For many years, in multiple southern and southeastern markets, Thom Abraham has worn multiple hats. Not only does he host and produce the content that he has put out, but he has also sold the advertising for his show as well. Abraham has been heard in Nashville, southwest Florida, and for the last couple of decades in Huntsville, Alabama. 97.7 ESPN The Zone owner Wes Neighbors saw the success Abraham was having selling his own show and worked out a deal to make him the station’s Sales Manager so he could teach the other on-air hosts to sell their shows as well.
According to Abraham, since taking over the sales team in 2019, the station is doing three times the revenue it was previously bringing in. He believes there are a few things that have made the biggest difference. One, is simply the passion with which the hosts/sellers are out selling with since they are mostly selling something they should be very comfortable talking about – themselves.
Another is that the station was able to get the rights to air Alabama athletics through a partnership with Learfield, which used to be across the street with Cumulus. And also, sports is what their company does and what they sell, there is no big corporate cluster to worry about or music sellers just throwing in sports and lowering its value.
“The sports station was always an afterthought,” Abraham said about working for companies with multiple stations in a market. “It was always a throw in or value-added where now, all we do is sports.”
Almost everyone who is on the air at the station is responsible for selling advertising for the station. As the manager, Abraham is able to create sales opportunities for the team, which he would be doing anyway for his own show. “Now, I share it with the rest of the group and create the same packages for everyone,” he said. “I manage all of our sellers, it’s six people, and everyone has an air shift.”
Abraham said the station has tried to hire traditional sellers but cannot find anyone who can sell the station with the same passion as the on-air team. “We’re passion sellers,” he said. “That’s the term I use with the guys all the time. We’re not selling numbers. We’re not selling ratings or cume. We are selling passion for sports.”
Abraham says the talent is limited to two-hour air shifts, so everyone has plenty of time to sell. “We have to move pretty fast throughout the day,” Abraham said.
While the station uses the ESPN moniker, it airs a lot of local programming. They do air The Paul Finebaum Show and Abraham says his team has been able to sell some local endorsements where Finebaum has worked with them to cut commercials for local clients.
“We’ve had great success selling live endorsements all the way across the board,” Abraham said. “We just found the secret sauce has always been when you can walk into a business or call a business, and they answer the phone, and they recognize who you are. You’re halfway done, you’re halfway to the close. We’re in a market that has 40,000 businesses. We need to have 60-70 clients on the radio station to be successful. So, you just keep moving. The idea is it’s a numbers game.”
When asked about how difficult it was to get the talent to buy in to selling their own shows and the station, Abraham said, “They bought in when they saw me doing five live reads on my show. and they bought in when they saw the success that we were having with relationship selling. They realized that they could increase their income significantly.”
With the hosts doing the selling, they are able to talk about how they will do the endorsement ads, when they can make appearances, post on their personal social media or things an Account Executive may not be able to do.
“When an AE goes out and sells an endorsement deal, is the talent really committed to that product?” Abraham asked. “Maybe, maybe not, but when the talent themselves goes out and sells a particular product, now they’re committed to it because that’s their client. Not only are they making a talent fee, they’re also making a commission.”
Abraham said with the air talent out selling, it has also led to very little attrition because the talent is working hard at keeping a relationship with the clients. They are now seeing for themselves how difficult it is to get a client, which makes them work even harder to retain the ones they have.
“We have very little attrition,” said Abraham. “It’s amazing how little attrition we’ve turned over in Alabama football. In the four years now that we’ve had it, we’ve only turned over two spots. We sold it out in six weeks, and there’s only been two clients move out and we sold those two spots again right away.”
97.7 ESPN The Zone also has done well with high school sports, starting a high school network online where they work with local high schools and provide what is needed to broadcast their games. The schools compensate the station and then are able to turn around and sell the inventory. Abraham said it has been a win-win-win with the station making some digital dollars, the schools making money off the sales to their boosters and the fans get to hear their team’s games online, plus some promotion throughout the week on the radio station. The idea came from Neighbors, who was a two-time All-SEC player at Alabama and has a financial background.
“On a Friday night, we are now producing six high school football games,” Abraham added.
This type of outside of the box thinking is what has the tide rolling for Thom Abraham and the team at 97.7 ESPN The Zone in Huntsville.
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.
