Pending Business: Recruitment 3.0
By Steve Lapa
Lapcom Communications Corp
President
It’s that time of year. College graduates are pushing out resumes. Are you open for entry level sellers? Any turnover on your sales team this year?
In April, we reviewed new data impacting today’s college graduate entry-level sellers. 97% are open to jobs unrelated to their new degrees. 56% of Americans, as in their parents, do not believe a college degree is worth it anymore.
There’s more. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, a survey by college healthcare provider Timelycare, shows 53% of (2023) graduates want a full work-from-the-office environment, while only 21% are good with total remote. Are we saying entry-level sellers WANT to work from the office? These young people want the commute, politics, and distractions of the office workplace environment. Are you kidding me? The good old days?
The survey results do make some sense when you stop to realize most of the new grads spent a good part of their COVID-impacted college lives logging into classes, missing several semesters of lecture hall instruction and dorm life.
Now comes the closer: these isolation years caused these new grads a lack of “soft skills” or what we used to call social skills. Recruiters, colleges and universities are now coaching these new grads in everything from “How to Start a Conversation,” to proper in-office dress, to eating at the same pace as your business lunchmate.
Not kidding here, all you 50- and 60-something sellers and managers. This round of recruiting entry-level sellers is totally about “How To…” and you may want to consider video and an eBook once hired.
Let’s face it, with AI coming fast, the future is here and like everything else in sales, there is no clear “How To…” handbook. But recruit we must as nothing happens without a seller. Loyalty is quickly fading as new, younger sellers want a different experience.
Let’s prepare a starter list for recruiting entry-level sellers in today’s world. Here are 10 suggested questions and concepts to cover the basics:
— Why do you want to join our sales team?
— What do you think is the most important quality a seller must have?
— How would you define a sale?
— When was the last time you experienced rejection? What did you do?
— Give me an example of a recent success in a competitive situation.
— If you could do anything professionally, what would it be?
— I am going to hand you my pen. Sell it to me.
— What is the difference between a Winner and a Champion?
— What do you think the most important thing an advertiser wants to hear from a seller?
— Tell me what specifically brings you to sell for _______?
I’m sure you have your own recruitment strategy/profile. Is it current? For the seller, that younger team member may be different from what you expect. The best seller I coached was an Art History major.
Steve Lapa is the president of Lapcom Communications Corp. based in Palm Beach Gardens, FL. Lapcom is a media sales, marketing, and development consultancy. Contact Steve Lapa via email at: Steve@Lapcomventures.com.
Has this happened to you? Moments after you have met someone, you forget his or her name? OOPS.
How about a collective “thank you” to the 45th president of the United States for keeping your talk radio programming relevant, timely, unpredictable and most of all engaging?
Mark Twain reckoned that “the difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
Last week I had the privilege of moderating a panel at the TALKERS conference. Confession: I listen to speech patterns and tones more than words.
I’m sorry.
How will AI tools like ChatGPT impact the way we work? The clues are everywhere. Several client stations have automated weather, and even with your consultant’s trained ear, I had to ask. And yes, she’s a robot.
Michael Harrison, founder and publisher of TALKERS, and the man who invented the term AOR – let’s not forget – strongly requested that I share this story about a remarkable event we experienced. Michael describes it as the “greatest promotion” he ever witnessed at a non-commercial function involving broadcasters… so I really have no choice but to accommodate him.
biography. I wrote him a letter inviting him to fly to New York to perform the scene live at our anniversary lunch at the National Arts Club. Two appealing prospects: Manhattan and the famous Club on Gramercy Park. Shockingly, he actually called and said if I would also fly his girlfriend in, he would do it! HE WOULD DO IT. Crap, now I had to do everything else. Invite all 200 wedding guests, stage a show, and not tell anyone that it was going to happen. Katie did not know.
Until NASA approves company logos on rockets, the fastest billboards an advertiser can buy move at over 200 miles per hour, weigh less than seven ounces and are three-hundredths of an inch thick.
A beautiful night. Paul Galvin and William Lear took their girlfriends to a romantic look-out view. Paul asked, “Isn’t this great?” His girlfriend replied, “It would better if we could hear music.”
Warning: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts certified me to teach high school English, in the early 1970s, the last year certifications were for life. Though I was lured-away by VU-meter hypnosis, I still carry a red pen. And radio news has it running-dry.
Are you a multiplatform juggler? If you sell or manage for a radio station, the answer is yes.
There are media and there are media. There are platforms and there are platforms. Not all cultural artifacts are equal in terms of their utilitarian versus cultural value. Damn the tone-deaf corporate bean counters who are ripping the heart out of the spirit that gives humanity its life force! Marketplace obsolescence should not solely be determined by profit and loss. With all due respect to the idea of public service, what about the concept of loyalty? Shame on the automobile industry! Not only is it turning its back on the needs of millions of people, it is in the process of betraying one of its historic partners in not only commerce – but romance and glory. In other words, the automobile industry owes the radio industry a huge debt. The relationship between cars and radios goes a century deep and has been nothing less than a two-way street. Yes, auto industry, don’t be so hasty to save a few bucks by rushing AM (and then FM) radio out the door. You might just find in the long run that “radio” outlasts the private “car” as a fixture of human activity.
What will hurt your chances of sales success more, graduating from a low-ranked college or attending too many inefficient sales meetings?
Ever lost your phone? It’s an instant sick, sinking feeling. It’s quaint to even call it a “phone,” because it’s…everything. Including us. Like the transistor radio Boomers toted in our youth, it’s audio in your pocket.
Tik-Tok is hot (largely among users too young to be heavy AM/FM listeners) and it’s in-the-news (about its possible ban). And, yes, Facebook remains T-Rex in the social media jungle. But people on Twitter seem to live there.
You have still have six weeks to make Father’s Day your sales success. Stop taking for granted, this always undersold 100-plus-years-old celebration.
of South Florida-based Lapcom Communications Corporation – a consultation and marketing firm that specializes in helping radio stations and program providers stay afloat financially and actually thrive in these uncertain times of digital media disruption. 
His career goes back more than four decades during which he has served in various management capacities at some of the nation’s biggest radio and television operations in addition to working with major names in talent. Harrison and Lapa engage in a productive chat about the existential challenges facing radio as well as some of the age-old techniques of sales and marketing that withstand the test of time. Lapa, who will be moderating the sales panel at the forthcoming TALKERS 2023 conference on June 2, states, “We have to get radio out of the emergency room and into recovery.” 
quarter to $21.7 million compared to the same period last year. A significant part of the increase in station operating expense for the quarter was due to a $272 thousand increase in our self-insured health care costs and a $446 thousand increase in employee compensation, including payroll taxes at the station level. After a number of years of holding the company’s compensation expenses flat, we decided that adjustments in our employee compensation were warranted in consideration of the economic times and inflationary environment.” 
It’s the most effective tactic in marketing: Free samples. And the attorneys, financial advisors, real estate agents, veterinarians, and other ask-the-expert hosts who broker time for weekend call-in shows can drum up lots of new business…IF they execute well.
The decision to change WABC from music to talk back in 1982 was not made by corporate, it was made by its then-program director, Jay Clark. Corporate was hoping he would approve the change, “they” lobbied for it, but the call was the ultimate responsibility of the program director. The business plan for WABC as a talk station predicted it to be profitable in year 10. (That’s because KABC, Los Angeles took 10 years to turn a profit.) As it turned out, WABC turned a profit in year 11.
Many years ago, I received a late-night call from a legendary radio talk show host who had just been let go by management at the iconic major market station where he had been presiding over the airwaves for several decades. His ratings had begun to downtrend a bit, but he still was a big draw for audience and advertisers. He was one of the biggest names in talk radio history and his still-sizable audience loved him. Thus, the unexpected news of his severance blindsided him with a wallop and surprised the heck out of the biz. Everyone was buzzing about it.
I’m one of the lucky ones. In my marketing work I get to speak with radio/audio sellers and managers around the country at companies privately and publicly owned, as well as that increasingly rare breed – the radio station owner/operator. They all share one common fault. Yes, I said fault. Can you guess what it is? Probably not, because you too may share the same fault.