For more than a quarter of a century, the first few months of the year meant a Radio Advertising Bureau Managing Sales Conference. It was Woodstock for Radio’s sellers and managers, a real working conference, usually without traditional “convention” trappings. This year, as a result of our difficult economic climate, the RAB Conference has been merged with the NAB Fall Radio Show, to be held in late September in Washington, DC.

Yet for many Radio folks, this is RAB season. I've asked a number of what I consider to be among our industry’s best “thinkers” to join me looking forward, to mull over the future of the RAB: How stations can best use it, where the organization itself should be focusing, and what moves should be made to help RAB through its current struggles. As you read through the articles, I strongly encourage Radio-Info’s readers to join in the important conversation about this critical industry institution.

-Lindsay Wood Davis

Roger Utnehmer is a Wisconsin Radio station owner, trainer and local internet visionary. By meshing the power of his stations with an on-line daily newspaper, Roger has been a standard-setter in new approaches to our business, a real world example of how using RAB training and tools can lead to great success.

Here’s what Roger has to say:

As a small market broadcaster I value my membership in the Radio Advertising Bureau as an important resource to develop the most important asset a station processes, its sales staff. A well-trained, informed, motivated and confident sales staff is the most essential resource to guarantee our success into the future. With rock-solid, well-trained, properly-motivated sales people a sales staff in a market like mine (so small our clients think Dunn and Bradstreet is an intersection) we have the ability to become the primary advertising medium of our key clients.

That makes me, as Warren Buffet said recently, as optimistic as a hungry mosquito at a nudist beach. We have an optimistic future in radio because our primary competitor is self-destructing. Fifty to seventy-five percent of local advertising dollars in small communities have traditionally been spent in print. No longer. With declining subscriptions newspapers are becoming irrelevant. In today’s economy, every local advertising dollar is at play. Rates rise. Subscriptions decline. Few under thirty subscribe to a newspaper. People get their information online.

That equals opportunity. With the resources available from RAB radio stations have the ability to make our case, convert dollars and become the primary advertising medium for our clients. Instant Backgrounds alone justify the cost of investment. Our salespeople have a current Instant Background copied into every account’s file. It’s useful for writing sample ads, for coming up with something NEW to say on every call and for asking the questions that OPEN relationships.

We ask clients to invest in their businesses. The question we need to ask ourselves is “Are we investing in ours?” We ask clients to put back 5% or l0% of gross revenue into advertising. If we are not investing that amount into development of our own most valuable resource, our sales staff, do we have standing to ask clients to make a similar investment into improving their businesses?

We have a new economy emerging in America. Our clients have been leveraged and pressured by the ravages of our economy like never before in recent history. Clients have renegotiated their floor plans, their lease payments, their interest rates. They have grinded vendors, cut staff, expected more with less, worked longer hours and become more cautions and fearful than ever before. The last opportunity to make a dramatic improvement in profits today for Main Street business American business is measurable and effective local advertising.

That’s what we can do best.

We offer that opportunity to businesses today. With the services of the RAB that can make it possible. Combining traditional advertising on radio with the internet, radio auctions, texting, and an open attitude about emerging technology will make us, as Warren Buffet said, as optimistic as hungry mosquitoes at a nudist beach.

Membership in the RAB is significantly less than the percent of revenue we ask our clients to invest in themselves. Can we do no less than follow our own advice? Invest in an optimistic future by exposing our most valuable asset, our sales people, to what they need to succeed in a new emerging economy.

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You can reach out to Roger Utnehmer, President and CEO Nicolet Broadcasting, Inc. here: utnehmer@doorcountydailynews.com

For more information on the RAB, please reach out to Jeff Haley, President and CEO of the RAB at JMHaley@rab.com

Previous installments included the opinions of long-time RAB President and CEO Gary Fries, and broadcaster (and RAB board member) Dean Sorenson. Check in tomorrow morning for Part IV in the series, from Consultant and Radio-Info.com regular contributor Lindsay Wood Davis.