RADIO INTERVIEW 101 Building Your Sales List, Using Radio Interviews

As you become a larger operation, you will need do more of your marketing out front (i.e., "in advance") of your product's availability, so that when your product IS available, you will have a "sales list" of people ready to buy it. But what is a "sales list", and how do you build it using radio interviews?

A sales list is a list of consumers who have inquired about your product before the product was actually available (another name for a sales list would be "leads".) Whether you or a third party are handling your sales, it is extremely useful to be able to show an initial "bump" in sales on the first month of your product's availability. And you do this by sending a notice of "Our product is now available" to your entire sales list. This is how you get immediate book sales, speaking engagements, consulting or coaching clients, or website subscribers. Here's how you build your sales list, using radio interviews; it takes two steps...

First, you must start your radio interviews BEFORE the street date of your book, the announcement of your website, or the availability of your speaking, consulting or coaching services. Second, instead of offering your product (which is not available yet,) you offer a free "Top 10 List" of useful pointers that relate to your product. Consumers always respond to free offers, and a free offer of ten pointers, written by you, and directly corresponding to your topic, will attract those consumers/listeners that are your prime sales targets.

Your Top Ten List should be very easy for you to create, since you (presumably) have a whole career of working with your topic. You simply list ten important things that people should know about your topic; interested consumers will then of course want to know more, and many will buy your offering when it is available.

You take "orders" for your Top Ten List by having an 800 number, an email address, a website, and possibly a fax. During your radio interviews, you tell listeners to request a free Top Ten List by contacting you, and giving you their email address (and possibly other contact info). It's this list of consumers that becomes your new "sales list", and it's what you will use when your product is finally available.

Radio is very big on giving out free info (it gets them more listeners), so just having a free Top Ten List in the first place will get you more interviews than if you didn't have one. And offering your free Top Ten List in advance gives you time to accumulate consumer inquiries ("leads"), little by little, so that they add up a usable "bump" in sales when they are notified of your initial offering.

Also, when dealing with larger price-point products ($500+), it is standard marketing practice to use a lead-generation system to build a large group of consumers that have initial interest in your product, so that the sales team can have a more-interested "group" to close later on; the free Top Ten List helps you build this group perfectly.

Note that it is never too early to start building a sales list, since the interests of consumers don't change that much over time. And, the more in-advance you start building your list, the larger it will be, and the larger your initial "bump" in sales will be, thus making it appear that your product is more of a hit.

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