2010 Vision: The Short-Sighted Radio Advertising Sales Business

Next week, two other former radio advertising professionals are joining me to discuss why the radio advertising industry is jacked up. We’re going to tape, transcribe, and share it with you and others.

It stems from frustration. We’re not getting together to spitefully kick an industry when it’s down. Several of my clients successfully use radio, and I’m sure my two colleagues would agree that collectively, we LOVE radio advertising as much as any three people in our market.

But it might be a nostalgic love … a love of a theoretical ideal that doesn’t … and maybe never really did … exist. Not of the media. I know it works. I know how to make it work.

I think it’s the service and training of those reps that makes me shake my head sadly.

Here’s the story I plan to share:

My eye doctor’s a kind man. I was one of his first patients shortly after he opened his practice and my wife and I moved to Columbia. That was 2003.

I saw him this week. He said to me, “Tim, you’ve been coming to see me for years. I know you’re in the advertising business. I have 8 or 9 patients in the advertising business, and you’re the only one who’s never tried to sell me anything. You don’t even like to talk about what you do. You’d rather talk about my kids and your kids how my practice is doing and other things.”

“Mmm-hmm,” I said, wittily.

He continued, “There’s this one guy … he’s come into see me a couple times as a patient, but when he’s here it’s a pushy sales pitch about how I need his radio stations. He’s evidently a director of sales or some big shot for one of the radio groups in town. He never asks me about my business. He doesn’t know me, but he knows my practice needs to use his radio stations. And he’s pushy about it.

“Finally, I told him, ‘Listen, I was up 28% last year, and I’ve grown every year I’ve been here … without you.’”

I used to think radio’s problem was too much rep turnover, and maybe that’s endemic of a larger issue and problem:

Poor training, arrogance, impatience and an unwillingness to listen.

Hmm. Sad. Radio’s been around too long to be acting like my five-year-old does sometimes.

Well, anyway, next week three of us are getting together to talk about what could work better in local media and local media sales. We’ll share the transcription with you.

One final thought … my eye doctor asked me how much it would cost to hire me. The first thing out of my mouth was a number. I answered the question as asked before asking him why he wanted to ruin such a good thing. 🙂

Answering questions as asked … hmm, that’ll be the second story I plan to share next week.

UPDATE: Here’s Part 1 of the Interview.