“Your ad spoke to me.  I knew I was the right person for the job.

For a recent job opening at our radio stations we ran an ad on the radio and in the local newspaper that attracted 101 applications in five days. When narrowed down to fifteen for interviews, that was the most common comment.

The key to attracting the right people is how you write the employment ads. Are they written about the job or about the person that you are hoping to attract? We did an informal survey of recent classified ads and found 96% of them were about the job.  An ad stands out from the clutter and generates lots of interest when the ad is about them, not about the job you’re trying to fill.

Here’s the ad we ran:

Are you dependable and resourceful?  Do you have lots of energy, intuition, and initiative?  Are you persnickety for detail? Do you dress well, and have good computer skills?   CJCS/MIX FM is looking for a receptionist and traffic manager.  Not sure what that is, call us and we’ll explain.  We’re looking for a special someone who can greet people in person and on the phone with energy, and with a smile.  It’s a friendly work place, and if you have a sweet tooth, there are always lots of treats.  If you have what it takes call us 555-1234.  

Let’s deconstruct what we did, so you can do it too in your next job search ad. 

We wrote the ad to match the tone of the person we were seeking by using references to energy, well dressed, smile and friendly. By inference, we also defined ourselves and our workplace. We had so many people say that they would “love” to work with us, that it was almost embarrassing. Almost. 

We asked questions to get people saying yes, that’s me. You’ll notice we asked the same thing three times…resourceful, intuition and initiative. Guess what we prize in our staff members? You’ll notice we didn’t explain the job, nor give the address or email contact. That was so the applicants had to show some initiative and figure out how to best apply for the job.

We didn’t want wallflowers, so we asked them to phone us. That showed a willingness to converse on the phone, which is part of the job as receptionist. If they are afraid to talk on the phone we’re not interested. It also gave our staff an opportunity to assess the applications. Our staff’s first impressions and observations are vitally important to the hiring process.

How many job ads have you seen looking for a “detail oriented” person? Ho hum. Boring. “Persnickety for detail” sure made them notice and hopefully smile too.

When you have a job opening that you need to fill, you can choose from 6 or 7 losers who view your job as a dead end time filler or you can choose from 100 applicants energized by the thought of working for you?

It’s more work for you, sifting through the resumes and interviewing, but the results are always more satisfying…and you’ll often find people for future job vacancies too. If you want to attract boring people, write classified ads about the job. But if you want to attract wonder workers, write about the person you want to attract and be persnickety in how you do it.

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This is an article from the Digital Media conference I attended June 8&9 in Stratford Ontario used by permission of author Greg O'Brien.

By Greg O’Brien

STRATFORD, Ont. – Um, in case anyone out there thought working in media was going to get less bewildering, to paraphrase Dr. David Jacobson: “You ain’t seen nuthin' yet.”


You think you’re pretty cool sipping your latte and watching the latest YouTube clip on your laptop or iPhone using the best Wi-Fi connection you can find, or trying to mess around with a spreadsheet on your Blackberry using some expensive mobile minutes? Nice. But that’s like, so 2008.

“We are at the end of the beginning of mobile ubiquity... the end of an era and the beginning of a new one – the digital media era – and we’re being able to use it with handheld devices,” Jacobson told delegates at the first Canada 3.0 forum, held this week in Stratford, Ont.

Hosted by the University of Waterloo’s Stratford Institute (a new think tank/campus dedicated to training the next generation of kids for careers in digital media – and backed by $10 million from Open Text), Canada 3.0 offered various sessions, from human resources challenges to infrastructure building, regulation to emerging technology.

We picked the mobile media stream on Monday to listen to Jacobson, a futurist and director - emerging technologies in advisory services, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Toronto. He’s also a Harvard prof and focuses on digital media and wireless mobility.

He’s convinced a sea change in human behaviour is under way and while engineers may talk about ubiquitous IP (meaning everything that draws electricity will have an IP address), that will enable ubiquitous participation, or UP.

“The future in business and society is UP,” he said.

Social networking and collaboration will become the norm, everything will be open source, “search” will be replaced with “discovery”, geographical and time boundaries will fall away, management structures will get flatter and new business opportunities will emerge.

And the kids coming out of a place like Waterloo’s Stratford Institute will emerge like no other young workers have before. “They will be expecting more than just an ordinary business,” he said. They will demand UP. “There will be greater demands on (executives) for innovative leadership,” added the good doctor.

And driving much of this change will be wireless broadband, led by the 4G LTE technical standard - which will begin to be deployed as early as the beginning of 2010, said Jacobson.

The hand-held mobile device is no longer a curiosity, or just for business. “It’s an intimate device. People cradle it in their hands,” he noted. “It’s become a part of contemporary life.”

Jacobson noted, for example, a potential game-changer as the Texas Instrument-powered Samsung W700, a smart phone with a built-in projector.

Traditional media companies are trying to take better advantage of existing technology and the upcoming LTE-driven bandwidth expansion, experimenting with bar codes in magazine ads, for example. The companies would urge readers to take a photo of the code with their cell phone, which would trigger the phone to deliver a branded portal to the user, encouraging the viewer to buy, perhaps with a special discount.

Jacobson also showed an MIT experiment, too, dubbed the Sixth Sense. The subject in the experiment had a camera phone and a micro-projector around their neck and a newspaper in their hands. The camera shot the newspaper and the smart phone searched the web for an update of the story the camera “read”, projecting it onto the paper for the user to watch, in either video or text.

And search is about to change, too, said Jacobson. As it currently works, search on Google or Yahoo! or Microsoft’s new Bing works fantastically – as long as you know what you’re looking for. But the best companies will pull their potential customers’ intentions out on the web, allowing those users to discover that which they want or need, but weren’t necessarily looking for.

Using social networking or other collaborative systems, said Jacobson, users get to trust and then their intentions can be divined. Companies need to seek a return on intention. That is, to capture the intention of a person’s desire to purchase something,” he explained.

“And if you can link a product to human emotions, you can capture their intention.”
 

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Wizard of Ads’ clients continue to grow, and that makes us pretty bullish on the coming year. Late last year, the Wizard of Ads Partners began to travel North America teaching 2-day marketing workshops to business owners. After sold-out crowds in Nashville and Denver, we’re coming to Toronto on May 4th and 5th, that's next week, and we’re bringing our love for the sticky impact and cost effectiveness of advertising with us.

 

As you also may know, tuition to events like these at Wizard Academy in Austin, Texas, runs well over $1000 or more, but we are only charging a $99 CDN per person OOP fee (ounce of prevention) for the two day event.

 

We'd actually do it for free if we could but many years of experience in hosting free public seminars has taught us that nearly 50% of all people who schedule, fail to show up. This wouldn’t be a problem except that it forces us to begin turning applicants away as soon as the number of registrants exceeds the 72 seats in our auditorium. Additionally, it causes us to order way too many refreshments. Our solution is to collect a $99 OOP fee. Register - show up – enjoy the course. Those who register and then don’t show up, forfeit the money and get nothing for it. We’re hoping the $99 OOP fee will cause people to think a little harder before they casually activate their “save me a spot” option.

 

For the Wizards On The Road events we want to fill the room with business owners, but radio folks tend to keep showing up for training. I guess they like what we have to say. So here's the deal, rather than bar entry to radio station personnel we are inviting them to attend with a business owner or manager or two or seven.  All will receive a wealth of valuable tools and actionable insights.
 

Our website www.wizardsontheroad.com that has more of the pertinent information.



Please join us for this journey to knowledge and action in Toronto.

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I thought this was maybe an ad gimmick, but from what I can find out, I don't think it is. Here's a link to a site that is giving away a blog with domain name that generates revenue already because the fellow maintaining it doesn't have the time to do it properly. Check it out and if you win, don't say we don't give you anything.

http://www.upstartblogger.com/giving-away-an-established-money-making-blog-with-existing-advertising-revenue

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Do you want to sell me something or not?

In this land of so called economic slowdown, I think one of the main culprits may be the apathy of retail salespeople.

My wife and I want to purchase a compact sized washer and dryer for our cottage. We’d love to put in a full sized set, but there isn’t the space. You’d think that we were lepers or something. We’re willing to spend whatever it takes to get the best we can find which is probably about $2000 but we can’t find anyone who is deserving to take our money.

We have been to 4 stores so far, 5 if you count the store that was a minute or two from closing time and the sales lady said to my wife “We’re closed.” When asked if she could answer a quick question the sales lady said, “What about?” “Compact washers and dryers.” “No” she said and SHOOED my wife out the door.  Whenever we mention that we need a compact set, the look of abject disappointment from every sales rep is palpable. Not one of them has questioned us about why, about our requirements, the reasoning behind our motivation or anything at all.

We have been the recipients of the half-hearted, “They’re over there.” Or when led to the machines on display, “Here they are, I guess they work okay.”  No product knowledge, no evidence of anything resembling a pulse from any sales person.

What gives? 

We feel like we’ve been shutdown by these salespeople but I’ll be damned if I’m going to reward some lazy ass slob with the commission on $2000.  I can’t be the only person in the world who feels this.

So, if you are in the retail business and you catch yourself or one of your sales staff treating customers with the kind of apathy we’ve been treated to, slap yourself  (or because I’m not condoning violence, figuratively speaking, your staff) and stop complaining about how bad business is.  If you can’t shake yourself or your staff out of this funk, there is a remedy in the name of Steve Clark of New School Selling. He writes: “During the economic boom of the nineties, business was easy and few salespeople were really “put to the test.” Because the nineties were one of the most prosperous decades in our history most salespeople that have less than ten years experience have never experienced selling in a recession.”

You have a great opportunity ahead of you, go ahead and grasp it simply by showing you care.

Cheers

Steve

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Eric Rhoads of Radio Ink Magazine writes some of the most important marketing pieces for business owners, not just radio people:

If I woke you from a deep sleep and said, "Quick: Give me three recession strategies for your clients' businesses," you could probably feed me some good ideas. If you were in the radio business in 1991, you gained experience in what  by being bloodied and beaten. Will those same recession strategies apply today? Yes, some of them will. But with every down economic cycle, the world is a little different. Look at how much the world has changed since 1991. And the way you assist your clients today is very different than it was in 1991.

Being Stupid And Predictable
It's predictable that businesses will cut back during hard times. It's also stupid. The problem, of course, is that hard times usually come right after the days of glory, and clients are blindsided. That's also stupid. Although it's human nature to believe good times will last forever, good businesspeople know they need to put some nuts in storage for the winter.

Those who reduce marketing budgets and diminish the quality of the customer experience send signals that they are in trouble, and they will sink faster than a life jacket filled with lead weights. I once went into a retail store that had about two-thirds of the lights off, making it difficult to see the merchandise. I figured the lights were off because business was bad, but I didn't want to do business with someone who didn't care enough about me to light my way. Customers are not very forgiving, even when they know companies have to do anything possible to survive.

What About Your Local Radio Customers?
Your customers must build market share with vigor just to stay even, which means pirating that market share from competitors. The competitor that has cut advertising is like a wounded sheep in a den of lions. Fortunes have been made during tough economic times, when businesses can double or triple their market share at the expense of their competitors, then get richer than they could ever imagine once good times return. Keeping your current level of advertising is smart if competitors have stopped. Increasing your advertising will speed traffic and increase market share more quickly.

The Pain Game
Every local retail business in your market is experiencing some pain at the moment. If their business is not off, their pain is driven by the expectation of coming declines. Is your radio station doing business exactly the same way it was doing business a year ago? Now is the time for a different strategy. Arm your sales organization with new tools, new information, and a new understanding of how to ease the pain. Doctors who relieve their clients' pain will have advertisers beating down the door.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy 
Not only are customers making silly decisions that can impact them negatively, I've been guilty of it too. What about you? The psychology of recession talk has us all a little skittish. It's become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet those natural reactions are not in our best interest. Are we making the same mistakes we're advising our clients against? Are we aggressively marketing our stations? Are we increasing the size of our sales organizations rather than shrinking them?

I Hate Spending Money
I'll admit it. I've cut back. I've asked my people to cut back. Everyone I know has cut back. Yet I'm spending money on education because I'm smart enough to know I need a new perspective. This week I'm attending AdTech, a very pricey conference on new advertising technologies. If I don't attend, I won't have new ideas to bring to the radio industry and to my own business. Sure, I could lay low for a year or two until the economy turns, but I cannot afford to stay even a year behind on trends. Last week I attended a private marketing seminar held by Roy Williams that provided new ideas I can apply to my business immediately -- and that will help my clients generate income. I don't like spending the money, but this is an investment in growth at a time when others are stagnant. Are you seeking new ideas, or are you confident you can get through this economy on your own? Are you willing to stake your future on it?

What Should You Be Doing Now?
1. Create a new level of client intimacy. Be generous with your time and your ideas. Show clients step-by-step plans to grow market share.
2. Increase internal sales training. Teach critical principals to your sales team until they can do them in their sleep.
3. Focus on the creative message of the client. Increased frequency won't make as much difference as a strong message.
4. Practice what you preach. Increase your station visibility in the marketplace to your audience AND your advertisers. Give clients good reason to have you on their short list of places to advertise.
5. Create more product offerings. Seek new and fresh products to create interest from clients previously not engaged.
6. Set up client training retreats. Bring in outside experts to teach them how to grow their business now.
7. Be different. What can you do to be undeniable?
8. Do the math. More sales calls equal more sales. Increase activity.
9. Increase the size of your sales organization. More sellers make more sales.
10. Increase management involvement. Get out from behind the desk and out on sales calls. Your expertise is valuable to clients.
11. Increase learning. Read more, study more, train more.

Eric Rhoads
Publisher
Radio Ink

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This is from Doug Lester, a former radio colleague and still best friend who is now a tax accountant in the middle of the tax season.He felt it was important enough to share and so do I: 

Steve:  Had to steal 5 minutes to pass on a story about customer service.....

Sue from our office, and her husband, took their three young daughters to Canadian Tire to buy 
the girls brand new bicycles-  their Christmas gifts, promised for the first nice weather in the 
spring.  
These are the first new, not hand-me-down, bikes the girls have had.  At the end of their first 
day of non-stop riding of their new bikes, they leaned them against the side of the house and 
went in for supper.  While they were eating, one of  their two dogs- a young labrador- was 
discovered chewing on the 5 year old's bike.  The dog had destroyed the sparkly, colourful 
seat and had made a good start on the plastic basket on the handle bars.  You can imagine 
the reaction- the little kid kind of crying with no tears-  just that shaking, sucking-in of air, 
silent sobbing.
Grandpa and grand daughter were back to Cdn Tire to find replacement parts the next day.  
I'm not sure who looked after them in Sporting Goods, but when he realized that the few 
weeks it would take to order and receive a replacement seat was far too long for a 5 year old 
to wait- he took her and her grandfather into the back, where he was able to locate a 
matching, fancy bicycle seat on a bike that had come back as a sales-return. He pulled it off 
the bike for them - no charge.  In fact, he told the little one's grandpa that he'd be willing to 
work a day without pay just to see how her face lit up when he handed her the new bike seat.
How long do you think she'll remember her first encounter with customer service at that Canadian 
Tire Store?

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 From Harvard Business School Professor John Quelch comes this interesting article with some sound advice for businesses during recessions.

The signs of an imminent recession are all around us. The spillover from the subprime mortgage crisis is weakening both consumer confidence and the consumer spending—much of it on credit—that has been buoying the U.S. economy.

Companies should bear eight factors in mind when making their marketing plans for 2008 and 2009:Read the entire article:

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Someone at an ad agency here in Canada is seriously bent. Enjoy this ad campaign for a Canadian breakfast cereal that's been around for decades. 

http://diamondshreddies.ca/videos.php

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According to Customer Service consultant

Deborah Schmidt,  http://www.customerservicegroup.com/csn.php) these are the  "eight worst customer

service traits."

*  Apathy/boredom - an "I don't care about you or my job"

attitude.

*  The brush-off - getting rid of customers by transferring

them too quickly, before determining if their problem is

something you can help them with.

*  Coldness - including impatience, curtness, and even

hostility with or toward customers.

*  Condescension - a patronizing attitude, creating

communication barriers by using jargon, or using a

customer's first name without permission.

*  Robotism - treating customers as if they are nothing

more than numbers. This is referred to as

"Have-A-Nice-Day-Next".

*  Rule book reliance - using company guidelines as

an excuse for not providing service, even when a rep

knows that a rule can be bent.

*  Giving the run-around - sending customers on a wild

goose chase to find answers because no one is willing

to take ownership of the problem.

*  Tuning customers out - not focusing 100 percent on

the person speaking, whether it's a customer, a coworker,

or a manager, and not asking questions to verify

understanding.

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