What can radio salespeople do to get a better understanding of advertisers and agencies?
They should do more focus-group research on the people they’re programming to, then give us that information. That would be invaluable. They do a lot of music research, but that’s as far as it goes. It’s time they started thinking of the advertiser as a partner in the whole process, including programming. Radio must look at innovative ways to partner with any media outlet they can find. Think of radio as a part of a multi-media mix. If radio is presented in isolation, it will be thought of in isolation. What about radio sales training that still teaches such lessons as How to steal money from newspaper? Radio broadcasters should think in terms of working with a newspaper or a magazine, or the stronger entities in their market. Then they can say, Look what we did – we partnered; we think this would work for you. That would be creative and innovative, as opposed to us vs. newspaper. They should be thinking about partnering with whatever medium the advertiser wants. They need to say, You
