Uncategorized – Phil Bernstein's Advertising, Marketing, and Sales Training Blog

How to Make a Graceful Exit

Remember the flight attendant who quit by sliding down the emergency chute?

In August of 2010, Steven Slater of JetBlue cursed out his passengers, popped a beer, and slid down the emergency chute at JFK Airport in New York. He instantly became a hero to disgruntled employees all over the world.

It’s an attractive fantasy — what would it be like to tell your boss, and your pain-in-the-butt customers, exactly what you think as you ride into the sunset?

The aftermath, alas, hasn’t been so great for Slater. Last year, a Washington Post article indicated he’s had a tough time finding another job:

Slater said he now does some work with the disabled community and is “looking at some other things.” He has gone to interviews and been recognized as “the JetBlue guy,” he said. They usually have a laugh, but he does wonder if his history factors into their ultimate decision not to hire him.

“I understand it,” he said. “If I’m going in for some sort of a customer service position, I’m kind of like your worst nightmare.”

Inevitably, we all leave our jobs. Sometimes the transition is voluntary. Sometimes we’re pushed out the door. Whatever the cause, there’s a right way and a wrong way to leave.

Here are a few tips on making a graceful exit:

1. Whatever your reasons for leaving, make a point of thanking the folks you worked with and for. Mention the things you learned and the skills they taught you — those skills will help you make the most of your next opportunity. Give credit where it’s due.

2. If you’re leaving out of frustration, resist the temptation to tell your bosses what you really think of them. You may need them later in ways you can’t predict. I know a salesperson who left his company in acrimonious fashion. Years later he applied for a great job at another firm. His old boss was there, remembered the harsh words, and blocked the hire.

3. Whenever anyone asks, praise your old employer. Do this even if your departure wasn’t voluntary. Never bad-mouth your old boss — not to friends, not to business associates, not to LinkedIn connections, and especially not to potential new employers. You won’t look good, and it may cause a hiring manager to wonder what you’d say about them.

4. Send a note or email to your old employers thanking them for the opportunity and wishing them well.

The things you say on the way out the door will follow you. Taking the high road will feel better later…and may pay dividends down the road.

[reminder]What’s the most unusual exit you’ve witnessed? [/reminder]

When Is It Okay to Stop Advertising?

The other day in a Midwest market, a store owner asked me, “How long will I need to advertise?”

It’s a common question. A lot of advertising people like to answer with a story about McDonald’s.

For one day, the story goes, McDonald’s pulled everything — radio, TV, print, you name it. They’d been relentlessly marketing their products for decades, and figured they’d earned the right to take the day off and save a few bucks.

The punch line, of course, is that store traffic count and sales dropped immediately. McDonald’s executives were so shaken that they resumed marketing the next day, and haven’t stopped since.

Disclosure time: as much as I like the story, I have no idea if it’s true, and have never been able to locate its source. If you can point me in the right direction, leave a comment below.

Because I’m not 100% sure it’s true, I tell a different story. It’s about my biggest client during my radio sales days. I trust this story because I was there.

The client was Paramount Equity Mortgage. The company had been running radio ads on 1190 KEX in Portland for more than three years when this took place. They’d been relentless, advertising every week of the year during that time. Although the offers changed as business conditions changed, the basics had been remarkably consistent.

For more than three years, they’d used the same spokesman in every commercial — Hayes Barnard. They’d used the same jingle. There’d always been a single one call to action — “Call 503-718-one thousand”. After three years of this, many KEX listeners could recite that number from memory if you woke them from a sound sleep.

But not everybody.

One day, Chris Brown, who ran our commercial traffic department, received a voice mail from a KEX radio listener. I’ve changed the listener’s name and number, but otherwise this is a verbatim transcript:

Good morning Chris, my name is Bob Johnson. This morning on my drive in, approximately 5:15am on 1190, I heard a commercial… I believe it was for Paramount Equity, it was a mortgage company advertising loans… mortgage loans. I was unable to write down the phone number and would certainly like to contact these people. I do not have a contact number. If you could get that number to me, my number is 503-555-1212. I’m very interested in the product and if it would work for me. Appreciate your help.”

I called the listener back and gave him Paramount’s number. I asked him if he was a regular KEX listener, and he said he’d been listening for years, tuned in almost every day, and was a member of the Mark & Dave Cult (our afternoon show listener club at the time.)

In the three years before he called the station. he must have heard Paramount’s commercials – and phone number – hundreds of times. Maybe thousands. He should have been able to recite that phone number in his sleep.

And yet, the day he finally decided to take action, he needed to be reminded one more time.

Not everyone forgets that quickly. A strong campaign will get into many consumers’ heads — Les Schwab and Fred Meyer and McDonald’s have a semi-permanent place in millions of mental hard drives.

But Les Schwab, Fred Meyer, and McDonald’s know that “semi” always comes before “permanent”. The day you stop advertising is the day that your customers begin to forget about you.

[reminder]Do you know the origin of the McDonald’s story? Got a story of your own?[/reminder]

Are You Underselling?

Are your clients investing enough to get results? If not, the fault may be with your proposals.

Radio and TV salespeople should ask for enough to get results — Photo by ivanmateev

When I prepare for a market visit, I like to ask managers and salespeople how much money it takes to generate measurable results on their station.

The answer I get varies depending on market size, rates and ratings, but there’s usually a consensus among the staff on the minimum monthly spend necessary to move the needle.

And often, there are advertisers spending well below that number.

Recently I accompanied an AE to a “save” appointment. The client was threatening to cancel because he felt his advertising wasn’t working. It was my job to come up with a way to save the business.

“What’s the minimum an advertiser needs to spend on your station to see a return?” I asked the AE.

“$3000 a month, at least,” she said.

“How much is this guy spending?”

A look of embarrassment crossed her face. “$1950.”

“Why are you letting him do that if you know it won’t work?”

She replied, “He told me that’s all he had in his budget.”

This AE is not alone. Every time I go out on the road, I encounter at least a few clients who have big expectations for tiny budgets. They are destined to be disappointed.

When a client underspends on a campaign, there are three losers:

The advertiser, who won’t get the return they expected.
Your station, who now has a customer telling their associates: “I tried [TV or radio] and it didn’t work.”
The salesperson, who loses confidence in the power of the medium.

If you’re a sales manager, this is a great subject for a sales meeting.

Before your next meeting, ask your sellers to email you a number – the minimum monthly dollar amount they think is necessary to get results on your station or media platform.

Compile the responses, lead a discussion on what it takes to generate results, and agree on a range.

When the meeting ends, ask your AE’s to go back to their desks and pull out their last ten direct proposals. How many of them were above the number?

You – and they – may not like the answer. Many will have to admit they’re not asking for enough to get the job done.

In my book Breakthrough Prospecting, I recommend setting an “Evangelista Number” – a minimum dollar amount for every proposal that goes out the door.

The Evangelista Number may vary for each AE depending on experience level and market conditions. But it should always be above the minimum necessary to get results.

As marketing professionals, it’s our job to educate advertisers on the right way to do things. That includes investing enough money to get the job done.

[reminder preface=” “]Confession time: As a radio sales rookie, I once accepted an order for $20. What’s the smallest order you ever took?[/reminder]

After a Huge Screw-Up, How to Handle the Aftermath

Inevitably, you or your company will screw up. Maybe today, maybe next week, maybe six months from now. How you respond will show what you’re made of.

When Dr. David Dao was beaten and dragged off a United Express flight last April, United Airlines’ upper management very publicly botched the initial response to the incident. Their reputation has not yet recovered.

When two African-American men were asked to leave and then arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks, that company was similarly under the microscope. Unlike United, Starbucks’ management has performed impressively.

What’s the best way to respond when things go south? Customer support expert Len Markidian points to Disney’s approach to service failures:

Their approach to service recovery is a five-step process, easily remembered with the acronym H.E.A.R.D:

Hear: let the customer tell their entire story without interruption. Sometimes, we just want someone to listen.

Empathize: Convey that you deeply understand how the customer feels. Use phrases like “I’d be frustrated, too.”

Apologize: As long as it’s sincere, you can’t apologize enough. Even if you didn’t do whatever made them upset, you can still genuinely be apologetic for the way your customer feels (e.g., I’m always sorry that a customer feels upset).

Resolve: Resolve the issue quickly, or make sure that your employees are empowered to do so. Don’t be afraid to ask the customer: “what can I do to make this right?”

Diagnose: Get to the bottom of why the mistake occurred, without blaming anyone; focus on fixing the process so that it doesn’t happen again.

Based on this criteria, how has Starbucks done so far?

Hear: Within days of the incident, Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson traveled to Philadelphia and met personally with the two men. He also met with Philadelphia’s mayor and police commissioner.
Empathize: Prior to the meeting, Johnson issued a statement saying the incident had “a reprehensible outcome.” Referring to the two men, Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz told CBS News that “the reason the call [to the police] was made is because they were African-American.”
Apologize: Both Johnson and Schultz apologized publicly to the men. Johnson also did so in person.
Resolve: Starbucks quickly escalated the response to the highest level of the company. Schultz told Gayle King at CBS This Morning that they have asked the men, “What can Starbucks, given our resources and the capabilities we have — they have an interest in real estate — what can we do to help advise them and support their own business endeavors?…Given the resources we do have, we will provide them with a foundation of learning, and provide them with an opportunity to be part of our company, either directly or indirectly, as a result of this situation.” It’s fair to surmise that at the very least, money will be changing hands.
Diagnose: Starbucks has announced plans to close 8,000 company-owned stores for several hours of racial-bias training, at a cost that’s been estimated at as much as $12 million. They clearly don’t want anything like this to happen again.

Shultz also met with the store manager who called the police. Although he made it clear she is no longer with the company, Starbucks has avoided the temptation to blame the whole thing on her.

Here are some tips to follow the next time you or your company disappoints a customer:

Make a point of accepting all of the blame, even if you believe your customer is partially at fault.
Don’t point fingers. Starbucks didn’t publicly blame the two men for insisting on staying, or the police for making an arrest. Your client doesn’t care that Corporate changed the policy, or that your production department was shorthanded, or that the sales assistant misfiled the paperwork.
Make it right. Give the client much more in return than they lost — and do it quickly.
Once the dust settles, figure out what caused the problem, and how you can prevent it from happening again.

Your best opportunity to demonstrate your customer service chops is when something has gone horribly wrong. With the right mindset, you can correct a big mistake and position yourself as a true professional.

[reminder]What’s the worst customer service fail/mess you’ve ever had to clean up? What did you do to resolve it, and what did you learn from the experience?[/reminder]

What You Say Online Will Haunt You

It used to be difficult to express your unvarnished opinions to the world. Now it’s easy. And because it’s so easy, Jamie Allman has lost his job.

Allman, a TV and radio commentator in St. Louis, fired up his Twitter account the other day and sent out a tweet about Parkland high school shooting survivor David Hogg. I won’t quote the tweet in this space. If you’d like to know what he said (it ain’t pretty), feel free to read about it here.

Soon after the tweet became public, Allman locked down his Twitter account. But it was too late. Within days, KDNL-TV canceled his show and fired him. He’s not currently appearing on his own radio show; it’s not clear when, or if, he’ll be back.

[UPDATE 4/11/18: Esther-Mireya Tejeda of Entercom Communications, Allman’s radio employer, told the Riverfront Times this on Tuesday: “I can tell you on the record KFTK has parted ways with Mr. Allman and that his show is canceled effective immediately”].

It Used to Be Inconvenient…
That Was a Good Thing

There’s nothing new in the opinion Allman expressed — people have been saying dumb and destructive things in the privacy of their own homes for centuries.

But it used to be much tougher to put those views into public circulation.

If a story in your local paper got you worked up, you had to get out your typewriter and write a letter to the editor. You had to look up the paper’s address and write it on an envelope.

You had to put a stamp on the envelope and schlep it to a mailbox.

It took a day or two for your opinion to arrive at the newspaper’s office. An editor would then read your missive and decide whether it merited inclusion in the “Letters” section.

And that’s where it stopped. Most letters were never printed in the paper.

In fact, a lot of them were never even sent. In the time it took to write a letter, print it, stuff it, and find a mailbox, many people cooled off.

Now It’s Easy and Fast

Thumb-type your 280 characters, press a button, and your unfiltered opinion is on the Internet for everyone to see.

No envelope. No stamp. No editor.

No time to think about what you just wrote before the world sees it.

Here’s the Problem With That

Companies don’t like it when their employees make them look bad.

Everything you say online – your tweets, Facebook status updates, Instagram photos, blog comments – is a reflection on you, and a reflection on your employer.

In 2013, a woman named Justine Sacco sent out a tweet and then boarded a plane from London to Cape Town, South Africa. The tweet was a silly joke – her attempt to be ironic. Outside of her family, friends, and 170 Twitter followers, nobody knew who she was at the moment she tweeted.

By the time she landed in Cape Town eleven hours later, she had become an internationally known villain. She’d lost her job – her mortified employers decided to fire her while she was still in the air.

The full story is in this New York Times article.

I’ve had my own issues with Facebook posts in the past. I’m now much more careful in discussing professional interactions, and I don’t post about Donald Trump anymore. It’s not worth the grief.

Baseball analyst Curt Schilling learned about the perils of social media the hard way when ESPN fired him for a Facebook post.

Jamie Allman’s learning the lesson now.

A while back one of my readers left a comment on this blog. The comment expressed a very negative opinion of the owner of his station. The reader’s identity and the name of his station were readily apparent.

Comments on my blog are held for moderation, and this one made me nervous. Rather than approving it, I took a screen shot and emailed it to the salesperson with a note: “Just wanted to make sure. Do you really want this comment on the Internet?”

The next day he wrote back and said, “Though it is true, he is quick to call his lawyer. Please don’t publish it.”

He is lucky that comments on my blog don’t post automatically, and even luckier that I gave him a chance to retract his screed before it went “live”. Because as Justine Sacco found out in a more extreme case, the Internet is forever, and it’s everywhere.

Three people can keep a secret, as long as two of them are dead.” – Benjamin Franklin.

Your emails aren’t private, either. They can be forwarded. You can Reply All by mistake. As senior executives at Sony Corporation and the Democratic National Committee have found out, private servers can be hacked.

What does this mean for you? It means you should think before you tweet, post, update, submit, or send. It may be helpful to put a delay on your outgoing email.

Would you want what you wrote to appear on the front page of the New York Times?

If not, delete it. Your career will be glad you did.

[reminder] But you may want to think about it first.

It Used to Be Inconvenient… That Was a Good Thing

Now It’s Easy and Fast

Here’s the Problem With That

Companies don’t like it when their employees make them look bad.

It Used to Be Inconvenient…
That Was a Good Thing