INK TANK

The Law of Reciprocity: Radio's Stimulus Plan for Helping Car Dealers Now

"One of the most potent of the weapons of influence around us is the rule for reciprocation. The rule says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us."
Robert B. Cialdini, author of The Psychology of Persuasion (William Morrow, 1993)

Perhaps one of the most powerful natural laws is the Law of Reciprocity, which says that if you do something for someone else, they will return the favor by doing something good for you. Experts say this law works best when you do something out of the goodness of your heart, expecting nothing in return.

Brainstorm
I've been racking my brain about what we, the people of radio, can do to stimulate the economy. After all, we are a powerful force, who reach 94 percent of Americans weekly. Certainly radio can influence Americans. Certainly we can influence confidence.

It's Payback Time....
The automobile industry has been our partner for decades. As Bill Burton of the Detroit Radio Advertising Group is famous for saying, "An automobile is a radio on wheels." Automotive has almost always been our largest advertiser, and local car dealers have made up our biggest category. Not only have they provided each of us with a significant part of our living, if they don't get healthy again, we don't get healthy again. It's time we thank them for their business by helping them get back on their feet.

Then It Came To Me....
"We need to run spots to tell people to buy cars," I thought, "and that there has never been a better time." And they need to be good, national-quality spots, so they work. So I contacted the best in the business: The Famous Radio Ranch in Hollywood, CA. I spoke to Dick Orkin and Christine Coyle, and sold them on how we can do our part to help the economy. They enlisted their creative team, who carefully crafted three spots you can run on your station.

Don't Be Greedy
I can hear it now: "Why should I run these spots, Eric. What have car dealers done for me lately?" It's simple. If we help them and they get stronger as a result, they will return to radio sooner. Plus, perhaps they will remember us for trying to do something. We must not ignore decades of radio spending from dealers.

Slam It!
Slam these three spots hard in all your unsold inventory. Show commitment. These spots are not designed to highlight individual dealers, but to sell the concept that NOW is the time to buy cars. The harder you push it, the longer you push it, the better the result will be. Run it so much that it works and that car dealers come to you because they hear it so much on your station! (Let's get a competition going to see who can run it the most.)

Alert All The Car Dealers In Town
We've built a website where you can download these spots. We've also created a sample letter you can send to car dealers. We recommend you send the letter to every car dealer (new and used) in town to let them know you're running the spots. (You could be first in your market and have them on the air today!)

But... please don't try to leverage this into "We're helping you, so now you should help us."

If you do that, it will backfire. Pitch the dealers at another time, but DON'T relate it to this campaign. Do this campaign to help all car dealers sell cars. Nothing more. And please do NOT sell tags to these spots. Car dealers must see this as your attempt to help. Nothing more.

Please go to the website, listen to the spots and download them now: www.helpfromradio.com

And please forward this email to EVERY person you know in radio at other stations, markets, and networks, and ask them to run the spots too.

Look, we can't make someone buy if they can't afford to buy.... but if this campaign moves the needle even a little, it's RADIO that is helping the economy. Do it now.

Please go there now -- www.helpfromradio.com -- and forward this to others.

Thanks,
Eric Rhoads, Publisher
RADIO INK

PS: My thanks to Dick Orkin, Christine Coyle, and Sandy Orkin of The Famous Radio Ranch in Hollywood for their devotion to the radio industry and for creating these spots.

PS: Send me an e-mail if you're running the spots, and feedback on how it's going. I want to see every station in America running these ads. It's time radio paid back its biggest advertiser and said "Thanks." More importantly, RADIO can stimulate the economy.

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Is Sales Sloth Killing Radio Revenues?

"Eighty Percent of Success is Showing Up"
- Woody Allen

I'm a radio client. As I've mentioned in previous columns I buy local radio as a favor to a friend who owns a small business in my city. In the past I've shared my negative experiences in the process of buying radio. Perhaps they are driven by the fact that I'm only spending about $50,000 a year on radio, and therefore unimportant in comparison to big spenders.

My client had started seeing his results drop off and as a result, against my advice, he stopped running his radio ads. He was, again against my advice, seduced by a PR person for a while who convinced him to spend his monthly budget on PR. Though PR got his business some editorial and television coverage, he cannot track a single customer to it but he liked being on TV. Money down the drain. He then got seduced by a company, which produces "programs" about clients and runs them in fringe times on local cable. Again, I told him it was a stupid idea (I can do that because he is a friend), that he was wasting his money. But he bought into the pitch and spent about $10 grand to be "interviewed" on television, and thousands more to run the program numerous times. He can track three customers only. Again, money wasted.

Finally, I convinced him to go back on radio and stick with it. In this market $50,000 does not buy a lot of media in a year, so I am dominating one day part on one station by saturating spots every weekday. This time I decided to try a different station, so I recently contacted the five stations which fit my client's audience profile, and sent out emails with the exact schedule seeking bids.

Of the five; one station has never yet contacted me three weeks later. One station, which I spent money on last year, has given me super service which is why they got my business in the first place. Another sent me a note on a Friday that I would get a bid on a Monday. It never came, so a week later I sent an email and the bid came in a full two weeks late. (After I had already made my decision.) Another station had phoned me, left a message and I lost the message. I never got a second call and still have not heard from them. The station I bought was super diligent and responsive, which may explain why they are a top market billing station.

If someone sent me a note, which said I plan to spend money I'd be all over them. Recession or not.

This story does not really end here. Only one radio station out of five ever phoned me. Not one sales person asked me who the target was, what we wanted to achieve, how we would measure success. Not one person sent me ANYTHING promoting radio, and in fact not one so much as sent me a one-sheet about their radio station, though one sent me a Tapscan breakout, after I requested it. All communication was through email, and the emails were ineffective. I would get emails that simply said "here is your quote" or "have you decided yet?" Only one station even bothered to ask me who the client was or what business they were in, which would have been an opportunity to share some data on how their station was effective with that industry.

Perhaps I'm old school, but if this experience in a MAJOR US MARKET from radio stations owned by the biggest companies in radio is an example of what is happening across the country, than radio has a serious sales problem. If I had to guess I would say this behavior is a result of heavy sales turnover (lack of experience), lack of training, possibly too few trying to do too much, and overburdened management.

I know budgets have been slashed and people no longer have the money to spend on formal training. But you can still train people. Isn't that part of the role of a sales manager or general manager, or are they so consumed with other problems that training simply cannot take place. Is there so much turnover in sales people that they are assuming they know the basics?

Very basic skills like questioning client needs, sales process, presentation skills, telephone skills, follow up, asking for the order, talking the benefits of a station or of radio seem to be completely devoid in this situation.

Sadly, I'm hearing a lot of stories about "Sales Sloth" from across America and someone needs to address it. Training tools are available from consultants, RAB, video libraries, books, and blogs. I'll start by asking our editors to increase the amount of articles about the basics so Radio Ink can be more of a self-training tool. But for this problem to be solved it must be addressed by group heads,  regional management, and local management.

Had I not already been convinced of the power of radio, and had I been some advertiser unschooled in the benefits of radio, I'm not sure I would have ever been sold the schedule I just bought. I simply had to work too hard to figure things out on my own and to buy. If radio isn't easy to buy, it won't get bought.

Eric Rhoads,

Publisher
RADIO INK

Read my blog or leave comments at http://ericrhoads.blogs.com/ink_tank/

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How to Drain the Life Out of Radio

 

There is no exact data available, but I've been keeping track of press releases and stories, and my estimate is that the radio industry in the U.S. has shed about 6,000 jobs in the last few months. That means radio is sacrificing talent on air, on the streets, in customer service, and in a lot of other areas. And that will be noticed by our listeners and customers if we're not careful. Though there is no question as to why these changes had to be made, there remain two responsibilities we bear for radio. 

 

Responsibility #1:

We need to use all of our ability to create jobs whenever possible and help place these out-of-work people in new roles in radio stations and online radio. These are valuable people who will be needed again in the future; we must seek ways to keep them in the industry and, if necessary, retrain them for new roles so they do not abandon radio. They are a valuable resource we don't want to push to other industries.

 

Responsibility #2:

We're now officially stressing the system. People are doing the jobs of those who were laid off, and it's inevitable that things will fall through the cracks. The worst possible thing would be if our customers and listeners have a bad experience as a result of poor customer service, unmet expectations, or other problems caused by too few doing too much. Therefore it seems logical to me that we invest in the people we have, to make sure they are capable of living up to their new roles.  

 

This means additional training, teaching them to manage their time and how to be effective at multi-tasking and prioritizing. We need to teach them improved customer service techniques, help them cope with stress, and help them understand their changing roles in radio as we go forward. Ultimately, our customers (advertisers) must not experience a dip in the quality of service by radio. And, of course, our listeners must also feel they are being properly cared for. 

 

We must continually evolve our people to make sure they understand ever-changing client needs. They must not only understand interactive selling, but know how to train clients in this new area. A year ago, one digital sales manager in the Northwest created a seminar for clients on interactive. No clients accepted the invitation. At the next seminar, six months later, 15 attended, and the most recent had 60 in attendance. He's seen a huge increase in interest in interactive from local businesses in just one year. 

 

Investing in Your People

The last thing anyone wants to do is spend any more money, yet our short-term thinking will bite us in the backside if we don't continue to help the remaining people stay current. If you remember, after 9/11, our business tanked and it seemed like it would never return, yet a few painful months later we saw things improve. Historically, advertisers come to a point where they realize they need to start advertising again, and they start with radio to keep their expenses lower. Investing in your people is important so they are able to cope with increases in business. How's that for optimism? (Read my recent blog entry about how to zig when others zag in this economy.) 

 

Embarrassment for RAB's Jeff Haley

At my recent Convergence conference, I asked RAB chief Jeff Haley to step to the stage, where I publicly embarrassed him. I told the people in the audience that the answers to radio's woes will not come from radio people, but from someone from the outside. After all, we're all too close. Historically, in every industry, reinvention comes from an outsider. Haley was hired because of his extensive experience in new media and the fact that he had no background in radio, but a great command of the advertising business. Though many were repelled by the idea of a non-broadcaster, it was a brilliant move. I told the audience that Jeff is one of the smartest people in the radio business, but that my guess is that his biggest challenge is getting radio to listen to him and follow his advice.  

 

Should you follow him blindly? Maybe. I think we have to assume he "gets it" in areas we, as broadcasters, do not. Sometimes we have to be willing to burn what's behind us and move toward our future. Haley understands that future, but I'm guessing that he spends a lot of time juggling board members who want to cling to the past. Therefore it's critical that we, as an industry, listen to Jeff Haley. Though I've heard criticism of Jeff, I think much of it comes from those who want him to do the same things as his predecessors. 

 

You're Thinking Like a Broadcaster

Yesterday I had the pleasure of a consulting session with Jeffrey Eisenberg, who, along with his brother Bryan, had the first New York Times best-seller that was sold exclusively on the Internet. They are among the smartest, most successful Internet optimization consultants in the world. Though I consider myself to be "up" on what is happening in this world, there is still so much to learn. When we discussed one idea, Jeffrey said, "Eric, you're thinking like a broadcaster. You need to shift your thinking because that model won't make you as much money as the one you're about to learn." He then blew my socks off with several hours of revolutionary thinking. And he was right.  

 

I default to old models, and I need to learn to be comfortable with new models. Yet, in some respects, people need to ease into concepts. That's why I think attending the RAB in a couple of weeks is a good idea. They are blending some of the important aspects of where radio is today with where it needs to be. I'm impressed with the interactive sessions and training they have developed for salespeople and sales managers, and I highly recommend it. I'll be there, not only doing our Radio Wayne Awards and presenting our Radio Executive of the Year award to Charles Warfield, but attending sessions too. To my knowledge, this event is the only one focused on sales, sales management, and management issues, and I'm impressed that they have so many advertisers at the conference. That alone may be worth the price because we need to listen carefully to what advertisers like Coca-Cola, AT&T, Wal-Mart, Chevrolet, Miller Coors, Home Depot, and Outback Steakhouse are saying. If we listen carefully, they will tell us exactly what they need from us. Seems to me this RAB conference is a great opportunity to retrain. 

 

You're Never Too Big or Too Important to Grow

At our recent Convergence conference, Jeff Hinson, the president of BMP, revealed how his company has reinvented radio and is making its stations a direct link to the interactive world, which I believe is the right thing to do. I applauded him on stage for being the only radio group CEO in the audience. To his credit, he sat for two days, took copious notes (yes, he actually attended sessions), then held a conference call with his staff to go over his notes. I've since learned that another CEO was in the audience -- Paul Ski, CEO of radio for Rogers Broadcasting in Canada, which is one of the biggest radio groups up north. These are busy people who did not assume they or their people know all the answers, and they were there learning. We even had people fly in from North Africa and Australia, and each said it was worth the trip because they learned so much. We all need to be learning and growing continually to stay ahead. 

 

Let's Go Fishing

Though things are feeling pretty gloomy, the lifting fog always brings new opportunity. New customers will try radio for the first time, and others who left for other mediums may return due to our effective costs. But, like fish, they won't just jump in the boat. We have to have our lines in the water, bait on our hooks, and know what techniques will seduce the fish onto our hooks instead of those from all the other boats. Preparation is the key to everything, and our people need to be properly prepared to tell our advertisers the recession story for radio advertising, and have the interactive presentation to capture those seduced by new media. We need to be able to dazzle customers so they have a great experience and stay.  

 

So many have laid off a big chunk of their staffs, and it could be easy to under-perform without knowing it. Though I know there is a slim chance companies will want to invest in their remaining people when they are trying to cut expenses, my gut is telling me that it's more critical at this moment than at any time in the past to find new ways to train your remaining people. 

 

Eric Rhoads

Publisher of Radio Ink

 

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