Welcome to those of you who have not started using the vacation days you cannot roll over to next year. Our sales meeting this week is going to start a bit of a series where we take a closer look at the six steps of the sales process, starting with prospecting.
As I have written before, this is a good time of the year to review not only your 2024, but also some of the basic fundamentals of the job. I bet if you do it right, you will find areas where you could improve to help drive more personal revenue in 2025 and beyond.
The six steps: Prospecting, Setting Appointments with Decision Makers, the Client Needs Analysis, the Presentation, the Close and then Servicing the account.
Prospecting is where it all starts and can be a very confusing part of the process for those just starting out in the business or those who were never taught the right way to begin with. The most difficult part generally seems to be the difference between a lead and a prospect.
A lead is the starting point. No matter the name of the business came to you – whether you saw it, read about it, heard about it from a friend or whatever, until you qualify that lead, they are not yet a prospect. There is work to be done.
This is a great conversation to have with your manager or the other sellers on your team. Start with defining what an ideal customer is for your station(s). Your office has the data on what categories spend the most money, and between the group of salespeople you should be able to come up with a good, strong list of the right kinds of businesses to go after. Dig into areas such as what the minimum monthly, quarterly, or annual amount of spend really needs to be in order to run a successful ad campaign.
There is plenty of research or what I would call ‘presearch’ that can be done to find out more about a business to see if, on paper, they are an actual prospect. Again, most of this can be done by category, but even inside a category you have to define the specific type of business. Restaurants are a perfect example. Within that category, there are national chains, regional favorites and the mom and pops. Even a mom and pop can be one with several locations all over the city, and ones where there is one location.
It used to be our joke in sports radio where we would tell new sellers to make a list of the first 100 businesses they want to call on and then laugh at how many one location sports bars/restaurants were on the list. Good luck to you!
The thing about the prospecting step is that if done correctly it can be a massive time saver in the long run. The last thing you want to do is waste your time on someone who cannot afford to advertise with you in the first place. Remember, you aren’t out looking for a one-time deal, you want someone who can spend throughout the year and for many years to come.
Also, part of the research that really comes into play is finding out who you would need to talk to at the next step. Knowing who the ultimate decision maker at the company is can be one of the most important pieces of information. That may not, of course, be who you would meet with at first, but you need to know that. If the person you would be doing the CNA with is not someone who can say ‘yes’ it would most likely change the direction of the meeting as it would be more about how you get to that person and what they are focused on.
The key here, and again something I would recommend you talk to your manager about for confirmation, is understanding what makes a lead a qualified prospect. Everyone uses different sources to find that information once they know what they are looking for, but I always suggest starting at RAB.com.
Especially in this day and age of everything being out there on the interwebs, use that to your advantage in the prospecting stage. Do your best to make sure the lead is qualified before considering them a prospect.
Don’t let the first step in the process be one where you try and cut corners, otherwise you are risking wasting a whole lot of time. And as we all know, time is money.
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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.
