Marketing Is About Creating Relationships
I just got off the phone with a friend of mine in Wyoming. While our conversations always cover a wide range of topics, the one thing we always come back to is radio. We have both been in the the radio business in various capacities (mine mostly as a personality or news writer, his in sales and management). Needless to say, it is a passion of ours.
During our conversation, we got on the subject of hard selling, which is a technique that some of the larger radio groups use to get advertisers. In the majority of cases, hard sales techniques don’t work. Clients feel bullied and will sometimes give in only to make the sales person go away – but never with the size of contract that they COULD have had.
My friend and I are from the “old school” of broadcasting. We see the business as basically very simple: Ratings, Revenue and Relationships.
A positive relationship with the audience, providing news, information and entertainment that relates to their needs and interests equal ratings. The more positive this relationship, the higher the ratings. This formula has been unchanged since commercial broadcasting began nearly 100 years ago.
When the station has ratings, the next step is to create a relationship with advertisers, who are concerned about getting the best return on their investment possible. The relationship with the advertisers, however, is much more personal because they are giving up their hard-earned money and want to like the sales person they are dealing with – relationship selling, in short.
This style of selling is more systematic and it takes more time to establish cash flow, but in the long run it pays off with larger, long-term contracts, which are often sustained even when the market sours. Clients stay with the station (or the company) because they like the sales person and feel that they have been treated fairly.
The real key to making this work is a combination of direct mail, business to business marketing and personal interaction. The marketing simply opens a door, which a competent and professional sales professional can walk through, establish a rapport with the client and close.
I agree with my friend that relationship selling works best in broadcasting and in just about any other business. Establishing a systematic marketing and sales approach, while it may take more time to produce results, is a more professional and effective way of connecting with the people who make a difference in the bottom line health of a company.
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