“Yes!” I said as the brilliance of what he was saying started to dawn on me. “We need to create deadlines.”
In the radio business, one day is pretty much like the next. There is little sense of urgency to cause a customer or prospect to move more quickly. Moreover, the lack of urgency on the part of the customers becomes contagious and bleeds over to the sellers. Yeah, we could get it done by tomorrow but what’s the harm in waiting till Wednesday.
Perhaps the radio business isn’t the only media selling business where this is true. Are there important deadlines in the internet advertising game? Probably not. Billboards? I doubt it. Other out of home like transit or airport advertising? Seems unlikely.
The lack of deadlines diminishes our ability to maximize philippines telegram data our revenue by delaying the revenue generation. You can’t bill for something that hasn’t yet run.
And so it was on that fateful day that Dick and I sat down to figure out how to add deadlines to our business for the purpose of goosing sales. Here’s what we came up with:
Deadlines for Prospects and Customers
Have a sale. Retailers do it and so can we. The key is that the sale has to be real and you can’t give anyone the same deal after the sale ends. Don’t be like Macy’s and announce a one-day sale that everyone knows is going to be extended for the rest of the weekend. When you do that, customers learn very quickly that the deal you are offering is available most any time they want it.
Create specialty programming. Our radio station may not have a Food Section in which restaurants and grocery stores want to advertise but we can create the Friday Afternoon Whistle or other once-a-week shows that advertisers would like to sponsor because of their popularity. Note that this is not the same as a daily feature, like a business report. If the special programming is daily then one day becomes like the next – exactly the situation you are trying to avoid.
Offer support by appointment only. Customers often need access to the recording studios of radio stations. Rather than letting them come whenever they want, if the access they require is a little more difficult to get then, they’ll be more respectful of the deadlines being established by their sales rep. The same could be said of brainstorming sessions with the promotions department. I’m not advocating a dereliction of our customer service duties, I’m suggesting that when the sales rep behaves as if the services offered are valuable and dear the customer will develop a greater appreciation for those services.