Professional Radio Advertising Sales

... the complete course.

If this is your first selling job in Radio advertising sales, this course is for you. If you have been in Radio advertising sales for some time and want to step up to the next level of professional selling, this course is for you too. This Profession of Advertising Sales course is for anyone who wants to get ahead quickly and start making more money faster. You will learn how to build a professional career in Radio advertising sales. You will be able to fulfill the dreams you have for your personal life, your family life, and your professional life. 

You will learn the professional way to sell Radio advertising by combining classroom time with sales activities time in on-the-job training. You begin putting your learning to work the very same week through assignments, exercises, and client activities. You will learn new skills you can start using immediately in the professional selling process.

You can view a description of each module within this course by scrolling down the page.  

You will always know exactly where you stand in the training process by visiting your dashboard. You'll find your learning plans, trainer feedback, exercise files, and performance records there. If you have any questions, please let me know at spike@spikesantee.com. 

00 - Orientation

The orientation includes a tour of your dashboard where you can access your online profile, set your online preferences, check your learning plans, review your progress reports, check your grades, participate in forums, chat with other sellers and access the instructor for additional personal assistance. 

Teacher: Spike Santee

01- Welcome to Radio Advertising Sales

Welcome to the Profession of Advertising Sales course. In this introduction, you will learn about the tremendous potential of your new career decision. This course will help you set the proper mental attitude for a high-performance career. 

Teacher: Spike Santee

02 - Radio Station Organization

This chapter is designed to introduce you to the basic organizational structure of a Radio station. 

Teacher: Spike Santee

03 - The Four Keys to Advertising Success

How does advertising really work? What does advertising do? In this class, you will learn the fundamentals of advertising, what works and especially, what doesn't work. This class will help you understand how advertising affects the psychology of consumer behavior. You'll learn why people buy things and when they buy things. 

Teacher: Spike Santee

04 - Setting Goals

Before you can become a successful professional salesperson, you must know what your goals are. You should establish your personal goals that guide you in your own life, your family life, and in your professional life. These personal goals are your road map for how you plan to conduct yourself in all aspects of your life. This course will help you set goals to become successful in your personal and professional life. 

Teacher: Spike Santee

05 - Building Your Account List

Your account list is the lifeblood of your new life as a professional salesperson. This course will teach you the basics of account list management and the concept of a sales pipeline. You will also learn the long-term benefits of building a diversified account list of businesses from a variety of business categories. In the profession of Radio advertising sales, virtually every company in your town has the potential to become a new customer. You will learn where and how to get started on finding people willing to buy. 

Teacher: Spike Santee

06 - Prospecting for New Business

Prospecting and lead generation is where it all begins in sales. Prospecting and lead generation is the key to an unlimited income in sales. The exciting thing about a profession in Radio sales is that almost every kind of business buys advertising. You have a wider variety of people to call on as opposed to a tool salesperson who would sell primarily to body shops and service stations. Prospecting for new customers in Radio Advertising Sales is wide open. Almost every business you see in your market could benefit from Radio advertising. This course will teach you how to develop an endless supply of new prospects to call on. 

Teacher: Spike Santee

07 - Qualifying a Lead

Finding someone to buy, that's what prospecting is all about. Professional sellers approach the process of prospecting with purpose. For whatever reason, sometimes through no fault of your own, customers go away. To be successful at sales, you must have a system to acquire new clients. This course will introduce you to the art of starting new relationships, that can result in new business opportunities that ultimately turn into sales. You will learn how to identify high-value prospects and increase your lead-to-customer conversion rate with simple to follow routines that make prospecting enjoyable and productive. 

Teacher: Spike Santee

08 - The ABCs of Qualifying a Prospect

There is a direct correlation between the quality of your sales performance and the quality of your preparation. You sell better when you prepare better. Regardless of what you call it, the Pre-call Diagnostic or the Customer Needs Assessment, the more research and discovery you do with your prospect before the presentation, the higher your closing ratio will be.

While there may be many more key factors to learn about the prospect's needs than just what the ABCs of Qualified Presentations require, the ABCs are certainly among the top bits of information you need to know before you proceed with a presentation.


Teacher: Spike Santee

09 - Setting Appointments

Working by appointment is not only the most professional, but it also the most productive way to grow a successful business in Radio sales. When you work by appointment, you present yourself to your leads as an organized professional, someone who recognizes the value of time and uses time wisely. Working by appointment is the key to successful time management and the best way to get more done in less time. This course will teach you how to overcome call reluctance and embrace appointment setting by learning effective techniques to reach decision-makers and secure a meeting. 

Teacher: Spike Santee

10 - Customer Needs Assessment

Prospects rarely buy advertising from you just because they like you or your Radio station. They buy advertising from you because they have a problem to solve and they believe you can help them. The degree to which they believe this depends on the level of confidence and comfort they have with you and your product. This course will teach you about the psychology of the business owner at work during the selling process. You will learn skills that will help you uncover needs or issues you can use to help the business owner solve. You will also learn how to get the prospect talking about these needs and issues to uncover just how much the prospect wants your help. 

Teacher: Spike Santee

11 - Coop Advertising

Co-op advertising is a system where manufacturers and distributors establish reimbursement plans to help a local business pay for a portion or sometimes, all their advertising costs.

Co-op advertising programs have many requirements the local companies must meet to qualify for co-op advertising funds. The rules can be complicated so you must do your homework to get paid.  


Teacher: Spike Santee

12 - Building Your Presentation

The key to a customized presentation lies in the information you uncovered in the Customer Needs Assessment interview. You want to use your presentation to show your prospect just how you can help them accomplish the goals they identified in the interview. The presentation will help the prospect gain a better appreciation for Radio advertising. 

This course will teach you how to organize your notes from the Customer Needs Assessment. You can use the presentation to tell the story of how you can help the business owner achieve the goals that you identified in your earlier meetings. 

Teacher: Spike Santee

13 - Return On Investment

Business owners want to know if they are getting an ROI, a return on investment from their advertising. That is one of the reasons many business owners turn to digital advertising. They believe they can track their advertising results. But don't let that get you down. Radio has demonstrated, through many new studies, to outperform other advertising choices in driving a measurable increase in sales. The average sales increase is approximately $10 for every $1 spent on Radio advertising. In one case study, the business saw a $23 increase in sales for every $1 spent on Radio advertising. In this module, you will learn how to estimate a possible ROI to include in your sales proposals. 

Teacher: Spike Santee

14 - Developing the Advertising Schedule

Learning how to build effective Radio advertising schedules has many benefits. You will sell more advertising, improve your renewal rates, and do a better job for your customers. In this course, you will learn about the two dimensions of effective Radio advertising schedules, reach, and frequency. For a schedule to be effective, the reach and frequency of the plan must be in balance. Understanding this balance will help you teach your new customers how to get real results from their advertising. 

Teacher: Spike Santee

15 - Writing the Creative Message

One of the most valuable skills you can develop is your creative script writing skills. Your new customer identifies with the commercial. It is about their business and brings tangibility to your plans. When you position yourself as the scriptwriter, your customer starts to see you more like a consultant, a resource they can come to for new ideas. Don't worry if you don't have any script writing experience. The biggest advertising companies in the world follow the same formula you will learn in this module.

Teacher: Spike Santee

16 - Presenting Your Proposal

When you are ready to present your proposal to your prospect, it is showtime! Giving a presentation is a storytelling exercise. You're on stage. You use your persuasive skills to describe the agreed-upon goals and why they are essential. You explain your plans to accomplish those goals, you demonstrate the commercial, and you define the possible ROI. Then you ask the prospect if they want to proceed. 

It is not the pages of your written presentation that does the selling. You do the selling. In this module, you will learn how to use the power of your mannerisms, your voice inflection, and your attitude.   

Teacher: Spike Santee

17 - Reaching Agreement - Closing

Closing the sale seems to get all of the attention in selling. However, reaching an agreement is the sum of all of the parts of the selling process. You cannot close something that has not been opened up in the first place. That's why we call this module Reaching Agreement. Your sales presentation tells the story of how you are going to help the prospect reach a goal or achieve an objective. Reaching agreement is the process of asking the prospect if they think your idea will work. It is the natural conclusion to a well-prepared sales presentation. In this module, you will learn how to ask the right questions to reach an agreement to move forward with your proposals.

Teacher: Spike Santee

18 - Customer Service

The professional salesperson knows that the fundamental building block for long term success is customer service. Satisfied customers help you sell other prospects. Happy customers buy additional products. When you're focused on maintaining a base of satisfied customers, you will start to see bigger paychecks, and you'll start living the life you deserve. In this module, you will learn the basics of ongoing customer service. There are easy ways to stay in contact with existing customers and proven techniques to bring back your old customers who may have gone away. 

Teacher: Spike Santee

19 - Digital Advertising Products

With the advent of the Internet, Radio stations have many new ways to bring buyers and sellers together. Your Radio station’s listeners are the buyers, and your advertisers are the sellers. In addition to Radio commercials broadcast over the air, Radio stations attract those same listeners to your Radio station’s website and mobile app. 

Teacher: Spike Santee