Working in Kansas City has me all caught up in Chiefs-mania right now and, as you might guess, the city is full of energy. Naturally, our sales team is actively out trying to take advantage of the opportunity. As most of you know, when selling play-by-play, or in our case just the coverage surrounding the team, one of the tricky things is having people waiting “on deck” should a team win a game or a series and advance.
In a lot of cases, stations have required advertisers to lock in the postseason games or weeks from the beginning and they just pay the pre-determined percentage increase or spot price as the additional games are played. If not, then it’s a mad dash for some short-term money.
In addition to running into a hot sports team, any given year there are going to be things that come up that are more short-term, such as a Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day promotion, which may be the only time you can get certain categories to buy. And, there will also, of course, be things that slip the mind that we turn in to short term deals by accident, when we forget about them until a few weeks beforehand. However, we’re all taught to keep our eyes on the big prize and focus primarily on deals with more months and more dollars.
So, which is it, short term or long term?
Well, the long and short of it (you see what I did there?), is you should be working both, simultaneously. Long term, direct, key accounts have to always be in the pipeline, being actively identified and pitched. I’ve had sellers before who’ve tried to live off the short-term play. They could knock out ten deals for $2,500 much easier than they could ever knock out one $25,000 deal. The problem is, it’s high risk and you eventually fail, because you’re trying to sell and service too many accounts, too many times and you burn out.
At the same time, it’s also very difficult to try and only be a whale-hunter and ignore the short-term opportunities. Whales take much longer to make decisions and there are simply some circumstances where you don’t have that kind of time, such as the one we currently face in Kansas City with the run through the playoffs for the Chiefs. Other times, you just need the billing because your family wants to eat and keep the roof over their head. Whatever the reason, the key is having the pipeline filled with both long-term and short-term opportunities at the same time.
Ultimately, to garner success from a shorter-term opportunity, you have to stop what you’re doing and solely focus on it for a brief period of time. You start by up-selling current clients by showing them the value of the opportunity, because you always bring these ideas to them first. Then you hit the phones, the text, the email or the pavement and get the opportunity in as many hands as you can. You follow up with everyone that received it and get some deals done. Then, when the opportunity is over or has passed, hopefully it’s time to get back to the longer-term candidates for answers and to make some new presentations. Rinse and repeat.
Long term. Short term. They’re like offense and defense, you need them both to win. Hopefully the Chiefs will have both on Sunday and my staff’s next short-term opportunity becomes the coverage of Super Bowl LIII.
Dave Greene is the Chief Media Officer for Barrett Media. His background includes over 25 years in media and content creation. A former sports talk host and play-by-play broadcaster, Dave transitioned to station and sales management, co-founded and created a monthly sports publication and led an ownership group as the operating partner. He has managed stations and sales teams for Townsquare Media, Cumulus Media and Audacy. Upon leaving broadcast media he co-founded Podcast Heat, a sports and entertainment podcasting network specializing in pro wrestling nostalgia. To interact, find him on Twitter @mr_podcasting. You can also reach him by email at Dave@BarrettMedia.com.
