Manage Expectations or It Will Manage You

If you sell advertising, no matter if it’s on a peanut whistle little radio station or a major market leading TV station, you share this same issue with advertisers. When they commit dollars to your station, many of them have an unspoken expectation of what kind of results they should achieve. Or more precisely, how quickly they should achieve those results.

Recently, I was working with a broadcast company in a major market. We kept encountering the same issue: Clients would get on the station and expect big returns almost immediately. And when it didn’t happen, they’d cancel (or threaten to cancel if the results didn’t improve dramatically). This was after only a week on the air! Now, the stations were determined to get results (good for them!) so they went back and re-wrote the ads, added bonus spots, and gave away some goodies to the client. The one thing they didn’t do was better manage the expectations of the client.

Let me be clear; getting results for the client is the reason we do this. It is our lifeblood. And I believe that when a local AE gets an order from a local business, he hasn’t “won the business”. He’s gotten the opportunity to win the business. The client is taking all the risk; they haven’t gotten anything from the station yet, however they have committed thousands of dollars. Our job it to give them a return on that investment that makes them want to keep doing business with us. I take that responsibility seriously.

That being said, sometimes the business has an unreal expectation of how advertising works best. The fact is that, depending on the product, there may only be a small percentage of the population in the market today or this week for what you have to sell. One example I had recently had to do with a mortgage company. Here’s their reality: the re-fi boom is over. Almost everyone who will refinance has done it already. So, we’re talking to an increasingly smaller audience. And the number of businesses going after that segment in this market was high. So, he has decreasing potential customers and high competition. What’s his expectation? “Blow my doors off in a week or I’m off the station!” Unless the station called a halt to this thinking up front, it’s a recipe for disaster. Guess what? Disaster ensued. I believe part of the obligation to your client is to have this discussion with them upfront. Yes, it can be fraught with danger but not having the discussion is more dangerous.

Here’s what I do. When I meet with business owners, I draw them a picture of a stepladder, usually with about 10 rungs on it. I circle the top rung and call this “big profits”. I draw a circle around the bottom rung also. This is where we are today, starting to climb the ladder to big profits. Then, I circle the third rung. This rung represents the “break even” point. I’ll highlight the gap between the first and third rung, and tell him that this is where too many businesses have their expectations out of line and cancel before they even break even. Come to an agreement that you’ll work together over at least 3 months before you can offer an evaluation of effectiveness. If the client won’t commit, be wary of his expectations.

Bottom Line: Manage client expectations up front, early in the relationship. Even if you have to tweak the copy or the schedule, knowing that you’re in this together to reach “big profit” status makes a big difference. Otherwise, the expectations will manage you.

Dave Burke is President of Burke Media Marketing, Inc, an advertising sales training consultancy. Dave works with radio, TV, and cable sales teams and their clients to help them dominate their markets. He can be reached at (603) 746-5588 or http://www.BurkeMediaMarketing.com