Finding the P1 Listening clients to your station should be mission-critical for any sports radio seller. I have found the most success selling advertising to clients who listened either often or exclusively to my station. Yes, P1 Listeners are also P1 Clients. And they want to spend money with you to hear their commercials on your station. It’s part of who they are. They want to meet your personalities, sponsor your promotions, and find more clients who feel the same way. They are the building blocks of any successful sales effort. A passionate audience is critical to local direct selling and your income.
So, let’s explore some ways to find more P1 Clients for you.
If you are a station that carries high school, college, or professional play-by-play, you have some great opportunities. Let’s say your station has a local college football team. Prospecting activities should ideally put you in social situations where the school is the focus. That’s where you will meet like-minded potential clients.
Join the booster club and design a promotion to improve membership. Sell it to the biggest booster you can find, and you will get access to meeting more clients. Volunteer to go out and ask other local businesses to join the booster organization and become an ambassador. You can also pick up a game program and start cold-calling school sponsors.
Does your station have any big promotions like a summer bash or Super Bowl party? Make attendees check-in and find out who they are. Give them a registration slip and ask them what they do and if they would be willing to grow your P1 Client base of advertisers. If even only one person volunteers, you have just won a new client possibly.
Can you get access to the station email database? Why not design a sales-oriented email to solicit new clients? Offer the first-timers package and see who emails you back. Offer a healthy referral fee for the rest of the P1 Listeners in the database to recruit new advertisers for you. Ask, and Ye shall receive!
Demetri Ravanos’s latest column, Sell your Talent, suggests bringing in air talent to visit clients. Make sure you ask every person on air, and I mean update guys, traffic people, and producers, and see if they have a list of friends and family who listen and could influence an advertising win for you. Build-in an endorsement package for the talent, and it’s a win-win deal.
There is a lot of gold when you mine amongst the P1 Listeners for your station. You can learn a lot from them. Edison recently studied how many P1 Listeners of eleven different formats, including sports, use smart speakers, listen online, Twitter ( a lot for ALL SPORTS users ), and whether or not they even own a radio. Check out the Radio Listener Profile Report to learn more. P1 Listeners can lead to P1 Clients!
Jeff Caves is a sales columnist for BSM working in radio and digital sales for Cumulus Media in Dallas, Texas and Boise, Idaho. He is credited with helping launch, build, and develop Sports Radio The Ticket in Boise, into the market’s top sports radio station. During his 26 year stay at KTIK, Caves hosted drive time, programmed the station, and excelled as a top seller. You can reach him by email at jeffcaves54@gmail.com or find him on LinkedIn.
