Friday, March 16, 2012

Wanna see some GREEN on St. Patrick’s Day?

Here are a couple quick hit ideas to get money going for Q2:

• Make sure you calendar of events, programming specials and partnerships with existing events is complete and now build the packages.      
• To my point in Monday’s column, plan a Q2 One-Day Sale for the first of April to lay in all the months of Q2.
• Target businesses that are driven during Q2 Holidays and build a package:
• Mother’s Day
• Father’s Day
• Easter (it’s early this year)
• Earth Day
• Memorial Day
• July 4th (for the end of June)
•  Turn over a new leaf with your sales staff and do what you may have stopped doing or might for the first time:
• I don’t care if they don’t like call sheets, do ‘em.  We are ALL accountable.
• Set new business goals and reward your reps for developing new biz.
• Consider a tiered commission plan:  X% at budget, higher for +10% of budget, and minus for missing.
• Don’t forget to add a separate budget for digital.
• Pledge to join each of your reps on one call a week.
• Provide new and different training for them -- presentation skills, closing skills, prospecting skills.  (You don’t have to spend a bunch of money … use RAB, or better yet, pick one of your better sellers and tell them you want them to do a presentation on any of the above for the rest of the staff -- they will love that you asked and your younger/newer sellers will benefit.