Radio Sales Café

I have a difficult ford dealer in my market, he advertises on the local tv station, cable and newspaper but doesn't like radio.  We are in a town of approximately 45K people and he is the numer one ford dealer so he is doing well.  However, there must be a dealer out there doing better adding radio to the mix in a similar market.  Any ideas, suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks, Tina

Tina, I posted your inquiry on the RSC Facebook fan page, and received several responses right away. From Dennis Jackson: Find a way to get his voice on the air without giving him a free schedule. Or wish him happy birthday on the air (even if it's not!) Then wait for the reaction. From Valeria Bongard: I love your idea Dennis. What we do is offer him BOGO spots at a ridiculous price (cheap) to get them to try us out and they have always come back for more. From Phil Bernstein: It's not about radio. For this dealer, radio is nothing more, and nothing less, than another delivery mechanism for his sales message. And if he's the number one dealer in town, the odds are that his current media are doing a pretty good job of delivering his message already. If you're pitching radio, you're offering him a solution to a problem he doesn't think he has. No problem = no sale. So you need to figure out if he has a problem you CAN solve. That means a complete needs analysis, with no selling in the meeting. As part of the analysis -- toward the end -- ask him two questions:... 1. Out of all the advertising you're doing now, what do you think is working the best? Whatever the answer is, don't argue with him about it. Just know that you can't compete for that pot of money. 2. Is there anything you're doing now that isn't working as well as it used to? Again, whatever the answer is, don't jump in with a pitch for radio. Just write it down, and try to find out how much money he's spending on it. That could be your money if you play your cards right. Tell him you think you can come up with a way for him to get better results from his advertising without increasing his overall ad budget. Ask for another appointment in a week to ten days at which you can make a presentation. Then, based on what you learned elsewhere in the needs analysis, come back with a plan showing how your station can do a better job of selling for him than whatever he told you about in Question 2.

Thanks for all the responses...I really appreciate your help. But I have done a needs analysis and we have offered him free spots...I know how much he spends per month on TV, cable and newspaper...how many cars he sold last year..his ROI...I am looking for an idea that will blow him away...I want a portion of the dollars he is already spending...If there is a top ford dealer in a similar market (45K people) with radio in the mix or that has done a promotion that has worked well chances are he will know that individual and I can use him as an example...this guy does his research...

Tina, I'm going to copy and paste your most recent reply to the Facebook thread, but since you're one of our Facebook fans, you might want to post your own response. Dennis Jackson and Phil Bernstein continued the discussion on FB, and Phil provided a lot of good advice in his reply: Dennis said, "Valeria, what are BOGO spots? "Phil, I certainly like your high road approach, if the dealer will allot the time for a meeting to discuss such issues. How to get into that meeting and discussion, is the question IMHO." Phil replied, "That's a great question, Dennis, and I'm not sure I have the answer for this particular dealer. I don't know the dealer, or Tina, or anything about any previous interactions between the two. "In general, though, you have to look at it from the dealer's point of view. He's got a lot on his plate -- customer issues, factory issues, service issues. He's plenty busy, and an hour he gives to Tina is an hour he won't be able to use on all his other problems. "If he's advertising on TV, cable and in the newspaper, he is probably getting calls from radio reps on a daily basis. If he ever lets any of them in, they show up with a ranker, a media kit, a graph showing 'the power of radio,' and the cheap spot package of the month. "So what can Tina offer to him that will be worth his time? Remember -- he's already the number one dealer in town, doing zero radio. "She needs to convince him that, given enough information, she can bring him ideas that will help him sell even more Fords than he's already selling. It means convincing him that she already knows something about the car business, and about Ford, and about what local car buyers are responding to. "In other words, she needs to earn the meeting. "Possibilities (I'm making these up, but I used variations on all of these in the 15 years I sold radio): "'I saw your TV commercial last week, and think there's a way to tweak the message to generate more ups.' "'I recently learned about a promotion that a Ford dealer in Virginia used to sell 45 trucks in a weekend.' "'I just read the Automotive News article about Ford's new F-150 campaign, and have a way you can leverage the money they're spending to drive the traffic into your store.' "None of these are particularly clever lines. And they don't have anything to do with radio, or the station, or the fact that you're #3 with Men 25-44 in mid-days. They're about the only thing a Ford dealer is interested in: selling cars and trucks. "I don't know if any of these would work on this particular dealer. But taking this approach greatly improves the odds of getting the attention, and time, of a car dealer. If not this one, then another good radio prospect."

One of the classic objections we've all encountered at one time or another is some variant of, "What I've got is good enough." And Phil is right about having to "earn" the meeting - insofar as the dealer doesn't "owe" anything -- not even a hearing -- to the salesperson, regardless of that salesperson's sincerity, good intentions, etc. In my experience, the best advice I can offer is to be persistent. Not pushy. Persistent. That distinction requires a great deal of empathy for the dealer, but it's not impossible to discern and walk the fine line that will eventually lead to success. This discussion brings to mind a little thing we did on the air back in Winona 30-some years ago. In retrospect, it seems kind of haughty and foolish...but we were young, cocky, and had a pretty good track record of getting and keeping clients on the air. So, when the Ford dealership in town changed hands, purchased by an Iowa dealer who'd used a lot of TV back in his old market, they stopped doing radio and put all their money into LaCrosse (WI) TV. We tried and tried to get a hearing, but this young owner was convinced that TV was king and radio a wretched beggar, unworthy of consideration, not even so much as a crumb. (an aside to Phil: pbbbbfffttttt!) After a few frustrating months, we concocted this "plan" in a sales meeting. Some twenty staffers lined up in the production studio and spoke this fellow's name into the mic: "Bill H------------er". Everyone had a different take on the delivery, quite a bit of variety in the interpretation. We arranged with the consent of the powers-that-be to schedule playback of this audio -- just his name, nothing more or less -- inserted between the automated announcer's time-check and the station jingle ID. So, several times an hour it would sound like this: "It's four-forty-six" -- "Bill H------------er" -- (jingle ID into music) I'm sure the dealer started hearing about this within a few hours, but he resisted contacting us for two days ... and even then, he had one of his front-office ladies call the station to ask, "Why are you saying his name on the air all the time?" Our receptionist responded along the lines that we just wanted to make sure people knew how to pronounce it correctly. I believe the point was taken that the station did, indeed, have an impact in the community and the potential to reach his prospects effectively...but as I left the market soon afterwards, I don't recall whether the dealer ever came around and became a client of the station. Think I'll check with my old boss to see if he remembers.... Anyhow, best wishes on this one, Tina.

Love this...It would definitely get his attention and he would do the same have his admin PK call in...If you do check with your old boss let me know how it turned out...Thanks so much....

There's a fellow whose name, unfortunately, escapes me. He's in SoCal and owns many car dealerships across the country. The way he determines what dealerships to buy is by going into a market and finding out which dealers aren't using radio. He knows any dealer who isn't using radio is under-performing.

It would be helpful to know what his prejudice against radio happens to be.

Hi Tina. I had a very similar circumstance with a Ford Dealership in our market years ago. He was hung up on Print and that was all he wanted to use. I asked him to go into his service department and check every car/truck that came in there for a week and see (1) if the radio was "on" when the ignition key was turned on and (2) what station was tuned in. I did this knowing full well what the results would be in advance. About 80% of the vehicles had the radio "on" and 65% of them were listening to our station.
The idea here was to proove to the dealer that HIS customers were radio listeners and therefore he should be approaching them in there cars with a positive message about his dealership.
It worked... that dealership has been thru two ownerships since and has maintained it's very strong presence on our station.
Jim Bowman