MANAGEMENT

INSIGHTS

MAY / JUNE 2016

Finding Value in AE’s Social Media Chatter About You and the Station

Recognized Experts Are More Respected Leaders

Practice Mindfulness to Make Better Decisions

Use the Words Clients Want to Hear, Part 2

Sales Phrases That Result in Dial Tones and Closed Doors, Part 2

Hard Lessons of Young Leadership

WHATS INSIDE

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Finding Value in AE’s Social Media Chatter About You and the StationWith the proliferation of mobile devices and the amount of time people spend on social media, you can be confident that your sales staff has shared comments or information about you and the station.

No doubt, companies should be aware of what employees are saying on social media and have an appropriate policy in place, but not curb everyone’s enthusiasm. With the slow, but steady maturity among most people in their use of social media, companies may have less to fear than they initially thought.

According to their 2015 report, Employees Rising: Seizing the Opportunity in Employee Activism, Weber Shandwick and KRC Research found that 39% of employees in a global survey said they had shared praise or positive comments online about their employer.

Another reason so many employees across the globe admitted to these actions is that social media has now become central to many of their lives, blurring the distinction between posting at work or during private time.

The upside to this phenomenon is found in the fourth finding in the table above: 33% of employees said they posted content about their employer “without any encouragement from employer.” Granted, it’s only one-third of the respondents, but they must have a positive view of their employer, which occurred independent of their influence.

Another table reveals a rather startling comparison of the actions employees have taken with and without employer encouragement.

It’s clear that employees’ social media postings about you and your station can be very beneficial. This is an excellent topic for a sales training session, but it’s important to encourage, but not try to control their posts. The element of spontaneity is critical, as the comments should come totally from what your sales team think and feel and not from specific suggestions you might make.

Employee Social Media Posting Findings, 2015

Finding Percent

Use at least one social media site for personal use

88%

Post messages, pictures or videos in social media about employer often or from time-to-time

50%

Have shared praise or positive comments online about employer

39%

Post message, pictures or videos about employer in social media often or from time-to-time without any encouragement from employer

33%

Have shared criticism or negative comments online about employer

16%

Have posted something about employer in social media that they wish they hadn’t

14%

Weber Shandwick/KRC Research, 2015

Employees’ Actions on Social Media for Current Employer, 2015

Action With Encouragement Without Encouragement

Encouraged others to buy company’s products or services 72% 48%

Recommended employer to others as a place to work 68% 54%

Made positive comments about employer where others could see or read them

63% 32%

Defended employer to family and friends 60% 44%

Volunteered for a cause employer supports 55% 30%

Defended employer where others could see or read it 54% 24%

Voted for employer in a poll or contest 52% 22%Weber Shandwick/KRC Research, 2015

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Recognized Experts Are More Respected LeadersIn his book, Build Your Personal Power Base, Steve Bressert, PhD, explains that others’ respect for you as a leader is greatly enhanced when you’re viewed as an authority on a subject or topic. When people (and in your case, your sales team) recognizes your expertise, they are more likely to listen carefully to what you have to say and you will exert more influence on their thinking and actions.

At the risk of making a self-serving statement, this is one of the primary values of your MEDIACENTER subscription: to provide information, data and insights to help you and your sales staff be recognized as the media and retail industry authorities in your market. When you are the first to absorb content from THE MEDIACENTER, and then share it with your AEs individually and/or during sales meeting, your authority and influence increase. They are more likely to use the information, thus exceeding their sales goals and maximizing the value of your subscription.

Dr. Bressert recommends the following steps to gain greater respect as an authority and a leader – and to inspire your team to listen to what you have to say.

1. Pick a topic or topics and learn all you can about it.

2. Don’t just learn it; experience it.

3. Use or share what you’ve learned with a different group of people to gain a better and more comprehensive perspective of the topic and look for new ways to use what you learn.

4. Approach the topic wearing more than your sales manager hat. Look at it from the point of view of an AE, a marketing professional, your station’s advertising clients and their customers.

5. Adopt the mindset of a student and ask other experts questions about the topic.

For more information, download Dr. Bressert’s book for free at this URL: http://www.rapidstartleadership.com/get-leadership-updates/

Practice Mindfulness to Make Better Decisions

Neuroscience knows why humans often make irrational decisions – even if we don’t think we are being irrational. Cognitive biases affect our decision making unconsciously, which often results in poor personal and business consequences. We may know the correct decisions to make, but the unconscious mind is so influential that the cognitive biases divert us towards the wrong decisions.

Research has shown that practicing mindfulness not only reduces stress and increases emotional intelligence, but also develops a keener awareness of the self. Instead of falling into the same old rut of habitual decision making, you can train your brain to be more objective, which leads to more rational decisions – and that makes for optimal business performance.

Learning to be mindful doesn’t require much of your business schedule and it’s an excellent topic for a sales training session, as you certainly want your sales staff to make rational, business-building decisions. A good place to start is the book, The Mindfulness Edge: How to Rewire Your Brain for Leadership and Personal Excellence without Adding to Your Schedule.

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Use the Words Clients Want to Hear, Part 2The March/April Sales Management Report featured 7 of 14 words from a February 2016 Huffington Post article. The list is concluded here with the second group of 7. They are excellent topics for your sales training program. Plus, you should consciously note if your team then uses them during phone calls and pitches. Their use can create a stronger rapport between AEs and their prospects and clients.

• I Don’t Know – Admitting ignorance may seem counter-intuitive, but honesty is almost always a more winning strategy than subterfuge. You lose control of a lie or the misrepresentation of a fact as soon as it is stated. A mistake that can bite an AE in the you-know-what part of his or her anatomy. Savvy clients will notice AE’s honesty. In addition, when AEs say they don’t know, they create an opportunity to provide the answer in a future sales call, which clients can’t lightly refuse.

• Imagine – The human brain’s ability to imagine is a strong sales tool. By asking prospects to imagine the benefits of advertising on your station, the images their mind creates are usually positive. In a sense, they are already experiencing the benefits they will derive from the advertising and relationship, which makes it much easier to close them.

• Now – Cultivating prospects today for future sales is an important part of the sales strategy. It’s even more important to create a feeling that prospects may miss an opportunity if they don’t buy now. This relates directly to meeting with a prospect prior to his or her prime selling season and emphasizing the urgency of advertising now to maximize the prospect’s share of the season’s sales.

• Save – Maybe the ultimate benefit of any sales is that people, whether retail consumers or advertisers, always want to save time and money. “Save” can work with “Now” by offering a limited discount or incentive. It can also be used when renewing contracts by offering additional services or a bundled package at a discount.

• Simple – As much as prospects may see the value of advertising on your station, they may not because they perceive the process of switching to another medium or station as complex. Reassuring them with the simple word “Simple” helps to reduce or eliminate this barrier to a sale.

• Unusual – Many business owners are wary about trying another ad channel when they perceive those they’ve always used are producing results. “Unusual” can be effective when it refers to an alternative ad strategy. Consumers are more likely to recognize a clear difference between an advertiser and his or her competitors when seen in a new medium or on another station.

• We – Instead of a pleasant, but adversarial atmosphere, AEs should use this word as well as “our,” “together” and “us” to create the feeling of a team. The execution of an advertising schedule and its outcome should appear to be a cooperative, shared endeavor.

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Sales Phrases That Result in Dial Tones and Closed Doors, Part 2The March/April Sales Management Insights Report from THE MEDIACENTER also shared the first of 4 sales phrases your AEs should avoid (courtesy of HubSpot). With training, these oft-used phrases can be expunged from your AE’s vocabulary and help differentiate their pitch from the competition – who are likely still using them.

5. “Are you the decision maker?” This one is a bit tricky for local media AEs. Today, many companies are more likely to make decisions as a team instead of an oligarchic leader dictating them from on high. Many local advertisers, however, are family-owned or a single proprietor, so the person an AE may be pitching is the decision maker.

In either case, a better approach is to substitute “you” in the phrase with “organization” or “business,” asking “How would your organization make the decision to advertise on my station?”

6. “I don’t want to waste your time.” Duh, of course, the prospect/client doesn’t want the AE to waste his or her time! AEs often use this phrase as way of disengaging with a prospect who the AE doesn’t think is a valuable prospect.

The mistake is that the prospect may eventually be of value. It’s better for an AE in this situation to provide some value, even if it means referring the prospect to another advertising medium or a consultant or agency.

7. “Can I send you some information?” There was a time when this phrase was a definite no-no. Sales managers

saw this as the sign of a lazy AE who was trying to avoid a direct sales conversation to determine a prospect’s need. Today, however, prospects are further along the purchasing funnel (as much as two-thirds of the way) before they have any reason to interact with an AE.

The variation on this phrase that is likely to work better today is to refer to specific information that the AE recently shared with another prospect or client who had the same need. Then, ask the prospect if he or she would look at it too.

Another important part of this phrase is to limit severely the amount of information sent to the prospect. It’s better for the AE if the prospect truly reads one piece of information versus disregarding an email with 10 links because of the perceived time involved.

8. “Honestly” or “to be honest with you.” According to Pete Caputa, the author of the HubSpot article, this is without a doubt the worst and most counterproductive of all these phrases. Even a prospect or client who isn’t listen carefully to the pitch will latch onto this phrase as an indication that something the AE has said or claimed isn’t true.

Use your training program to scrub this phrase from the memory banks of your AEs. Teach them, instead, to focus on the value advertising on your station will create for the prospect/client.

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(THE MEDIACENTER is not affiliated with or endorses any of the resources, authors, speakers, companies or their content noted in this report and shares the materials for purely informational and educational purposes.)

2016. THE MEDIACENTER. All rights reserved.

Hard Lessons of Young LeadershipWhether you’re a relatively young – or not so young – sales manager, much can be learned from the blunders of young leaders. With the rise of the Millennial generation, there are an ever-increasing number of young adults in leadership positions. No doubt, you’ve added Millennial-age AE to your staff; and although you’re their leader, they can improve their performance and gain greater job satisfaction if they think and act like a leader too.

The following 5 mistakes are often hard lessons for young adults, but by understanding what they could have done differently, they become stronger people and better leaders.

1. Disregarding the gap between one’s choices and skills.

Young leaders may be able to discern the path ahead and understand the right choices, but there is often a gap between those intentions and the utilization of their skill set. In young adults, those skills are newly minted and they are excited and confident (sometimes overconfident) about putting them into practice and succeeding with them. To close this gap, young leaders (and would-be leaders) must continue to work hard at their skills and future choices.

2. Failing to delegate authority.

In their enthusiasm to apply their talents and accomplish individual and team goals, young leaders make the classic mistake of thinking they must be at the core of all actions. One of the most important qualities of a leader is that he or she knows how to inspire and motivate the team to accomplish most of the goals. Young leaders who make this mistake often limit their team’s opportunities to grow and succeed.

3. Overcome by the short-term world.

For good or ill, technology, the Internet and social media has created an environment where everything happens faster, which leads to too much focus on the now and short-term gratification. Young leaders, who are members of the technology generation, gravitate towards and participate in this behavior in their private lives, which is easily transferred to their leadership role in business.

4. When the drive for success supersedes the value of building relationships.

As with almost every generation of young adults, they are rip roaring ready to go from the gate. They can’t wait to put their talent to work, achieve and be respected for the results. Their enthusiasm should be encouraged, but not at the cost of creating a network of relationships that even the most successful and celebrated young (and old) leaders need to sustain their success and become greater leaders.

5. Avoiding the lessons of bad leadership.

In their desire to become better leaders, young adults may think that all their focus should be on the good leaders for whom they work or wish to emulate. As is almost always the case, there is much more to learn observing bad leaders. By doing so, young leaders learn how to make better choices and not acquire the negative traits of bad leaders.