5 Things Programming Can Teach Sales

For years, top radio programmers have employed strategic research to improve ratings and solidify their positions in the market. Salespeople can learn from these Program Directors about how to grow their clients' businesses - a giant step in developing more local business for themselves.

Most retail clients, unlike good PDs, know little about their business holistically. They know lots about how many widgets they sold last week -- much like radio stations know how many listeners they had last week -- but little about why their customers bought ... and why they didn't. Here's what radio salespeople can learn from their programming brethren.

1. How Customers See Things

Radio stations that underperform in the ratings don't understand why they aren't doing better. They might believe their music is better than their competitors ... but listeners don't agree. Similarly, a restaurant might believe they have the best tasting hot dog when customers think the guy down the street has the better frank. Customers determine who has the better tasting hot dog.

Programmers look at perceptions of their customers -- not the people in the station. Salespeople have to look past what clients (and their employees) tell them about their business through objective research.

2. Not Enough ... or Unsatisfied Customers?

In programming terms, many businesses don't realize if they have a "Cume" or a "TSL" problem. A music radio station might have a large audience, but very short Time Spent Listening, for instance. This indicates a problem with their product, not their advertising. Advertising can increase the number of people who sample the station, but better music converts these listeners from "Cumers" to "P1s." So radio programmers know how conversion rate impacts their formats.

Few retailers know their conversion rate -- the number of people who buy something divided by the number of people who enter a business over a fixed period of time. If 100 people enter a client's store and two of them purchase something within the same period, they have a conversion rate of 2% ... great for selling Lear Jets but not-so-good for cell phones, fast food restaurants or convenience stores. Imagine if only 2% of customers who entered McDonalds bought something to eat!

Cash register printouts indicating the number, time and amount of each sale are not as useful without the context of conversion. Businesses need to know how many people come into their store and leave without buying something to understand if they have too few customers or too few satisfied customers.

3. Reasonable Goals

Losing programmers set unrealistic goals. They might have the 14th-rated station in a 20-station market and naively expect to become #1 by launching a flashy TV advertising campaign.

Similarly, without knowledge of their businesses' perception in the minds of their customers, clients aren't able to set realistic campaign goals. And because their goals are unreasonable, they are unprepared for predictable setbacks like Seth Godin's "Dip" or Roy Williams' "Chickening-out Period" - the early stages of a campaign when it is not yet delivering the anticipated end results.

Good programmers set reasonable goals -- specific, focused, measurable and consistent with their resources. And they are prepared for inevitable setbacks that occur along the way, confident they will prevail in the end with a well-crafted strategic plan.

4. Congruent Product Features

Radio programmers are misguided if they believe a better morning show or a big promotion will grow ratings when listeners think their music sucks.

A restaurant may think a "low price" is their most important feature - when objective research shows that a "good tasting meal" trumps cost for their customer's satisfaction. Bill Clinton's team realized, "It's the economy, stupid," was pivotal in winning the 1992 U.S. Presidential Election. Without critical research, they might have focused on the war in Iraq or another important issue at the time - just not as important as the economy. (Interestingly, the research for Clinton's campaign was conducted by a radio programming facility.)

Radio's clients must have product features congruent with what their target customers most want to buy -- not just what they think consumers want.

5. Effective Promotion

Radio programmers test their TV commercials to discover if they are...

1. Likeable: Do people like the commercial?
2. Properly received: Do they "get" the message being sent?
3. Effective: Does it inspire them into action?

If salespeople tested their client's radio commercials before they aired, and re-produced the ones that performed poorly, their client's campaigns would be much more effective.

Research that addresses every one of these five points is easily and inexpensively fielded using today's Internet technology. And as radio programmers have discovered, salespeople can use this information to help grow their clients' businesses and develop a large portfolio of local clients.