Can You Stop For A Moment?

Can You Stop For A Moment?

by | Nov 22, 2021 | Really? The Personal ScLoHo, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

As the General Sales Manager of WOWO radio in Fort Wayne, Indiana, I lead a team of advertising sales people and marketing consultants and on Thursdays we gather for an hour for a Local Sales Team Meeting.

Naturally we will skip this week because Thursday is Thanksgiving and our company has added Black Friday as an additional paid holiday, giving everyone a nice long 4 day weekend.

However last week’s WOWO Sales Team Meeting had a focus on the Final 40 days of the year and what we needed to do.

40 days on the calendar in reality is more like around 20 business days this time of year.

Now if you work in retail, every day counts because it’s that traditional make-it or break-it time of the year. The origin of the term Black Friday was that was the day of the year that retailers finally stopped operating in the red financially and started making real money or being in the black.

Regarding the title of this piece, Can You Stop For A Moment?, for some of us that moment is now, for others it will be in a few weeks after Christmas, others may need to wait until the beginning of 2022.

What and why do I even ask that question?

Because we seem to be running at an incredible pace these days.  Even if things do slow down in business right now, your lives will be filled with other events like family gatherings and parties, and well, somehow we manage to fill all 24 hours of every day, don’t we?

How long is a moment?

Depends, of course.

I know that there are some parents who would long to have an hour each week that is entirely theirs with no expectations.  Some even long for 15 minutes a day.

Same is true with so many people.

As you and I wind down this year and prepare for the new year, I urge you to add something else to your schedule.

Call it what you want, but it’s basically time for YOU.  It’s a time that you give the very highest priority and spend it on YOU.

It could be daily, it could be weekly, it needs to be something that you can negotiate with your family, partners, whomever you need to, to set up for you and you alone.

Here’s a couple of examples of how I’ve seen this work.

I have a friend that is very busy trying to get things done at work and at home with a new baby coming and both parents working and, well you get the picture.  They are struggling a bit at work and what I see is a lack of focus.  I encouraged them to take a step back and stop for a moment.  Last week instead of the running around we had planned for the day, we took a few hours and started the process of planning for the new year.   A story about Abe Lincoln came to mind, that if you have say 5 hours to chop down a tree, it’s better to spend the first 4 sharpening the axe than to wack away for 5 hours with a dull blade.

My wife takes time daily for prayer in the morning and evening, and she also taught me the value of taking breaks.

I have found that by spending some time in the morning observing nature a few times every week, it keeps me centered.

The answer to the question, Can You Stop For A Moment really is Yes.  How you implement this is up to you.

$5000

$5000

by | Nov 16, 2021 | ScLoHo's Media, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, wowo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

As we approach the end of 2021, I’m looking to add to my advertising sales team at WOWO Radio.  I just started running a radio ad that mentions a $5000 sign-on bonus going to the next person who qualifies that I hire.

Here’s the text of the ad or if you would like to hear it, listen to the audio clip in the podcast:

It’s true. Everyone is hiring. But you’re not just anyone. You’re a self-motivated, over-achiever who’s looking for a new career home. Have you considered that home might be right here, working for your favorite radio station? The legendary WOWO radio has been making an impact on our community nearly a century, and I’m looking for our next radio sales account executive to join our growing team.

This is Scott Howard, General Sales Manager for WOWO radio. We invest in you before day one on the job: it starts when you take our free sales talent assessment.  Text sales to 46862. That’s sales to 46862 to receive your free talent assessment. With only one sales opening, do it right now! If you wait, you’ll also miss out on the five thousand dollar, $5000, $5000 sign on bonus. That’s right – a five thousand dollar sign on bonus for the next WOWO account executive. Text sales to 46862 so we can start investing in you at Federated Media; or send me an email: scott@wowo.com.

Federated Media  an equal opportunity employer.

The Ten Busiest Shopping Days for Christmas 2021…Are you Ready?

The Ten Busiest Shopping Days for Christmas 2021…Are you Ready?

by | Nov 9, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Sound ADvice

The top 10 busiest shopping days typically account for about 40% of all holiday shopping visits to physical stores. (2019 was 46.5% of the total season’s brick-and-mortar traffic whereas in “2020 COVID”, the busiest shopping days accounted for 35.2%).  Source: Forbes online, Sept 28, 2021.

As we approach Christmas 2021, here’s what consumers will be facing:

  1. It will be more expensive than any year in history
  2. Supplies will be more limited than ever
  3. Shop early or lose out

If you own a retail store, you have heard all the doom and gloom about people spending money online or through e-commerce.  That was certainly true in 2020. COVID caused a huge push to e-commerce, but they are excited and ready to return to Brink-n-Mortar shopping in 2021.

While e-commerce will continue to grow, so will Brick-n-Mortar. Estimates suggest that total US holiday retail sales in 2021 will rise 2.7% to $1.093 trillion, while the season’s e-commerce sales will rise 11.3% to $206.88 billion. Even with the increase in e-commerce, that still leaves 81.1% for Brick-n-Mortar, or $886,120,000,000.00. (That’s $886.1 Billion Dollars)

Businesses that are well planned and run well-executed events and promotions can help garner more than your fair share of the holiday shopping pie. Knowing when the shoppers are ready to shop and being ready for them is paramount to getting that fair share.

Stores that plan in-store special events and then promote them will see greater store traffic and greater sales than those that simply sit back and “hope” people stop in. Getting them into the store at key buying times can and will make all the difference.

Are you ready?

According to Forbes magazine, here are in order what are expected to be the 10-busiest shopping days for 2021:

  1. Black Friday, November 26
  2. December 18, Super Saturday – last Saturday before Christmas
  3. December 23, Thursday before Christmas
  4. December 11, two Saturdays before Christmas
  5. December 26th, Day after Christmas
  6. December 22, Wednesday before Christmas
  7. November 27, Saturday after Thanksgiving
  8. December 4, 1st Saturday in December
  9. December 21, Tuesday before Christmas
  10. December 19, Sunday before Christmas

If you would like help in planning any of your marketing and/or advertising events for this holiday season, it’s not too late.  Give me a call and I will have someone from my team sit down with you and help come up with creative ideas to help you have a successful 2021 holiday shopping season.

ReOrganizing The WorkPlace

ReOrganizing The WorkPlace

by | Nov 2, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

In less than 2 months it will be 2022, nearly two years since the American Lifestyle was disrupted due to a mysterious virus we call Covid-19.

The pandemic and our response to it created a acceleration of certain changes that were happening but at a slower pace.  For example working from home created a boom for video conferencing and tele-meetings. Did you realize that Zoom was founded over a decade ago? It was one of those software companies that was just chugging along, took over 6 years to become profitable, and then it seemed like everyone discovered it in 2020 out of necessity.

I had been using it for a couple of years before that with a friend and client of mine for our weekly meetings with her team that were all across the country.

On-line shopping was something we had been doing with national companies like Amazon, E-bay and Zappos to name a few, but out of necessity, in 2020 if you were a small mom and pop or a local chain, you needed to create a way to sell your stuff besides coming into your brick and mortar store.

My wife and I did most of our grocery shopping online and still do some of it especially as the weather gets uglier.

That’s some of the consumer side, how about the business side of life?

It was announced that McDonald’s is going to take a Chicago experiment and make it a national innovation.  McDonald’s is partnering with IBM to automate the drive-thru experience.  We’ve already seen many fast food joints install kiosks to place and pay for your order when you go inside, and the popularity of mobile apps has surged in the past couple of years too.

This move of McDonald’s to eliminate the humans from the customer drive-thru experience is expected to actually create a better customer experience and help ease the worker shortages.

That’s the other side of this coin, a lack of people willing and able to fill the jobs has created the necessity for companies to find alternatives to the way things have always been done in the past.  I wonder what innovations are going on in your business or industry?  Drop me a line or comment and tell me.

The company I work for is making some adjustments. Federated Media is a privately owned company with a dozen radio stations in Northern Indiana along with a digital division.  I worked for one of our Fort Wayne Indiana radio stations on the air in my 20’s and then came back 30 years later to join the Local Advertising Sales Team for WOWO radio.  In 2020, I took over as the General Sales Manager of WOWO.

Before I returned to Federated Media, they did some restructuring of their Fort Wayne radio division which created some efficiencies in their operations and also set us up for success for the 2020 pandemic a dozen years later.  One of those changes was the elimination of an office or assigned workspace for the local advertising sales people.  We were doing work from home long before it was the thing to do in 2020.  When people asked me about my job, I would tell them about the flexibility of my work schedule and say, “I only go to the office 2 hours a week”.  One hour for our weekly sales team meetings and the other hour was for a one-on one meeting with my boss.

When I moved into management, I did have an office, but for about 3 months in the spring of 2020, I was also working from my home office again.

Sometime in the next few weeks, Federated Media is going to begin moving into a new larger office space that we recently purchased.  The past 3 years, Federated Media Fort Wayne has been operating from two buildings and this new place will bring us back together under one roof.  However, I noticed in the planning for the new floor plan, we are not creating offices or cubicles for the local sales people because we simple don’t need them.  Currently there are 15, and in the year ahead we will expand to 20 local advertising sales people in Fort Wayne, and they will continue to have the same freedom to come to the office for about two hours a week most weeks.

By the way, I am hiring for a couple of qualified people to join my team.  Email Scott@WOWO.com for details.

What about your workplace?  What kind of reorganization are you doing?

Customer Trust Builds Customer Loyalty

Customer Trust Builds Customer Loyalty

by | Oct 26, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, Sound ADvice

In last week’s article and podcast episode which featured material from my SoundADvice newsletter, I mentioned that when all things are equal, the decision we use to determine who we purchase from is based on… perception! And that perception is, who’s better, who’s more “trustworthy”, and who’s more reliable!

The internet has changed the way your customers buy.  Before most purchases, they go online to learn more about you and your competitors. Successful marketers today know the route to higher closing ratios and sales is built upon stronger customer relationships. And those relationships are built upon trust.

“Trust” is defined as, confidence in a person or thing because of the qualities one perceives in them. Your advertising, your website, and your front-line people can create the qualities your prospects perceive in you and cause them to choose you over your competitors when they go online.

If your customer count and page views are not reflected in your sales, you need to examine four key areas:

  1. Does your advertising pre-sell customers and build realistic expectations?
  2. Do the expectations match the actual shopping experience?
  3. Does your website answer the questions your customers are asking?
  4. Are your front-line salespeople competent and confident?

The powerful four-way marketing of credible advertising to pre-sell your prospects, matching expectations with actual experience, combined with helpful websites/Facebook pages and knowledgeable salespeople to improve your closing ratios will increase your sales.

In the Twelve Trust Techniques, Technique Number 3 is Be Real – Turn Weaknesses into Strengths.  Every business has a “perceived weakness”. Don’t be afraid to share the weakness and turn it into a strength. People will trust you more when you share an inadequacy.

Click here to review our Twelve Trust Techniques to create a pre-need trust and preference for your website and your salespeople.