HOW TO SURVIVE AND THRIVE IN THE NEW YEAR

WHAT YOU MUST DO TO MOVE AHEAD IN 2011

This is going to be a terrific year for radio, much better than its naysayers care to believe. That will be especially true for radio station managers and owners who embrace the new realities of radio life. It isn’t about tightening up the morning show, tweaking the music or cleaning up your interns so remotes don’t resemble college radio outings. Happily, it’s all about things you can directly implement and manage.

THE ONE THING YOU CAN’T DO: LOOK BACK

Hey, I love history. We can learn a lot from it. But when it comes to financial performance, I can’t think of a year when year-over-year numbers are more meaningless than they are right now. After three years of battling a recession-addled economy, past sales figures tell us only one thing: this has to get better.

While it’s always tempting for a manager to base budgets and goals on previous-year numbers, we need to do better than that in 2011. This is a time for a zero-base look at budgets and expectations – paring everything down to the bones then adding, first, what we need and second, what will give us extra muscle in moving our stations forward. That’s never a bad idea; this year, it’s just about required.

Another way that looking back on the least three years won’t help us is in the confidence department. Your properties may have behaved superbly. Probably, they didn’t. Most likely, you were at least in a holding pattern if not worse. So let’s not give in to doom-and-gloom by excessive archaeology into recent financials.

Instead, let’s concentrate on where we go now.

FOUR TRAITS OF RADIO MARKET DOMINATORS IN 2011

Regardless of your market size, you want solid traction to get going in the new year. More than ever, these four things will get you there:

Get A Grip On New Media – So you have a website. So what? It needs to be valuable to your listeners and advertisers or it’s nothing more than something you checked off a to-do list. Listeners don’t care about your air personalities’ favorite movies or what the national group owner supplies that might be interesting to website visitors. You need to provide a reason for listeners to visit your website every day – or they won’t.

I’ll talk more about winning radio station websites soon. For now, look at your website home page like a listener would. Anything interesting? Valuable? Funny? Or do you have to register, click several times and generally wade through meaningless junk to find what you want?

Apply PPM Tactics Even If Your Market Isn’t Rated

One of the big lessons we’re learning from Arbitron’s PPM ratings system is that air personalities need to look at every segment of each hour as equally important. That means spreading good content throughout the hour. It also means get to the point without lengthy lead-ins.

Gone are the days when we load up the first quarter-hour with the big stuff and plan every major bit or guest for the 7:20 AM segment. Listeners, we are discovering, don’t listen that way. So we had better not be programming that way.

Provide Compelling Local Content

Make sure everything on your air has at least some local flavor. Yes, if you’re a talk station or employ another format that relies heavily on satellite programming, much of the day is beyond your control. But it’s still your station and your listeners live in your market, not New York or Washington or L.A.

This means providing something other than canned weather updates without current temps. Disembodied voices intoning “community calendars” and other content. Celebrity gossip instead of local news. This is the year you have to do it differently.

Build and Keep A Stable Sales Force

In my best-selling book, The Zero Turnover Sales Force – conveniently on sale now at your local Barnes & Noble or Borders or, if they’re sold out, at online at Amazon.com – I offer many ways of building and keeping a sales team that succeeds in part because managers aren’t constantly recruiting, training and ramping up new people. Buy a copy, for cryin’ out loud. What are you, cheap? Okay, trade it out. I’m game.

One important point is that local business people won’t tell their story to the salesperson of the week. When your staff is stable it builds relationships with clients and prospects and avoids meaningless cold calling. If a key requirement of a sales job applicant at your station is that he or she has been born. you need to look deeper and hire better. There is an enormous payoff to having a stable sales force.

You know what I wish for you: An incredible, profitable, highly satisfying New Year. Join me here regularly and I’ll share insights that will help you get there.