TALKERS® recently published an article by Kathy Carr, Where Have All the Sales Reps Gone? in which she reminisces about her early days as a radio sales rep working in a highly competitive environment, and she expresses concern that with the pandemic-induced phenomenon of radio salespeople working from home, the lessons that can only come by working in-person with a sales team will be lost.
What do you think? Are you still working from home, or are you back at the office? What do you feel are the pros and cons of each work environment? We'd love to hear your thoughts.
We've been back in the office since June 2020. Thank you for sharing that article, I agree with Kathy 100%. I'm very competitive and always want to be the top producer. Being competitive pushes you. I'm going to work the same, whether it's at the station or my home office, but everyone is different. You must have personal goals to push yourself or you'll get sidetracked with other things.
My first 5 years in sales I was a part of a small sales team for a AM/FM combo in a town of 40,000 with two aggressive competitors that worked on underpricing and diminishing results versus working smart. I needed the support of that team so very much. Together we fought many battles and won.
At my second sales position my title was General Manager but in reality it was sales 99% of the time. At my third I was sales manager and then as the sole salesperson at a Houston AM daytimer. AM wasn't dead in 1993 but it was still disadvantaged, especially as a daytimer.
After my first five years I found I had to somehow encourage myself when I had a bad day. If there was a brick wall, I had to figure it out if I could. My good luck was to have slammed in to brick walls and torn down quite a few times in my first five years. I remembered the words of my teacher, the GM and Managing partner. I learned to walk away when I had to and to never give up until I got an answer.
Now I'm working in a small market, a town of 16,000 in a county of 40,000. We're the #1 station and a household name. I don't have a direct competitor in radio but the usual media choices everybody faces. I am the outside sales guy. There are house accounts and a part-time salesperson. I don't have a desk at the station. I use my computer, printer and phone. Everybody selling here, not to sound condescending, aren't radio salespeople. One person is a DJ who manages the station so he also handles house accounts generally via email. The part-timer knows lots of people in town because of the former fulltime job.
I have had to be a lone wolf so many years, I can't say I miss the office full of other salespeople. I enjoyed and really needed that in my first five years. In fact I needed it the first 15 years! I suppose the positive is I had to figure myself out and learn how to deal with myself when bad days happened and how to build myself back up. I had to learn to think about everything. Sometimes clients give subtle hints you might miss if you don't. I've been selling so many years now that I am rarely stumped but I must admit I learn something new every day.
