Tag Archives: Sales

Bloggers wanted

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USATODAY.com: Retailers are creating blogs to promote brand awareness and sales. A recent study by online market research firm ComScore Networks found that shoppers who visit blogs spend about 6% more than the average online shopper. “The people who spend time on our blog are the people who are … the very top customers that we have,” says a former CEO of fashion catalog Spiegel.

I’m of the opinion that EVERY company should be blogging. No one is interested in your static, boring “About Us” website. And, frankly, I’ve got a few of those up myself. If you’re gonna be online, talk to your customers. Listen to them. Blog.

But I have a hunch it’s going to be harder to find people to feed the blog beast than than we realize. It almost certainly won’t be the guy that writes your bullshit company news releases. I used to write radio commercials and I’m pretty sure that in no way prepares someone to blog. And a lot of news writers are terrible at the blog format. So I’m wondering, why is it so hard for some folks to write a decent blog post? I think it probably has something to do with honesty. Specifically, that “voice” thing.

Blogging is kind of like writing a letter to a friend…but letting the entire world read over your should. And if you’re faking it, people somehow know it. In much the same way the “America’s Funniest Home Videos” producers know when they’re watching a true candid moment or something staged.

I had lunch with Chuck this week. He’s been blogging for less than six months but picked it up quickly. We talked about where you would look to find people to hire to blog for a business or organzation. The first thing that popped into my head was, I would never hire someone to blog professionally if they were not already blogging. Frankly, there would be no way to know if they could do it…unless they WERE doing it.

I’m not sure I could get a job as a blogger. But the real acid test would be right here at smays.com. If you’re reading this, you probably know everything you need to know about me. No personality profile. No writing tests. You could probably skip the interview. If you couldn’t hire me based on what I’ve posted here, you wouldn’t want me. Blogging is about honesty and transparency and hanging it out there. Could someone scam me with a bogus blog? Could they fake it? Maybe for a few posts… but it would be hard work to keep up that kind of charade for weeks or months.

If I had to go looking for a new job tomorrow, I would not bother updating a resume. I’d just send them here. They could read for 3 minutes or three hours and know everything they need to know about me.

Kevin Kelly: We Are the Web

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Kevin Kelly has written a wonderful article for WIRED.com about the Web that perfectly sums up what I’ve been feeling but didn’t know how to say. I encourage you to read the complete article, but here are a few grafs that jumped out at me:

The scope of the Web today is hard to fathom. The total number of Web pages, including those that are dynamically created upon request and document files available through links, exceeds 600 billion. That’s 100 pages per person alive.

No Web phenomenon is more confounding than blogging. Everything media experts knew about audiences – and they knew a lot – confirmed the focus group belief that audiences would never get off their butts and start making their own entertainment. Everyone knew writing and reading were dead; music was too much trouble to make when you could sit back and listen; video production was simply out of reach of amateurs. Blogs and other participant media would never happen, or if they happened they would not draw an audience, or if they drew an audience they would not matter. What a shock, then, to witness the near-instantaneous rise of 50 million blogs, with a new one appearing every two seconds. There – another new blog! One more person doing what AOL and ABC – and almost everyone else – expected only AOL and ABC to be doing. These user-created channels make no sense economically. Where are the time, energy, and resources coming from? The audience.

The Web continues to evolve from a world ruled by mass media and mass audiences to one ruled by messy media and messy participation. How far can this frenzy of creativity go? Encouraged by Web-enabled sales, 175,000 books were published and more than 30,000 music albums were released in the US last year. At the same time, 14 million blogs launched worldwide. All these numbers are escalating. A simple extrapolation suggests that in the near future, everyone alive will (on average) write a song, author a book, make a video, craft a weblog, and code a program. This idea is less outrageous than the notion 150 years ago that someday everyone would write a letter or take a photograph.

There is only one time in the history of each planet when its inhabitants first wire up its innumerable parts to make one large Machine. Later that Machine may run faster, but there is only one time when it is born. You and I are alive at this moment.

Interview with Mary Quass

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Mary Quass has been doing the radio thing for a long time. She bought her first station in 1988 and was right in the thick of the consolidation “land rush” of the late ’90s. Mary’s from a small town in southeast Iowa (Fairfield) and got her first radio job in 1977 selling advertising at KHAK in Cedar Rapids. She became sales manager of the station for two years (1979-82) and then served as GSM at KSO Des Moines until she returned to Cedar Rapids to purchase KHAK.

Ten years later, Quass Broadcasting merged with Capstar to form Central Star Communications, and Mary oversaw all aspects of the radio stations in her region. In July 1999, when the company merged with Chancellor Media to become AMFM Inc., Central Star Communications consisted of 66 stations in 14 midwest markets.

I’ve known Mary for a long time and she’s been a good friend to our company. Mary is one smart lady and she doesn’t think out of the box because she doesn’t know there is a box. So I called to get her take on what’s happening “out there.” I asked her about satellite radio, podcasting, consolidation, blogs, Internet radio and a bunch of other stuff.

AUDIO: Interview with Mary Quass 30 min MP3

Correction and update: I knew that Mary had been interviewed by Radio Ink in 2003 –and mentioned it in the interview– but when I went back to check a couple of things I thought I was looking at a new interview. I wasn’t. But I found a couple of interesting nuggets while re-reading the piece. Remember, this was two years ago.

“We cant just stick our heads in the sand and think that the Internet wont have an impact on Radio. This is the first technology to mean that anybody can have a radio station as good as, if not better than, whats out there today  and it has nothing to do with a license. I want to be in and out of the business by then. When I was growing up, I could tell you my favorite radio station, and I was adamant about it. Well, a 12-year-old today can tell you the artists, but they may or may not have a Radio station where they know the DJs. Im very concerned about this, because we havent remained relevant to these people.”

“As an industry, we got away from that and have lost sight of the fact that we must give people product that they cant get everywhere else. If we dont differentiate our product when the Internet becomes wireless, it will be a whole new ball game for all of us. We had better be ready, or the frustration we feel will only grow.”

Podcasting is bottom-up

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Rex Hammock knocks “the business of podcasting. Not the essence of podcasting” in a response to Darren Barefoot. I agree with Mr. Hammock about the content of podcasts:

The “killer-app” content will be that which has no professional alternative: A report from a Mom to her two children away in college; a recording of a Sunday School class for six people who couldn’t attend; an inspirationial chat from the regional sales manager to 15 sales people to listen to while driving between calls; an explanation of a new product by the lead engineer; a father’s play-by-play description of a Little League baseball game — all showing up automagically on the iPod or other MP3 player of the individuals who “subscribe” to it.

Radio to decline 2.5%. Blame iPods and satellites.

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Some interesting stats coming out of the Kagan Radio/TV Summit in New York. The CIBC World Markets director of research says radio can expect an overall 2.5% annual radio audience decline this year owing primarily to iPods and satellite radio.

According to independent research commissioned by Sirius, once consumers get a Sirius radio, they spend 83% of their radio time with Sirius and 7% with traditional radio. So whats commercal radio to do? According to the presentation: Increase local content; upgrade national sales efforts; get better research data; Hire TV people (“they know how to sell in a declining market.”)

Radio-Guy

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Steve Erenberg collects stuff.

“Oddball & scary scientific stuff, globes, industrial masks and helmets, motors, contraptions, electrostatic devices, salesmen’s samples, anatomical models, x-ray tubes and early radio equipment.”

I’d love to see where he lives. Erenberg is a creative director at a NY advertising agency but was trained as an architect. He designed the five-story globe in front of Trump Tower.

Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel

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I’ve spent the last few minutes of the last few nights on my back laughing so hard tears trickled down to my ears. I’m highlighting my way through Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel by Scott Adams.

“You can ignore almost everything that is asked of you and in the long run it won’t matter. Either the tasks will become moot or your boss will forget what he asked you to do, or someone else will do it.” Or, “If you stall long enough, every corporate initiative ends, even layoffs.”

I particularly enjoyed the description an encounter with a salesman for a local radio station that was trying to convince Adams to buys advertising for the resturant he co-owns. Adams asked the sales person how many listeners the radio station had.

“The sales weasel explained, ‘You have to spend money to make money.’ I pointed out that he probably knew the number of listeners and that I could decide on my own if it was worth knowing. The weasel responded by explaining how many human beings lived within listening range of his station, i.e. weaselmath. I asked how that mattered if they weren’t actually listening, just potentially listening.”

“Then he explained that it’s much more expensive to advertise on other radio stations on a cost-per-relevlant-listener basis. I asked how he knew that if he didn’t know how many listeners he had.”

“He explained to me that some of my competitors were advertising on his station and they must be getting some benefit or they wouldn’t be doing it. I pointed out that most of my competitors weren’t advertising on his station and if not advertising wasn’t working, they wouldn’t be doing it. It wasn’t a good meeting.”

God help us if radio listening ever becomes as brutally measurable as the Web.

Boiler Room

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A great “sales” scene from Boiler Room (2000), written and directed by Ben Younger and staring Giovanni Ribisi, Ben Affleck, Scott Caan, Vin Diesel and Nia Long. The movie was just so-so, but the scene in which Ben Affleck’s character (Jim Young) explains things to a bunch of trainees in a small-time brokerage house is… chilling.

Jim Young: “Goddammit, you fuckin’ guys. I’m gonna keep this short, okay? You passed your sevens over a month ago. Seth’s the only one that’s opened the necessary forty accounts for his team leader. When I was a junior broker I did it in 26 days. Okay? You’re not sendin’ out press packets anymore. None of this Debbie the Time Life operator bullshit. So get on the phones, it’s time to get to work. Get off your ass! Move around. Motion creates emotion. I remember one time I had this guy call me up, wanted to pitch me, right? Wanted to sell me stock. So I let him. I got every fuckin rebuttal outta this guy, kept him on the phone for an hour and a half. Towards the end I started askin him buying questions, like what’s the firm minimum? That’s a buying question, right there that guys gotta take me down. It’s not like I asked him, what’s your 800 number, that’s fuckoff question. I was givin him a run and he blew it. Okay? To a question like what is the firm minimum, the answer is zero. You don’t like the idea, don’t pick up a single share. But this putz is tellin me you know, uhh, 100 shares? Wrong answer! No! You have to be closing all the time. And be aggressive, learn how to push! Talk to ’em. Ask ’em questions… ask ’em rhetorical questions, it doesn’t matter, anything, just get a yes out of ’em. If you’re drowning and I throw you a life jacket would you grab it? Yes! Good. Pick up 200 shares I won’t let you down. Ask them how they’d like to see thirty, forty percent returns. What are they gonna say, no? Fuck you? I don’t wanna see those returns. Stop laughing, it’s not funny. If you can’t learn how to close, you better start thinkin about another career. And I am deadly serious about that. Dead fuckin serious. And have your rebuttals ready, guy says call me tommorrow? Bullshit! Somebody tells you th-they money problems about buyin 200 shares is lying to you. You know what I say to that? I say, hey look, man, tell me you don’t like my firm, tell me you don’t like my idea, tell me you don’t like my fuckin neck tie, but don’t tell me you can’t put together 2,500 bucks. And there is no such thing as a no-sell call. A sell is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some stock, or he sells you on a reason he can’t. Either way, a sell is made. The only question is: who’s gonna close? You or him?! Now be relentless. That’s it, I’m done.”

Kind of makes me wonder if Ben Younger liked the Glengarry Glen Ross scene as much as I did.

Glengarry Glen Ross (Always be closing)

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In thirty years I’ve been in on or part of countless sales meetings, sales seminars and sales calls. But David Mamet boiled it all down to one great scene in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. It’s the “Always Be Closing, Always Be A Closer” scene in which Blake (Alec Baldwin) is confronting the employees of a tough Chicago real-estate office, Shelley Levene (Jack Lemmon), Ed Moss (Ed Harris) and George Aaronow (Alan Arkin) while their unsympathetic supervisor John Williamson (Kevin Spacey) looks on. If you would like, this monologue I’m sure can be edited into one incredibly long one, if you want to take out the lines from the other actors.

Blake: Let me have your attention for a moment! So you’re talking about what? You’re talking about…(puts out his cigarette)…bitching about that sale you shot, some son of a bitch that doesn’t want to buy, somebody that doesn’t want what you’re selling, some broad you’re trying to screw and so forth. Let’s talk about something important. Are they all here? Continue reading →