Many problems in radio anyone can do anything about are self inflicted. Things have happened to radio no one can fix like new audience tastes, competitive media and technology. However, problems are compounded internally. Radio has been repositioned both creatively and physically as new media players compete for ears and relevance in new times.

Music, once the strong hold and essence of radio no longer has category crossing demographics. It has become virtually impossible to program and target 18-49 or 25-54 in one radio format unless its language and ethnic focused. Audiences both young and old have become eclectic. An entire generation programs for its own personal tastes on IPods. Digital games eat hours out of radio listening. Radio shrinks because of less reach and TSL (time spent listening), a double whammy to ratings and revenues.

Radio creates its own content problems sounding like an old medium while new media competitors slice up radio core audiences. Many in control of the radio industry today came up through the medium are still addressing radio like it's the good old days. They trade new morning teams and re-position on air slogans but the real problem is dealing with what is going on outside the radio station.

Radio broadcasting is now part of a crowded of field of digital media and technologies with new leaders and thinking reflecting new times and tastes. No one cares about radio unless it presents itself as a competitive source of entertainment or information.

Millions of new generation thinkers think radio is little more than white noise. Radio still owns car audiences because of circumstance and logistics, it’s hard to do much else besides drive, listen and talk on cell phones. Many that listen to radio in the car feel captive as they punch around the dial avoiding the poor programming and way-to-long 60-second commercials that have said it all in 15 or 30 seconds at most.

That’s my opinion, what do you think? Hmmm, do you care?

Thanks for forwarding my pieces to your friends and linking to your websites and boards.

Reach Brian at http://www.brianbieler.com/ or http://blog.brianbieler.com/ 

        

(By guest blogger, Paul Anovick, www.anovickassociates.com)

What is your purpose?  During the past week we lost Tim Russert. On Saturday, Peggy Noonan wrote in the WSJ, “A Life’s Lesson" (opinion, 6/21/08)

No doubt you have heard Tim’s story, small town, Big Russ, hard work, preparation, taking care of those you love, self sacrifice, self discipline, religious faith and enjoy life. This may sound “old school” to many; however, it describes the  “habits” to build a worthwhile, successful life.

This question often comes up when we discuss “purpose”, many say, “be true to yourself”, or “hold firm to your ideals”.  Well, what if you can’t answer these questions?

Several years ago I spent time developing my personal “mission statement”.  Which required much reflection and looking inside myself to answer these questions. The result follows.

“To make a contribution to the world by being a living example of; Love, Understanding, Compassion, Trust and Wisdom.

Starting first with my family I will help each develop the strength and courage to lead an independent and fulfilling life. Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

I will live by the values of integrity, compassion and self-discipline. I will strive to keep commitments not only to others but to myself as well. I will not make excuses or blame others. I will keep my mind and body healthy and strong so that I am able to live my mission.

My mission is to be a force for positive change and to inspire others to greatness through being a catalyst for action and through developing a shared vision of that which is possible.”

The outpouring over Tim Russert, the people who knew him, worked with him, they were honestly grieving. It caused me to sit back and think…wow; will my family, customers and those I know react like that when I die? Why not, we make choices each day that influence our legacy. What can you do better? Are you spending your time the way you want?

Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Paul Anovick, 201-445-2822
"Developing Potential, Producing Results"
www.anovickassociates.com 

        

If you want to sell more, tell more tales. A good sales story stimulates the mind and engages people to conversation. If you are selling and people are not tuned to what you are saying, it's almost impossible to move them to action. Executives and world-class sellers tell stories to get people involved.

Stories are not more important than features and benefits; they help emphasize points and create feelings. Combining data and left-brain logic with emotional right-brain stories is a powerful and professional way to make dramatic sales points. Executives, politicians and professionals tell stories to start people thinking and make important points.

What sells people is how they see benefits working for them. Storytelling engages people in their own minds, emotions and imagery. Although decisions are largely formed with logic, data and information, decisions are mostly made with right-brain subjective emotions. Storytelling is a strategic sophisticated sales tool. We know that people are going to forget data and information but are unlikely to forget a good story.

President Ronald Reagan exploited his age and was nearly 70 when he became president. He left office at 78, the oldest man ever to serve in the office. He joked about himself and repositioned a problem to an advantage with wit and humor:

One of my favorite quotations about age comes from Thomas Jefferson. He said that we should never judge a president by his age, only by his work. And ever since he told me that, I've stopped worrying, and just to show you how youthful I am, I intend to campaign in all 13 states.

Robert Kiyosaki, author of the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series has sold over 26,000,000 books since 1997 and has earned tens of millions of dollars. You may have read his books or seen him on TV. Three of his books, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Rich Dad's CASHFLOW Quadrant and Rich Dad's Guide to Investing, have been on the top 10 best-seller lists simultaneously in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the New York Times.

Much of the success of Rich Dad is not simply because Robert wrote a book. The message of becoming a better money manager, understanding taxes, dealing with expenses and using the power of leverage to create wealth created a story that challenged conventional thought: only high income leads to wealth.

Robert crafted a story of logic and emotion so he could repeat it virtually word for word in seminars and in radio, TV and newspaper interviews. He took a simple boring subject about money and made it visually and emotionally unique by telling a story.

The story of two fathers is an unusual message. Without that story, Rich Dad would likely have been like so many other books telling of money and investing. Robert is a gifted storyteller and his messages are motivating, entertaining and lead to his record-breaking success as an author. Robert is a master of sales.

·  Are you successful because you simply sell a product?

·  Do you master sales because people relate to you, your values and your knowledge?

·  Do you get people emotionally involved?

·  What makes you unique and a standout in a crowded field?

What Are Stories?

Stories are images and eye candy for the brain. Words are ways of communicating the images in the mind. When we tell stories well we are actually imagining what happens in the story and using words to describe what we see.

Remembering And Telling

Storytelling has a common problem. More salespeople would use stories if they could just remember how to tell the story.

It's the same problem in public speaking. Remembering words can stump people. People try to memorize things that are far too difficult to remember. Unless you have a photographic memory, remembering word for word is out of the question. That is why we invented computers, to keep track of lists and words.
To tell stories naturally, imagine what happens in the story. You can use the same words every time if that comes easily to you or you can use different words every time to tell a story. As long as you connect the words to the images in your mind, you can deliver a good story.

Three Keys to Storytelling

1. Learn The Story. Focus on the story and get the image in your mind. It is far easier to remember scenes or sequences of several images of things like sounds and pictures than the literal sequence of many hundreds of words. Remember, it's never the story, it's always the emotion that communicates the real meaning. Tell the story from your memory of how it made you feel.

2. Telling The Story. Relax, have fun and enjoy the story; it will be easier to tell. Imagine what is happening in the story. Use your natural style and expression.

3. Remembering The Story. You will not easily forget a good story. Images stay with you. However, words escape you. As long are you are confident that you do not have to remember word for word, the story will be easy to remember.

The Secrets Of Story Strategy

We tell stories in sales situations because it helps compel people to action. It is hard to make a computer chip exciting, a stack of lumber enthralling. That's why selling features and benefits are rarely enough to bring people to action. People make decisions in their minds, not from your mind. Draw pictures for people and reach them emotionally.

Use Stories As Sales Tools:
1. Use stories to keep ideas in order and show ideas sequentially: First this happened and then that happened
2. Use stories to point out how this happened or that happened
3. Use stories to help others understand why things happen
4. Use stories to share information and to illustrate
5. Use stories to help illustrate principles that can be used in other situations

Stories Stimulate Even More Stories

Have you noticed people clamoring to tell you their story before you finish your story? When people listen to your story, they are actually visualizing their story.

Stories stimulate more stories and start conversation. You learn a lot from talking to people and when people tell you their stories, you learn even more about them.

If people don't talk back to you, you will have a problem selling them anything. Passive listeners may be thinking about dinner or picking up the dog from the veterinarian. Even worse, they may be thinking, "when is this presentation ever going to end?"

A client telling you a story is very likely the one to be telling you to write down orders. A storytelling client is an order waiting to happen! Remember that features and benefits are boring but people engaged in a story are emotionally connecting to you.

People see things through their paradigms. Be sure your story develops not simply from your point of view but a story that will stimulate a positive associate idea in others.

What sells people on your story is not your story, it's how they interpret the story for their own benefit or viewpoint. A story should not simply jump out of your mouth. It should be constructed to achieve your objective.
The key to crafting a story is the logical flow. It must have a beginning, middle and end. However, it needs a trigger to set off an emotion. The trigger can be something that will literally force the prospect to ask a question. A trigger can set off ideas of what to buy, when to buy and how to buy because your story is compelling.

How To Craft A Story

·  Start with simple recognizable truths

·  Show the way out of problems and situations

·  Show how customers win

·  Show why your products or service works better than competitors

·  Show why your products or service has more value

·  Use scenarios of what and why to make things work and happen

·  Leave room for the listener to have their own points of view

·  Have fun telling stories, be real, be alive

What will make you a great storyteller will be how well you craft stories to fit situations.

Ad-libbing stories without following an outline and strategic thinking may be hit-and-miss. Without a roadmap in your mind, a story told differently every time might have a different meaning every time.

You may be adding things that will get you off track, forgetting important ideas and getting yourself into twists that may alter the outcome. Critically, you may miss using an emotional trigger in the right place. You cannot expect the best results if you wing stories.

Develop a bank of sales stories that you can use to illustrate important points, scenarios, answer objections and show benefits though real-life situations or people and how others can meet their needs from your stories.

By Brian Bieler author of The Sales Operator, visit Brian’s website at www.brianbieler.com.

        

What keeps salespeople from selling more? They don’t spend enough time selling! Twenty-five to thirty-eight percent of salespeople spend time specifically devoted to selling. That translates into the average salesperson spending approximately 19 weeks out of 50 weeks selling. No wonder salespeople feel overwhelmed with other things to do besides selling.

Here’s a tip to get more sales time in. Stop prioritizing your daily schedule. Instead, schedule your priorities. Get important things done first or the false alarms, fire drills and urgent but unimportant things may eat up valuable time. A theory for effective time management is the idea of “fit” or knowing how to fill up a jar.

Start with a large jar. To fill the jar completely, put the big rocks in first. Next, add the pebbles and finally, fill the jar with sand. If you have a jar filled with rocks, pebbles and sand, you have effectively filled in the space.

However, if you empty the jar and fill it with the sand first, you will not be able to put all the rocks and pebbles back in the jar. If you manage your time effectively, you will be working on the important things first just like getting the big rocks back in the jar.

Sorting out the big and important from small less important is no small task. Salespeople that manage time more successfully have better odds of sales success. If you have little sense of priority, critical time may be eaten up dealing with things that have little to do with achieving sales performance.

Selling is measured and competitive. Salespeople simply cannot afford to have time working against them. Sales skills, strong desire and a good attitude alone are not enough to create success if time is not managed for performance.

Develop a habit of dropping what’s not working. Put the emphasis on doing what works. Manage time effectively.

By Brian Bieler author of The Sales Operator, visit Brian’s website at www.brianbieler.com.

        

There may be danger with group thinking; it depends on your goals. Consensus leans towards safety; group thinking may distract you from taking calculated risks. A team might not be able to create a strategy as good as your instincts. While looking at our sales strategies in our company I told my concerns to one of our marketing consultants, E. Karl. We talked about risk taking and playing it safe. He told me a story.

“Do you know how they make airline lasagna?” E. asked.
“No,” I said.
E. said, “It works like this.”

“When you have a lot of money at stake and a lot is riding on decisions, get a bunch of expert opinions. The thinking is, the more opinions, the better. Therefore, the airlines serving lasagna lunches and dinners by the tens of thousands, made sure the people responsible for creating the airline food called in the best chefs to get the best ideas. The goal: make a dish that will taste good to everyone.”

“The airlines use the best of the ideas and came up with great tasting lasagna for everyone. Actually, when you put all the thinking together, you wind up with a lot of compromising. What you come up with is average tasting lasagna that won’t offend anyone,” E. said.

“Airline food is safe food. Not a lot of spices to get anyone upset. It tastes OK, but hardly award winning. If you want great tasting lasagna, you need spices and that means taking some risks. When you spice things up, some people will love the dish even more and some will not like it at all. It is a risk you take. Successful ideas can never please everyone. If you try to please all, you become average.”

When you have too many chefs in the kitchen, group decisions will more often than not come to a safe conclusion. Groupthink may distract you from leading edge thinking; it tends to be conservative and safe while setting high goals usually means taking more risks.

Playing it safe and doing what everyone else is doing may only be a guarantee of average. To perform above average, be prepared to take some risks. If you simply follow the consensus, you may be serving “Airline Lasagna” and losing your edge. Top performing salespeople are most likely not doing what the average sellers do. The winners in sales take risk in stride as it’s part of the sales game.

Sales Principles Dealing With People:
    1. You cannot please all people.
    2. Some people will not like you no matter what you do.
    3. It’s impossible to win 100% of the time.

Don’t let yourself become over-concerned with making mistakes as much as focusing on what it will take to win.  Spice up your unique individual style. Dare to be different and memorable. You’re sales will improve when you serve up exciting spicy presentations.

By Brian Bieler author of The Sales Operator, visit Brian’s website at www.brianbieler.com.

        

        

The quality of information we communicate is how people judge us, not the quantity. It is clarity we need but we get a lot of the opposite. People may be artful and deceitful at making simple things difficult to understand. Those who are able to explain concepts in simple terms are the gifted communicators and professional salespeople.

I once worked for a manager who had the notion that effective communication was speaking more than the other person did. He thought good speech was the ability to say more and wear the other person out. If he disagreed with you, he would just keep talking as he felt he had the power of persuasion in his speaking. Luckily, he had a great bubbly personality so it was hard to disagree with him but the point of speaking more and saying less was apparent. When he stopped talking, you wondered what was said or if it even mattered. It is what you say and how you say it, not how much you say.

The Gettysburg address was only 286 words. Winston Churchill’s “blood, sweat, and tears” speech to the British Parliament was 627 words and lasted only 6 minutes. You do not want people to think, "Why doesn't he just tell us what matters and get it over with?” Choose your words carefully, edit your thoughts and say what needs to be said.

Whether you sell advertising, bricks, cars or a hospital service, speaking is dramatically more powerful and effective when it is focused and concise. Selling and influencing others is your ability to explain your visions clearly. John F. Kennedy’s, “My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,” or Ronald Reagan telling Gorbachev to, “Tear down this wall,” were brilliant focused thoughts that had a point with very few words. Before you make a presentation or speak with customers, be sure to craft your thoughts and make them simple to understand.

By Brian Bieler author of The Sales Operator, visit Brian’s website at www.brianbieler.com.

        

The Old School Selling style is a needs/satisfaction selling process is that a sales person goes in to ask questions to find out what the needs are. This assumption is that needs actually matter and the customer actually knows what they want.

Sellers find out what the needs are and based on those needs, put a pitch, proposal or presentation together. This will usually lead to objections: too fat, too thin, too big, too small, too expensive, lousy value, not fast enough, too slow or simply I don’t like it because it’s the wrong color.

It is a sales game and everyone knows it. It is not as if this process is a real authentic conversation on either side. The salesperson has the intent to sell and get the buyer to buy and both sides know it.

This system based on simple left-brain logical need draws the conclusion that people make decisions based on what they need. That is simply not true. When it comes to taking action and making buying decisions, you can bet the decisions will be emotional and win over intellect and logic virtually every time.

You only have to look to yourself as an example. You may have needed a new wardrobe for the job but if you wanted a new car, you bought the new car. The wardrobe can wait. We all experience knowing what we need but doing what we want.

You cannot assume the prospect can actually tell a seller what the needs are. The problem is the emotional wants may not be on the surface of the buyer’s mind but beneath the surface. People simply do NOT know what they need much less what they want.

Change your thinking and CHANGE YOUR ATTITUDE. All things will change if you fundamentally change your philosophy. The customer is not a convenient money flow pipeline directly to your wallet simply because you are selling something.

The selling style today is not conquering people but giving support. People are far too enlightened and smart to let you get away with that for long. Your responsibility is to serve others and not assume anything and you will earn respect and build relationships.

A sales secret to eliminating objections is to focus on both the intellectual and emotional side of sales persuasion. Do not focus on needs over wants! If you make assumptions, you may be as wrong as you are right. It’s not your job to take that risk. More often than not, people will buy what they want. Need is WHAT they want, WHY is the emotion behind their action.

The Sales Job Is Not To Judge Others, It’s to help them get what they want or need and make a profit from them. Start asking the question WHY; it leads to fewer objections and more sales.

By Brian Bieler author of The Sales Operator, visit Brian’s website at www.brianbieler.com.