Reading this post? Thank a soldier.

As we head into Memorial Day weekend we should take a moment of our professional day to think about those who have given their lives in the service of our great country. Without their sacrifice, without the efforts of American fighting men and women now and then, we might not be in business today as we know it.

Want to open a business? Go right ahead. Want to switch careers, maybe move to a different state to start anew? You are free to do so. Want to publish your thoughts and opinions in your publication? The Constitution says "be my guest." Thank a soldier for preserving those rights and privileges. Remember all those who have fallen this Memorial Day holiday but do so during your business day, too. It seems only fitting.

I've never lived in another country but I have to think the USA government is one of the innovators in programs to help people get started in business and to start over in new careers. There are a lot of things in our nation and state that could use reform and improvement but there's still no place better on the face of the earth to live, raise families and do business. Thank a soldier.

Enjoy your holiday weekend!

Numbers are changing but it's still a numbers game

Wish me a happy anniversary. Three years ago today, May 15, I was ordained a permanent deacon here in the Catholic Diocese of Syracuse. It's a wonderful part of my life, a real blessing. What does it have to do with sales training? I thought you'd never ask.

Driving to the office this morning I had the Catholic Channel on satellite radio. To be honest, it's not one of my favorite channels (classic rock'n'roll!) but, just by chance, I happened to hear the host talking about a study of the young men who are going to be ordained as priests this spring. Fascinating stuff considering the shortage of priests is one of the biggest challenges facing the American church today. I'll be the first to agree that the Church typically doesn't move too quickly, but here was a report on trends and stats for a group of 2013 people. Extremely current stuff. They knew more about these guys than one would ever have imagined. Four percent of them have been home schooled compared to less than 2% of the general population. Thirty-one percent of them had grown up in families that traveled with the military. That's a huge number.

Timely, statistically significant information about a big problem that needs solving.

That's a big part of what a successful media sales group has to bring to the client's table today, more than ever before. With all respect, if a church gets that than you and I had better get it, too.

Google "newspaper readership demographics" and gobs of goodies come up in your search results from respected companies like Pew Research and others. All for free. Subscribe to (and actually use) services like AdMall that give you great local information on business trends and demographics. Understand the information and use it to your advantage. If you are an FCPNY member, call me (315-472-6007) or email me (tcuskey@fcpny.com) to arrange for in-house training on these topics and more.  Use the numbers to help build the most important numbers of all: profitability and cash flow.

Thanks for reading!

A hit? An error? Let's go to to the tape...

I started my day today, as usual, watching SportsCenter on ESPN. My heart went out to the skipper of the Oakland A's, ejected from a game with the Cleveland Indians for arguing a call, a call he got right. Umpires called a shot off the outfield fence a ground-rule double. Replays clearly showed it to be a home run ball but the umps, after reviewing the video, stuck to their first call. Ouch. 

I wouldn't want to be sports official for any amount of money, especially today when there are cameras everywhere. Every ball, every strike gets reviewed...your mistakes go on national TV. Can you imagine working under that kind of pressure? Maybe you can, or maybe you should. If an average workday of yours were recorded for the purpose of review, what would the video (or audio) show? 

Trust me, you are saying things you shouldn't. Your body language sends the wrong message. You make statements that are confusing or don't make any sense to the listener. So do I. It happens to all of us. Videotaping a role-play in your sales meeting helps but it isn't the same as "game conditions" where we relax and get into our routine. Let's start with the easy stuff. If you have a smart phone (and you should) it likely has an audio recorder built in or there is an app for that. Turn the recorder on and record several live sales calls. Playback right after each call; listen carefully for those "did I say that?" moments. Share it with someone you know. Ask them to rehash back to you what it was you were trying to say to the customer. Did they get your message correctly? If you're gutsy, play it back for a colleague or manager and ask them to critique you. 

The only way to get better at anything, selling included, is to practice, get good coaching, learn from mistakes and repeat good behaviors. Good baseball managers may get thrown out of a game a few times each season. Good salespeople get ejected from sales calls several times a day. Don't argue the call, but learn from the errors you make in the sales field by reviewing the tape. 

Here's hoping you go 5 for 5 in your next outing! 

That's why they call it a slippery slope.

Just back from Denver, site of the Association of Free Community Papers 2013 conference, where I had the privilege to be part of the training component of the three-day program. "Reaching New Heights" was the theme and I believe we did just that. My colleagues in The Leadership Institute did a great job presenting on a wide variety of topics and the rest of the presenting team was simply awesome. It was one of the better conferences I have ever attended.

In keeping with the "heights" theme and the Rocky Mountain backdrop was our keynote speaker, Rex Pemberton. The Australian native is the youngest person to have scaled Mount Everest and his presentation was spellbinding. He also put on a great business skills seminar using the art and science of climbing as a teaching tool for teamwork, communications and decision-making. Two things struck me about the taking of Everest:

1. To reach the summit, a team has to alternately ascend and descend from one camp level to the next in order to acclimate to the brutal physical conditions. You just don't go up and come down, but rather advance and retreat in order to reach the goal. It takes months.

2. More than 80% of the mishaps that occur happen on the way down after the summit (or goal) has been reached. 

A publisher can apply these lessons to their overall business just as a salesperson can do so in approaching a customer. Good salespeople tackle big goals and big prospects. They feel their way through the process, advancing an idea, retreating and learning from the environment and are willing to invest the necessary time to win. They don't give up when conditions get tough. And once the sale is made, they stay focused on service and follow up making sure their "descent" from winning the sale is also successful. After all, in sales you have to live to sell again tomorrow. 

You have to train to be successful no matter what you do. One of our goals this year at FCPNY is to help provide sales and sales management training on-site for our members. We will be reaching out to members soon with a menu of available topics to help your team reach new heights this year, too.

Thanks for your time today!

Vroom-vroom...be careful with that thing!

Whuu-whuu! 

I'm not sure how you spell it but I'm trying to recreate that sound that Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor (Tim Allen) used to make in his TV show Home Improvement. Remember? The grunting sound he would make when he fired up a he-man power tool? A lot of guys and a growing number of gals know that feeling when you get your hands on a new power tool. Cant wait to use it! Fix something...even if it doesn't need fixing. Maybe just a modification or two? An improvement? Please?

In sales we are blessed when we get a new power tool. Things like CVC circulation audits and readership studies, AdMall Minutes and other sales aids give you that same powerful feeling, and -- if you're like me -- you can't wait to use them on some unsuspecting customer or prospect. Fix them...even if they don't need fixing. Maybe just a program modification or two? An improvement? Please?

Truth is, you can do more damage than good with a sales tool when you use it in situations where it is not needed. Find a nail sticking out of a wall and you fix it with a deftly applied hammer. Smack that same wall with the hammer when no nail protrudes and you've created a major hole, done damage to what was otherwise a perfectly fine structure. In our world, throw some new readership stats or AdMall facts at a customer who never questioned your readership and you could open a hole that costs you sales dollars and commissions. 

Know your tools, know their capabilities but know when and where to use them and how. That's how "power tools" improve our situations. 

If you're an FCPNY member we would be happy to arrange for sales training in your facility on a wide variety of topics. If you're not a member, please ask about the benefits of belonging to the finest state/regional free paper association in the country. Yes, I'm biased ;)

Reach us at 315-472-6007 or tcuskey@fcpny.com. Thank you!

Finding your biggest fear.

A few years ago I was at a conference where the facilitator was working hard to get people out of their comfort zones. He was picking on individuals at random when he spotted me (they always spot me; it must be the glare off my dome). He pointed at me like I had just shot JR Ewing. "What's your biggest fear in life?" he shouted at me. "To be 59 and unemployed," I calmly and readily answered. 

I have no idea where that response came from except to guess that it was dormant in my psyche until this guy pulled it out. It was a prediction that almost became a reality. For those of you that follow the free paper industry you know that the company I spent a total of 28 years working for decided to get out of the free weekly publishing business recently, about five months after my 59th birthday. This isn't about that event or about my experience except to say that my end date with my employer was 90 days or so down the road and I was looking more and more like Nostradamus. I was very fortunate, very blessed when my friends and colleagues at Free Community Papers of NY asked if I might be interested in joining their team as a sales and training person. Oh yes, I would be very interested. I will be writing my blog/column under the FCPNY flag now and am very happy to do so. I hope you'll sign on as a follower and take advantage of what I will humbly try to offer in sales and training tips. 

Back to the real deal: what is your greatest fear? More importantly, is it possible that it might happen, even if it doesn't seem very likely at the moment? Forget about spiders and snakes, high places or cramped quarters. What might really make you stumble? What do you control and what can't you waste your time worrying about because you can't control it? What can you do differently to insure the worst fear doesn't become your worst nightmare? 

I volunteer to be a brief case study here in hopes of helping someone avoid his or her greatest fear from becoming true. Downside first. In retrospect, I wished I had written down a list of the four or five critical activities I needed to engage in to achieve more success. I would focus on doing just those things -- nothing else -- and doing them more quickly. Speed of action is everything today. You know things will change, but we don't appreciate how fast change happens in the 21st Century. Now for the upside: I am glad I have stuck to my personal ethics and ideals and didn't panic when things looked bleak. I have faith -- in God and in myself -- and it all turned out well. I never doubted it. I have a wonderful family and friend network that made it a lot easier to have great faith that everything would be.

Summary: 

1. Get out of your comfort zone often.  

2. Continue to plan and re-plan for success. 

3. Adjust activities and don't waste time on things that don't matter.

4. Spend time on things that do matter, especially family and growth, be it professional, personal, spiritual or some combination.

5. Working on skills that make you a better salesperson or manager should also make you a better person -- be true to yourself in everything you do.

New posts coming soon more focused on our industry and business at hand. Hope to see you soon!

Vote for the positive

Election Day has dawned across our land and nowhere are voters more excited than they are in Central New York. It's not because they get to exercise their privilege today but because one of the nastiest Congressional races ever will come to a close, or at least the campaigning will. Democrat Dan Maffei squares off against incumbent Ann Marie Buerkle in one of the most hotly contested -- and negative -- campaigns in the country. It's a rematch of the 2010 race when Buerkle was the challenger, Maffei the incumbent and the race came down to the absentee ballot count. Polls show similar narrow margins are also likely this time.

Both candidates ran campaigns that attacked the other but even nastier ads ran thanks to national party and PAC money that flooded the market, much to the pleasure of area TV outlets as most of the funds went to local spot buys. Buerkle made a stop at our offices last week and she was very gracious, even kidding with some of our employees that they are likely happy to see all the mudslinging come to an end. Yes, even the candidates know that voters have had enough of it. One of the local news shows this morning interviewed a university political science professor who said that a little known third party candidate in the race could see eight or nine percent of the vote come her way just from backlash voters who were sick of all the negative ads. Why, then, did they continue to blast away at each other when no one seemed happy or pleased with the results? 

Marketing and advertising are part art, part science. A good ad campaign has a target and a goal and you hit both with good planning and consistent execution. But not always. In the early days of NASA, great scientific minds -- rocket scientists -- planned and participated in rocket tests that went haywire until they found the right stuff, the technology that took us to the moon. If you're an ad rep working with clients, if you're an advertiser trying to cut through the noise in the market today don't hesitate to take a long hard look at what you're doing and don't stick to something that isn't doing what you hoped it would. Staying the course just because you authored the idea or paid good money to experts for the plan isn't smart when everyone knows it's not working. If you need a case study, Google "jc penney ad campaign" for a recent walk down the wrong marketing path. There’s probably no way to tell for sure, but I bet local voters would have gravitated to the Congressional candidate who swung back with a positive ad campaign. 

We're not scientists here at the Scotsman, but we have a lot of expertise in helping advertisers succeed with print and digital campaigns. Drop us a note at info@scotsmanmediagroup.com if we can be of help and thanks for your time today.