Radio Sales Café

I am happy to say that my radio station is no longer dead and rotting in the ground, but starting come back to life.  Because of this great news, totally due to our excellent sales manager, things are starting to fall through the cracks.  Before, our clients would only change their spots once or twice a year if at all, where as now, they are changing them every few weeks or each month.  I have tried to put the spot schedule and order schedule on my outlook calendar, but it is not working very well.  We have tried extra papers in the orders to track spots, but that was even worse.  Please, Please, Please, does anyone have any ideas?  I know that I am great at my job, but with such important things  as airing the correct or current spot falling though the cracks on occasion I am feeling very defeated.  What do you all do?  Thank you for your time, consideration, and help with this matter. 

Hi Valeria, I feel your pain. We can help! What you are looking for is what our PPO ( Paperless Production Order) system does. Go to this link: http://www.vcreativeinc.com/radio/

Valeria-
A simple Excel spreadsheet with client name, schedule start date, schedule end date, copy change dates and a brief description of what the schedule is very helpful. You can sort the spread sheet by what ever column you want, and check it weekly to look for important things happening each week/month etc. The important part of this is to take five minutes at the end of each day and add all new sales to your spread sheet.
Hope that helps
Chris

We have what is called a 'come-up' system in our building. Let's say that I have a client who is on a yearly schedule. We renewed in December 2009. I know that their first commercial runs Jan. - March 31. Then, that next ad runs 3 months, and so on. When I write that yearly order...I then make 'come-up' sheets that will remind me of when I need to change copy. So....I write the order in December. At the same time, I take a plain white sheet of paper and on it I write 'come up - March 15, 2010 - Stephanie - change client abc copy - to start April 1st.' We have one gal in our front office, Leanne, who we give this 'come-up' sheet of paper to. She would get this come up in December...so she would file it in her 'March 2010' folder. At the end of February, she pulls up everybody's 'come-ups' or reminders....and passes those out to the sales people. Then...I see this reminder that I wrote myself that says: 'come up - March 15, 2010 - Stephanie - change client abc copy - to start April 1st.' I hope this makes sense....but I also use this system for reminders for sending clients b-day cards, etc.

We also have a report that is send to us daily called our 'copy missing' report. It is emailed to us and if we have an order in, but we have no commercial to match that order, it will give us a reminder to get them that commercial.

Hope this makes sense - if you have a question - let me know!

We have computer driven billing which does all this but I try to put the information in my appointment book, too. A simple note is sufficent.