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By Stan Hustad

One way you can make more sales is to present yourself, your message and your personality as if you were a radio broadcaster. Even in sales, you need to learn the power and poise of performing as if you’re on the radio.

Broadcast training is excellent sales training. Just look at the following parallels:

Attracting an audience
The first thing you learn in radio is how to attract an audience. Warmth, presence, personality, music, talk and information are the elements that make listeners tune into one radio show instead of the other, and this goes for financial advisors, too. People have to want to listen to you. If not, they’ll simply change stations, and you, your presentation and your message will be gone.

Today, people are choosy about the messages they’ll consider. The trick is to attract them and gain their listening loyalty. You can’t pester them or beg them to listen to you. In fact, you can’t really prospect for listeners. You have to perform in such a way that people want to listen. You have to earn the right to have people heed your financial message. It’s your personal performance, not market performance, that will attract people to you.

You have one minute
Learn the art of the 60-second commercial. Today, most people get their consumer and financial information over the radio and television in 10-, 15-, 30- and 60-second bites. They have been conditioned to it. For this reason, you have one minute to tell your story.

This may be a hard lesson to learn. Many insurance advisors today still use the old line, “Can I have 20 minutes of your time to tell you what I do?” No savvy radio broadcaster would expect such consideration, and neither should you.

It’s your personal performance, not market performance, that will attract people to you.

You need to shrink your message and your approach into a short, emotionally rich message. This is how you get people’s attention, keep their interest and lead them to buy your product.

Try this: When you call a prospect and get voice mail, you’re usually prompted to leave a message. When that happens, consider yourself on-the-air. It’s time for the One-Minute Show starring you. If you’re boffo, the prospect will call back. There is power knowing you can say to a prospect, “My presentation will take one minute.”

Talk radio
One of the most popular broadcasting formats is talk radio. An entertaining and informed talk radio host can attract millions of listeners and followers. And one thing you can learn from these glorified gabbers is the art of pleasant conversation.

I often ask advisors, “What is the goal of having a telephone conversation with a prospect?” “To get an appointment,” they answer. But I question whether this is an appropriate goal. There is no way you can control whether a person will give you an appointment. You can be charming, well scripted and persistent, yet still fail.

A better tactic is to do what a good radio host does: Have a helpful and pleasant conversation. The conversation between you and a prospect should be enjoyable. And just like a radio host, your conversation should seek an ongoing connection. You want your listener to keep listening, and you want your prospects to become more engaged with you and your message.

Your phone conversation should be a good radio program in itself. Make every effort to seek a connection with your listener, and help him take positive action. This connection will often lead to an appointment, and the listener has the choice to continue or terminate the connection.

Keep it fun
How does this take the pressure off working the phone? Remember, the goal is not to push your prospect for an appointment, but to trust the communication process. When you call someone, initiate a pleasant conversation that provides insight and information and makes the prospect want to connect with you further. If you can do this, almost every phone call can be a success.

I know one advisor who set up his office like a radio studio. Playing the radio game allows him to perform his telephone work as a radio host, and this makes it fun for him. He uses earphones, a studio microphone as well as scripts. He will often have a tape recorder running so that he can play back his calls at a later time to see how well he performs.

Radio training may be just the thing you need to help you become a more professional marketer and to have more fun while you’re doing it. Let your personality run the show, and the possibilities will unfold. Isn’t it time for you to be on the radio?

Stan Hustad is the leader of the PTM Group (www.ptmgroup.com), a performance coaching and marketing service for insurance and financial advisors. You can contact him at ptmark@aol.com.

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