The month of February brings to the forefront a single day where love is the focus. Valentines Day. Yes, that one-day where we go all out for that one person we love dearly. I would suggest to you that if you wait until February 14 you have missed 11 other months to show your love. Because I am a sales coach and not a life coach, I need to quickly move over to the lovers in your business life? From an ad sales training perspective, what have you done recently to show your advertisers some love? If you don’t take care of your advertisers your competitors will! That I can promise you.
Experts tell us that it takes fives times the money and five times the energy to win a new client. So, what can we do to show our advertisers some love and keep them in a long-term relationship? Let’s have some fun on this topic, but also look at some serious ideas to boost your relationships with your advertisers.
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Here are 6 ways to show your advertisers some love this month and beyond.
- What about sending hand written love notes? The art of the hand written thank you note has neared extinction. Join me in reviving this age-old sales retention activity. Buy some nice thank you cards and grab a nice pen and get to work. I like to send along a $5 Starbucks card with my thank you notes too. Is your handwriting poor? Check out Bond.co (not dot com. Dot co) They will write your thank you notes for you for $7
- Who doesn’t love to eat? Send some lovely small edible gifts. I use 1-800-flowers.com to send small tokens of appreciation like popcorn or cookies. A little secret is to buy the free all year shipping pass. This means all of your shipping is covered for the year at one flat rate. There are many non-floral gifts for under $20.
- How about sending non-sales emails of love? On a monthly basis I like to find a great motivational article or Youtube video to share with my clients. I find many on Inc.com under their motivation section. I write a simple email and send them the link. I do NOT mention sales at“Hi Bob. I came across this great article and thought I would share it with you. – insert link – . Have a great day. – Ryan” In my ad sales training workshops, we spend 45 minutes on this important topic. Why? Because this retention activity truly needs to be a part of your daily sales life.
- Introduce your advertisers to experts that will love them too. Set-up meetings for your advertisers with subject matter experts that you know will benefit their business. For example, find a cyber security expert or an SEO expert and work out a deal with these pros where the first consultation is free for your advertisers. Or, you pay for it.
- Online educational love-fests. Or, you can call them “webinars” if you want. Lol. Educational webinars are a great way to show your clients some love. Arrange for an expert to talk on a webinar about topics that are important to the industry or community that you serve. You might event tap some of the subject matter experts from #4 above for these webinars. The topics you choose are important to draw a crowd. You might even consider using a survey to determine the topics that are important to your advertisers. This is an invitation only type of online event. Those invited can ask questions as well. Don’t worry about large numbers of attendees. Keep it intimate and action oriented. Do not over think this retention activity. I use GotoWebinar for this type of activity. GTW is cost effective and I have never one time experienced a technical issue with the
- How about a sexy phone message from the boss? Ok, that might be a stretch. Arrange to have your boss or a member of top brass simply call the advertiser. Even if you get a voicemail the impact is awesome. Advertisers love to hear that the boss cares about them enough to call them. If you make this a monthly activity, the time commitment is fairly minimal yet the impact is monumental. Keep in mind, you will get voice mail 90% of the time.
Many of you will wait for the holidays to show your love. By the time you wait for the Christmas holiday to say I love you, your competitor has asked them for a date 11 times. The odds of success are in their favor. Show your advertisers some love today! Make these activities a part of your ad sales training program and your annual advertiser retention program.
Loving your advertisers and having an active retention plan in place is mission critical to your long-term success in the sales business. Those that master the retention game survive a VERY long time in the sales game. Don’t wait. Start showing some love today!
XO Ryan
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Ryan Dohrn is an internationally certified ad sales coach and media sales trainer with a focus on the media industry. You can find out more about his ad sales training and ad sales coaching programs online at http://360AdSales.com . Ryan is also a top sales conference speaker and sales meeting speaker.