Radio Sales Café

This Friday’s poll question arose from Jerry Frentress’ post (click here to read) on walking away from a sale; thanks for raising an excellent topic, Jerry! 1) Under what circumstances do you walk on a sale, and how do you do it? 2) Does your station empower your sales team to make this decision unilaterally? As always, thanks for participating!

Nobody wants to walk on a sale, but there are situations that can cause us to do so.

Because this is a small town it is important for us to maintain rate integrity, offering everyone the same opportunity. The word gets around fast if someone gets a better deal than someone else, so we don't respond well to people who try to grind us for a low rate.

Our salespeople are paid on collections, so it is incumbent on them to evaluate the client to determine if we're going to get paid or have to chase the money. If a client in our market can't write a $500 check upfront, you can bet we'll be chasing that and the rest of the money long after the schedule has run. Time to walk.

Then there's the client who, when asked "would you rather spend $10 to make $100 or $100 to make
$1000" answers $10, and wants to "test the station." Our salesperson had better run from one of those.

When one of these situations comes up there is usually a considerable amount of "wailing and gnashing of teeth." Most of them are pretty obvious decisions, but salespeople need to get a concensus and vent their frustration to someone. That's why I'm here to make suggestions to make it work or to be "the blankety blank boss who won't accept the deal."

We recently walked away from an account. We have an account that is very hot headed and a known meth user. He spends the money but after going through 2 sales people, a sales manager and the owner as his sales rep...we decided it wasn't worth the money. It was just impossible to deal with this account.
From copy writing to coop....he would approve the ad and then come back and say it wasn't right....He was totally out of control...It's not worth the headache...no matter how much money he spends. In the end the owner of the station made the decision. This will be the second time we have walked away from this account.

(1) This is fairly simple to answer I think. Not just in radio, but in any sales profession, the sale must be good for the client and good for your business. If it is not, you walk. Short term gain is never good for long term profits.

(2) This part is a little tougher. New sales people have little ability to step outside well defined guidelines. As they gain experience, they get a little more rope. I always carry a cell phone and if they run into a problem and are not sure what to do, they are told to call me while they are with the client. Let's get this done or not done now and not have to go back. I have also told the sales people that if they need too, just make the call. I will never make them go back to the client and tell them they can't do what they agreed to do. We'll talk about it and hoplefully if a mistake was made, it won't happen again. Whatever decision the salesperson made, we will live with it.

I have a number of reasons to walk a sale:

1) You calculate the ROI and it does not work. Try to sell tacos from a taco stand in a small market where the average sale is $1.50, there is 30% margin and your ads cost $17 each. I don't care if you turn 50 people a week into repeat customers, the math does not work. (ever wonder why some restaurants don't pay their bills? because "salesmen" convince them to buy without considering the ROI).

2) If the are disrespectful of the rep. Let someone walk on you once and it will never end. You (if you know what the hell you are talking about) deserve respect. You need to earn it, but the customer is NOT better than you are.