MYTH #29: You Can Fake it Till You Make it

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, Dave Sturgeon here, author of The Truth About Radio, a myth busting guide for today's media buyers and sellers. Today, myth number 29. You can fake it till you make it. Truth is, you can't sell what you don't believe in. I received this in a comment on one of my LinkedIn posts recently. Nobody listens to the radio anymore. It wasn't a TikTok teen or a digital agency intern who posted that. It came from a radio account executive currently employed, you know, the person tasked with selling it. I received a similar comment from a radio producer who publicly posted that they might still believe in radio if it were fifteen years ago. Just a reminder, both of their paychecks are still very much tied to radio. If you sell radio and you're not meeting budget, this might be your problem. You simply can't sell what you don't believe in. That doubt, it leaks into client conversations, into copy, into close rates, into culture. If you're a market VP or sales manager, here's your midweek gut check. Do you know how your team really feels about the product you're asking them to sell? Because if some of them quietly believe radio is dead or dying, guess what? They're not defending it, they're not recommending it, and they're not leading with it in a way that infuses their confidence into the person they're speaking to. So how to expose that belief gap? You want to find out who truly believes in radio on your team? Try one of these suggestions in your 101s. Ask each AE, hey, what do you say when a client tells you nobody listens to the radio anymore? And watch their body language. Have them write a one-minute elevator pitch for why local radio is a smart buy. Role play a radio proposal, listen closely, and then ask yourself, did they present intelligent radio strategies with confidence? There's no shame in a sales rep being unsure, but there's high risk in not deeply believing in what you're selling. So challenge them. Remind them what radio does better than anything else. Trusted voices, mass reach, real results. Radio creates demand, digital captures it. Because if your own people don't believe in radio, why should your advertisers?