A client of mine had a radio sales person stop by the other day, she was polite, left her card and said she’d follow up with an e-mail. My client has already told her he does not want to use radio. The following day he receives an e-mail/sales pitch on why radio is the best medium to spread his message to the masses. Radio? Really? REALLY?
This is frustrating for my client because he doesn’t have an awareness problem, he has a marketing problem. The sales person has never thought to ask “what is the goal of your marketing?”, a simple question that would have helped her immensely at understanding how to make the sale.
The first thing I learned about this client is that he does not want all of the world to know about his business. He does not need more unqualified awareness. He has measured enough to know that referral based clients are the most valuable to his business.
A radio sales person comes in offering one tactic to solve a problem that radio can’t solve. I’d be willing to venture a guess that this sales tactic’s success rate is diminishing every day. Something is broken here. Radio sales people actually believe that radio is the best way to get your product or service out to the masses. It’s not their fault, someone is teaching them, someone is giving them the rate sheets and someone is telling them not to take no for an answer. This is broken.
If radio wants to keep up with the internet juggernaut they need to take the time to understand how help potential advertisers. They need to determine the problems they can help solve and find the businesses that are the right fit. The other option of course is to do as they’ve always done and watch ad revenue slide month after month until it’s too late.
I think this is an appropriate video that the sales person should watch:
This is broken by Seth Godin:
Seth Godin at Gel 2006 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.
