I have found time is my friend in radio advertising sales. It seems it takes more time that it did a decade or two ago. The station I'm selling for was urged to think ahead (partly by me). I found I hit hard deadlines with 2 or 3 weeks to sell special promotions with too many potential accounts not saying yes in time.
Now I have the Junior Livestock Show promotion to sell exactly 13 weeks before the promotion begins. I'm walking around saying this comes beyond Christmas and is a big deal locally. I say, let's get this done now. Just today I showed it to 10 clients, got two immediate yes answers and two more where we are checking co-op requirements and about 5 others saying to check back next week.
I got this before my list of agency and in-house offices out of town to being my barrage of phone calls that make them say I had better talk to the guy because he keeps calling.
My goal is to write up about 30 of these by November 1 so my current non-annual projected December is equal to my non-annual projected January.
My forward thinking station will have that special February deal for clients in November. There's lots to be said about selling a slow month in one of the busiest months of the year when the money is flowing.
The takeaway from this post is thinking ahead, at least a few months, lets you organize and develop those potential leads, turning them in to customers with the time to pull it off. So, go for all the annuals you can and mop up with these nice monthly specials to ice the cake. Gotta get back to those copy changes and writing a couple of proposals.
