Week of July 9, 2007

Friday 07/13, 2007

The Spring books are about to be rolling out. Have a story ready in advance no matter what the numbers are. Don't wait for the competition to "spin" the results. Have each PD and sales manager informed ahead of time. Everyone must tell the same story. Have a great weekend everyone!

Thursday 07/12, 2007

Now is the time to start planning for the Fall book. If you have a large cluster of stations, make sure your sales, programming and marketing departments are thinking about it this week. It's never too early to plan, even if you don't have the Spring book out yet.

Wednesday 07/11, 2007

You notice that pacing is not moving at all. You decide to have a meeting with your sales managers to see why they can't even hit their re-projected June revenue forecast. You ask to see the direct % of all business written for month and find out the average is less than 10% of total business written. You ask the sales managers what is the consequence if the sellers don't hit their direct goals? The sales managers tell you there is no consequence. You immediately implement a consequence, which deducts 1% of their commission if they don't hit direct budgets. Do you think your sellers will get the message that direct business is important?

Tuesday 07/10, 2007

Your GSM just came in and informed you that your top salesperson is going across the street for a huge list and a pile of stock options. The worst part about her leaving is 35% of her billing was direct clients that will be impossible to replace. The direct clients always follow the relationship across the street. What was your relationship with this A/E? If you were doing your job you would realize that the top billing A/E is no different than a big morning show. Each do basically the same thing...they bring in lots of revenue! Don't take your largest revenue producers for granted....just because they make more money than you, doesn't mean they don't need some recognition once in a while.

Monday 07/09, 2007

You just got a page over the intercom that your Regional is on hold...you tell the receptionist to tell the Regional that your out on a sales calls...(always works). Here is a hint....your Regional has had lots of time to prepare for the call and they have very specific items that they want to cover. Most of the items will be P&L questions with a lot of emphasis paid to comps from the year before regarding; cost of sales, A&P, programming and G&A. If you don't know the answer, don't bu@%llsh#t...tell them you are going to research it and get right back to them. You did do a preliminary P&L with suggested expense cuts when you received your soft June forecast, right?