Learn & Earn: The Last Thing Computers Will Replace.

Computers are good at many things. Creating demand is not one of them.

Seduced by the undeniable marvel that is Artificial Intelligence, the radio business — like every other sector in the world of advertising — is galloping towards a future in which it will surrender its inventory to be bought and sold by computers.

In doing so, radio is about to abdicate its power over its own growth. When the industry reaches that inevitable automated, self-serve future, there isn’t going to be anybody there who knows how to create demand. And without the ability to create demand, sustained growth is impossible.

What Computers Do Well — and What They Don’t

Year-over-year growth is the result of three different functions media sales organizations perform as they interact with their clients. Those functions are satisfying demand, maximizing demand, and creating demand. To predict how computers will likely fare in performing those three different functions on behalf of a radio company, we can take a page from our interactions with an e-commerce juggernaut like Amazon.

Using Amazon as the avatar for what computers can and can’t do seems appropriate, especially given the growing availability of audio streaming inventory already on the Amazon DSP.

When it comes to satisfying demand, Amazon gets an A+. In a matter of minutes, you can search for a product, read a couple of reviews and charge the item to your credit card, confident that it will arrive on your doorstep, often within hours.

Maximizing demand is a different story. Amazon’s idea of maximizing demand is to give you an option to add a three-year protection plan for the piece of luggage you are considering. At best, Amazon gets a C in maximizing demand.

Where the wheels clearly fall off is when Amazon tries to create demand. Like those “we found something you might like” emails featuring products you already bought, when computers try to create demand, the result is irrelevant, disposable communication.

Amazon’s failing grade in demand creation is the fatal flaw that all media leaders should factor into their future calculations.

Let’s Redefine the Job of the Seller

It is unfortunate that, for the most part, the industry has trained its sales organizations on pitching products. The uncomfortable truth is that much of what sellers have been trained to do can and should be replaced by machines. Transmitting inventory and pricing information back and forth between the radio company and its clients isn’t even a job anymore.

There is a much more relevant and important job for media sales organizations to do and that is to find growth opportunities inside their clients’ businesses. Those opportunities are rarely revealed in an RFP. They need to be uncovered by talented, well-trained humans interested in their clients’ success.

What You Can Do Right Now

If you manage a sales organization, consider these questions.

• Look at your current pipeline. How much of what your team is working on is satisfying and maximizing demand vs. opportunities created by your sellers?

• How do your sellers prepare for meetings? Are they getting ready to talk about the tools they want to sell or to engage in conversations where they might uncover challenges and opportunities others will miss?

• When you participate in client calls or review meeting notes, what are your sellers actually talking to their clients about?

Every time we narrow the seller’s role to activities software can perform, we move another growth decision out of human hands. This is not some luddite rant against technology. On the contrary, all this wonderful technology would be better utilized supporting media sales organizations rather than replacing them.

Trust your company’s future to salespeople and managers with the imagination to envision how much bigger your clients’ businesses could become.

That is the last thing computers will replace.

Sally Beamer is Managing Partner and Gerry Tabío is Founder and CEO at the Creative Resources Group, which specializes in helping media companies create sustained year-over-year revenue growth. You can reach them at sallybeamer@creativeresourcesgroup.com and at gerrytabio@creativeresourcesgroup.com