Happy Friday, everyone!
Since there are just three weeks left in the year, I thought it would be fun to find out:
Whether it was starting a new position, finally getting a tough prospect on the air, or creating a new promotion that turned out to be a big success -- what were some of your sales highlights in 2015?
Looking forward to reading your replies!
We're just run a promotion called 'Adopt a Christmas Song! - It's Just for Christmas not for Life' which involves local businesses 'adopting' a Christmas song for one week or two weeks. We've created a tag before each song selected with a 'Happy Christmas' message from the local business that has adopted it.. The adopted song will play once a day, seven days a week and at no other time. We've made over £1000 in ten days, which as a local, community, charity radio station is huge for us. It's a simple concept and local businesses loved the idea and jumped on board. 
My highlight was going through my first year in a career in radio. I started as Promotions Director 7 months ago after a 10-year career in Graphic Design and it has changed my life. I love all the wonderful things a radio station does for its community - too many to name for us. I look forward to many more years and to seeing all your wonderful promotions!
Ashley, congratulations!
I'll bet your co-workers love the fact that you have the skills to womp up professional-looking sales pieces, too. Sadly this is one area where many of us could use some help. Our page designs are functional if not beautiful, but often inconsistent from one to the next. Perhaps you'd consider sharing some of your work here with us, so that we can see what's possible? :>)
Kay, this is an amazing idea! I am 4 months into radio sales. We are VERY connected to our community. We do live remotes for 3 basketball teams and so much more. It seems like you and I do similar things. I love your ideas. I would love to ask you your plans as you start 2016. I am trying to get organized, and trying to make smarter sales choices. Like, setting up meetings with clients to plan the YEAR. Not just going event by event. Any advice from you would be so great! I'm lost a lot of the time, but I really want to do well and make enough to stay!
ME TOO! I came from teaching. I work for local radio, and LOVE how connected we are. Any advice for 2016? Most days I feel like I am just running wild, trying to get new connections. I need some advice. Thanks. I need to work "smart" because I need to make enough $ to stay at this job. I hope I can do it!
This is my 4th month in radio sales. I came from teaching full time for 14 years. Some days I feel that my wheels are spinning.... I work hard to educate prospects, but nothing sells/ and I find that I just can't get motivated. However, as a singer in a band, I LOVE that I work with music! I keep thinking of how I could start doing radio jingles for my clients. We don't do these currently, but I know I could get this going! Our staff is open to try anything, and they would work with me to try new things. So, my highlight would be the POTENTIAL to make this more than just a sales job. I will work hard to develop relationships in this new year, and I am hoping that I will experiment with jingle work. Here's to 2016!
Just wrapped up my 2nd year with a new station for me and my favorite success was calling on a national company that has their HQ in town. I met their VP of marketing a few years ago and simply wanted to find out who to contact in his company to set up a local co-op to work with area HVAC contractors who had co-op funds from his company.
Turns out, he wanted to spend money directly with me too. We have a minimum of $1500 a month for 12 months, but will have peak months where we boost it up to $10,000 for the month, which we just did in December and will do a few more times over the next 10 months.
Mine was with a jewelry store in Texas a few months ago. I was meeting with them on behalf of a TV station, but (as I always do) I offered to evaluate the store's radio commercials as part of the consultation. One of the issues I found was that their radio and TV campaigns had nothing to do with each other -- they sounded like two completely different stores.
I came back with a television campaign and recommended that they use the same approach with their radio. The owner signed the contract on the spot, and I learned later from the TV station AE that they called the radio station to revise tthe same afternoon. They were also looking at options for changing their in-store signage.
Nice to bring in money for my TV client, but even nicer to see them improve ALL of their media.
Jill:
I hope you were well trained. But if you are having spinning wheel problems may I suggest a refresher course? On and it's FREE. RadioSalesSchool.com. Most people who follow this plan will close their first annual sale by day 10.
Never give up. It is a great career no matter what market you are in.
Hi Jill
Sorry for the late reply and I've only been involved in Radio Sales since March 2015 so we are both newbies to this. I also present and co host radio shows too so my main focus for 2016 is thinking of ways to make money out of specific events in the year that engage the local business community and listeners. The Adopt A Christmas Song was such a huge success that we plan to use it again next year and also adapt it to suit other events such as Valentines Day, Mothers Day, Fathers Day etc but this time let our listeners adopt a song for a day too. We also cover outside broadcasts for local events, festivals etc and contact anyone who posts anything about local events, new business launches, local bands releasing new music etc on social media to ask them to come into the studio to talk about it. That's our chance to discuss advertising with them and play them some ad examples. I keep all the radio ads on my phone on an app so that I can play them anywhere to anyone who might be a possible client.Oh and one of the most important things we offer our radio clients is exclusivity, which means we only have one business per trade, ie; one electrician, one hairdresser, one nursery etc, our clients love this, and there's enough different businesses that we don't need to have two the same. If I come up with any other new ideas I'll let you know. Good Luck!
Best wishes
Kay
