Radio Sales Café

Is the number of accounts an account executive has on the air each month an important statistic to keep track of? Or is the total dollars billed monthly the more important number?

Thanks,
Randy

I don't look at the number of accounts. I look at dollars billed and new business added.

Randy....
I always found this number to be very helpful. Here are a few ways:

1. You cand discover the investment per client. Is your seller presenting enough to gain results?

2. You can compare the client investment between sellers. Is this seller behind or ahead of the other team members? Why?

3. You can play the "what if" game. What if the seller added one more client? You could show him or her how it would impact their billing and their income.

4. You can review the number of accounts on air by the month. Where are the peaks and valleys? What's the plan to bring up the valleys based on the # of accounts?

5. You may discover that your salesperson has two or three big ones accounting for all the bucks. What happens if one of them falls off?

I hope this helps. Have a great day and don't forget to power-up.

Jerry
Jerry's free newsletter: JerrysSalesInsight.com

When I was a rep I was always happier to have 20 small advertisers than 5 large ones for one basic reason - attrition. It's something that will happen and there's very little we can do about it. When, not if, one of those 5 big advertisers goes away what are you left with? And it's much more difficult to replace a larger one. Ultimately you want to have a nice mixture of each and that's what I try to instill to my reps, but in answering your question, give me lots of smaller ones everyday.

We believe keeping a monthly list of active accounts PLUS $$$ generated...& then an average $$$ for your benefit. Helps keep alert to needs when you lose a client...another indicator to keep your planning better. Both numbers are important to me!

Looks like a couple of replies to this thread got posted as a separate discussion, so I'm going to consolidate and re-post them here: Gary Voss , of Hoopeston, IL, wrote: "As many have said this is an important number. Not only for the rep but for the station. Obviously, number of accounts divided by billing gives you the average per account. "You should be able to compare your number of accounts and average with other reps and how you stack up with the station average. Helps at budget time, goal setting and as someone else said look what happens if you would just add one new client per week what you'd have." And Fran Maze, of Jackson, MS, said: "At the start of the month your list can have fifty accounts. Active accounts are not part of the 50 count (businesses that have been on the air in the last 60 days, plus seasonal). During the month you can add accounts (cold calling, leads, etc.) but at the start of the new month your list is recalibrated to 50. "Rolling over accounts is largely done in-between sales people. When management is involved in rolling over an account the sales person can try and make the case to keep the account for another 30 days. We then print an alphabetical station-wide account list that each sales person keeps in their car, so when they see a business to call on then can double-check and see if the business is on someone’s list."