART for your savvy recommendation. In fact, in return for your suggestion your boss will probably give you a big national account and a trade-out at Nordstroms. That happens all of the time.

Why You Tube is Getting Your Budget

It's no secret that many radio and television account executives are running into real trouble trying to make budget. Sellers who have prospered for years dealing primarily with advertising agencies are seeing their precious billing siphoned away to newer, shinier media. Expect this trend to continue. This year agencies are expected to pull even more budgets away from radio and television and into new "interactive" media campaigns. In fact according to Advertising Age Magazine, last year's trend toward You Tube type viral media campaigns will become standard fare for 2007. The main reason? It's the trendy thing to do. The shallow reality is that agency creative directors, once eager to "make their mark" in television are now flocking to the newest "cool" medium, the Internet. The new goal is to somehow create a viral campaign on a site (or sites) like You Tube. Logically of course, very few of these campaigns will succeed in helping advertisers break through the clutter, but damn the results. The agencies are going there anyway. As a consequence, agency-oriented broadcast salespeople are finding that in order to make their numbers for 2007 they must focus on local direct business. The problem is that many of these veteran broadcast salespeople are a little rusty when it comes to hustling up local direct contracts. Unfortunately the pressure is on. If you are feeling pressure to bring in more local direct billing here are some things you can do to immediately improve your chances. 1. Prospect the easy way-Don't just call on accounts that other stations already have on the air. Go to product/service categories that are completely over-represented on other media (like attorneys in the Yellow Pages) and completely unrepresented on your station. Cull out one advertiser from one of these categories and tell him you've found a hole in his competitor's marketing and advertising strategy that a B-52 could fly through. Then simply explain that the media "lake" he's fishing on is actually being tremendously over-fished. Meanwhile, you have a perfectly good lake with lots of fish in it and not one single business in his product/service category is fishing your lake. The client would practically have a monopoly on your lake. 2. Convince your prospect that using your station is not a "gamble", but in fact a good, calculated risk. Determine the client's average sale and gross margin of profit. If the client owns a funeral home his gross margin would be close to 55 percent and his average sale would be six to eight thousand dollars. I mean, come on...how many...ummm...new bodies would would you really have to deliver in order to justify your measly little 10 thousand dollar weekly schedule on your station? What percentage of your total 12 plus total CUME audience would that "magic number" represent? 3. Make sure that your prospect realizes that you are an expert on making good "bait." That is, you are an expert in the difference between good and bad advertising. For example, use the Best Friend Test on the client's copy to ferret out cliches. Explain to the client that if he wouldn't say those exact same words to his best friend that the copy is cliche and needs to be replaced with words that really do identify and solve consumer problems. Once the client realizes that your plan for his success is better than his own, he'll surrender and let you lead. By showing the client that it's in his best interest to let you drive the bus you'll get more long- term contracts with less rate resistance and less "added value." You'll sell more local direct whether you're number one or number twenty, regardless of your format or program. And by working local direct you'll have more control over revisions and cancellations with less worry about meeting a media buyer's ridiculous cost per point. Working with local direct clients after a career of dealing with agencies can actually be a liberating experience.

The Quickest Path to Success in Local Broadcast Sales

My CDs have now been packaged together, so you can buy all four at a reduced price. The four CD set includes Direct Selling Step-by-Step, Sales Basics: How to Make Broadcast Sales Logical, Natural and Fun, Long-Term Local Direct: How to Get Rich in Broadcast Sales, and my newest CD On the Spot: How to Produce Genius Creative Whether You're a Creative Genius or Not. Armed with these four CDs you'll learn the ten things you must teach every direct client, better ways to prospect, present, negotiate, close and collect, what's in it for you and your client to sign a long-term contract, and the elements of good creative. Click here for more information on my CDs.

The Weyland Whitepaper Blog

As an ongoing resource, bookmark my blog, The Weyland Whitepaper. It's all about local direct broadcast sales. I discuss topics like automotive, ROI, prospecting and any other topic related to local broadcast sales. Please add your comments to any article on the blog, and communicate with other broadcast salespeople and managers around the world. Click here to read and add your comments to Weyland's blog.

New This Year--Chamber of Commerce Seminars

This message is for radio and television station managers and owners. Paul Weyland Communication Strategies offers a very intelligent way to significantly ramp up the number of long-term local direct customers you have on the air. Instead of counting on sellers to go out and approach local direct clients one at a time, why not educate business owners in your community en masse? Book a client seminar with us. Ask your sellers to invite all of the local direct decision makers they know. Then invite business people that your sellers would never even think to contact by advertising the seminar in unsold inventory on your station. You book a room and bring me in as an independent marketing and branding expert. Before the client seminar I'll work with your sales and production staffs, going over precisely what I'm going to say to the clients and why, so that everybody's on the same page for the client event. For even more credibility, tie in your local Chamber of Commerce as an event co-sponsor (they might even contribute money). On the day of the event I'll talk to the business owners in your community about modern marketing and branding, the difference between good and bad advertising and how to calculate return on investment on any advertising they buy. This seminar really is a community service. They are under no pressure or no obligation to buy. We don't pressure you to lower rates. Once I educate these local direct clients in language they understand, they are much more likely to buy from you at regular rate card. Once I teach business owners that a year- long presence on your station is not a "gamble" but instead a good calculated risk, they are more likely to double or triple what they "perceived" they should be spending with you. After the seminar we'll tell the business owners that your station offers the same long-term branding and marketing strategies that we discussed in the seminar. We encourage these decision makers to make appointments now with your salespeople. Additionally, sales assistants gather contact information for all attendees so you can triage potential clients and assign them to sellers after the seminar. Everybody wins in this situation. Educated business owners are grateful for the information and much more likely to spend money with you with less rate resistance, regardless of your format or program and regardless of whether you're number one or number twenty. You have the chance to "showcase" your station or stations through an informative seminar to business owners who might have never considered you before as advertising venue. You are providing a valuable public service to your community of businesses and at the same time giving those businesses the opportunity to do business with you. Your sales staff sees how local business owners respond to an excellent presentation about the benefits of using broadcast advertising. Should they participate, your local Chamber of Commerce has the opportunity to reach out to non- members who attend the seminar and tell them that by joining they will receive many similar benefits. Call now for more information or to book a client seminar.

As you work your rear-end off closing more long-term local direct business this year, keep your chin up. After all, we are in the entertainment business and it's supposed to be fun. Let's put the "show" back into show business and always remember that in the media sales game the days are hard and the nights are long and the work is emotionally demanding. But it's all worth it because the rewards are shallow, transparent and meaningless.

Now get off the computer and go get some appointments.

Kind personal regards,

Paul Weyland

Paul Weyland Communication Strategies

email: nhutzler@swbell.net

phone: 512-236-1222

web: http://www.paulweyland.com