First Quarter Sales Packages

Welcome to the new year 2017! The busy-ness of the holidays are behind us and now it’s time to get down to business.

Traditionally, radio sales are slow in the first quarter of the year, as local businesses take inventory of their stock and attempt to recover from a busy holiday shopping season. If sales people are waiting around for the orders to come in, the station’s commercial logs will be empty. This is the time of year to be creative and put together some sales packages to encourage local businesses to buy spots on the station.

Many stations create special rates to entice clients. The problem with this approach is that when an advertiser gets used to a $20 rate, it’s going to be difficult to get him back at a $60 rate. In my experience, the best sales packages are when you offer an advertiser something they normally can’t buy.

For example, put together special 60-second spots that have a unique purpose. On Valentine’s Day, have a Valentine’s Day package where you put three appropriate clients – florists, sweet shops, restaurants - all in one spot. Produce a 60-second spot with an open and close, and give each client fifteen seconds of copy inside the donut. If the sales department is aggressive, you could sell fifteen to twenty different clients on this package. Charge each client one-third your top ratecard 60-second spot rate, and you’ll be getting full rate for each spot, while at the same time giving a small business an affordable way to get their message out to your listeners.

Put together a package for a shopping mall or a shopping neighborhood. For instance, you can produce an open and close for Crossroads Mall, then plug three different small stores into the donut. There are numerous types of packages you can put together: medical centers, restaurants. Think of any type of product category and you can put together interesting and creative sales packages.

These types of packages will be production-intensive, and good production will make them interesting to listen to. They are also sales-intensive, as salespeople have to call on many smaller businesses to make the packages work. To incentivize sellers, offer a special higher commission for selling businesses into these packages. Some stations have had such success selling them that they even put together some packages during their heavy advertising time, too. If produced properly, they will become part of the content of the radio station letting listeners know where they can find shopping bargains, as opposed to just another commercial.