"I would like to get rates for advertising on your station. I have a limited budget and I'm only interested in morning drive and afternoon drive because that's when everyone is listening." I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard that when I was a sales person.

What those prospects were really saying was, "I have limited advertising funds and I want to make sure I reach as many people as I can with what I have to spend." It's not hard to see how an inexperienced advertiser would logically arrive at that conclusion. If a prospect says that to you, you must choose one of two responses. You can say...

1. "I can do that. How much do you have to spend?"
                                 or
2. "Let me explain the difference between reach and frequency."

Unfortunately, the first impulse many sales people have is to seek the path of least resistance. So, they take the client's money and run a schedule that is long on reach but woefully short on frequency. The next sales person to call on that client will probably hear the dreaded phrase, "We tried radio once. It didn't work."

But it is equally bad to try to explain reach and frequency by using ratings terms like gross impressions or unduplicated cume. You might as well be speaking in Swahili. For those of you who understand why a client with a limited budget should choose frequency over reach, here is a way to demonstrate the concept in a way that is easy to understand.

"I can understand why you are concerned with reaching as many people as possible. But I should point out that what we really want to do is reach as many people as you can afford to reach with an effective level of frequency. Let's pretend that I own a stadium that holds 100,000 people. And let's say that you are interested and advertising your business to the people in my stadium. I have two plans and they both cost $1,000 which is, coincidentally your budget. With Plan A, I will allow you to communicate your message to all 100,000 people but you can only do it once. With Plan B you can only communicate your message to 10,000 of the people in my stadium, but you get to do it 10 times. Both plans result in your message being heard a total of 100,000 times, at a cost of one cent for each time it's is heard. Which plan would you prefer?"

The client will almost certainly choose Plan B. Then you say, "So you see the wisdom in sacrificing 90% of the reach to gain a level of frequency that will actually yield better results from the same investment?" Then you finish by saying, "That's why, based on your budget, I think it might be a better idea to look at dayparts that have less reach than our drive times.  The advantage is that you can  dominate smaller dayparts with frequency. You'll see a much better return on your investment."

Not only will your client see better results, but they will also see you as more credible than any "path of least resistance" sales people they may have encountered in the past.

Of course there are many other things to consider when trying to help your clients succeed, but at least you are now on the right path.