Most people intuitively understand the concept of supply and demand. When you have an abundance of something (bananas, I-Pods, gasoline) and demand is low, prices decrease. When those same products are short in supply and demand is high, prices tend to increase. Despite the best efforts of man and government to the contrary, the supply [...]

When station revenues begin to decline, management quite sensibly looks to reduce expenses. One obvious example of red ink on the P&L is the monthly payment to Arbitron (or whatever ratings service your station employs). While it’s tempting to not renew the ratings contract and pocket the savings, most sales people shudder at the thought [...]

Owners and managers of most commercial operations do everything they can to attract and hold loyal customers. These businesses understand that once a customer has been won over, that individual’s repeat business can add to the bottom line for years, even decades to come. The same is true about Radio. As a multi-station manager, I [...]

How much sales training is enough? Personally, I believe a Radio sales rep cannot get enough training. With over 30 years in the business, I was always learning something new…for a while. Then, after a period of time, I found I was hearing the same training but from different sources. Certainly there were variations on [...]

Working in Radio through the recession of the late ’70′s and various minor economic downturns over the decades, a pattern started to emerge. Somehow, local retailers managed to sense a slowdown in business long before it revealed itself in national statistics. They responded to their perceptions by cutting back on their advertising budgets. Our stations [...]

A sales consultant I know was recently telling me about one of his clients. He said the stations were experiencing a rough period — this is unusual? — and some days as much as 69% of the available inventory was going unsold. The stations were only selling 31% of their ad time. I asked if [...]

Most Radio broadcasters are happy to see the last of 2009. With a number of major Radio companies at or near bankruptcy, most operators are struggling to keep their heads above water in an increasingly oppressive economy. But in the middle of the doom and gloom, there are glimmers of hope. In a few markets, [...]

In an earlier post, we talked about the fact that your Radio clients don’t require everyone to respond to their ad message; it is necessary only for enough people to react to the ad to produce a return on investment for the advertiser. Unfortunately, most Radio sales reps can’t or won’t convince the advertiser to [...]

If your stations are like mine, sales are horrible. We’re down for the year and it’s getting worse, with the average sale WAY down. The problem is not store closures or empty strip centers. It is confidence and spending. I think Radio as a whole is fine. The latest RADAR study shows 92% of the [...]

I had lunch with a very good friend of mine just last week. She’s sold radio in a top 50 market for over 20 years. She’s busted her rear drumming up new business, good economy and bad. She drives 30 miles out of her way to pick up checks from her local small direct clients–just [...]