Last week I made a regularly scheduled Advanced Hiring service call to a General Manager of a radio station client. He told me he had fired a candidate he had run through the System.

I wasn’t surprised in the least…

It had been three months ago, when the Business Manager of the station and I were talking. We were reviewing the results of the tests of candidates who had applied for an opening as Traffic Manager. (This is the position that handles all the details of making sure the ads are scheduled properly. It is very detail-oriented. It requires a Style Analysis profile that is nearly the OPPOSITE of a sales profile.)

We had already found some good applicants who were in the interview process. However, a new test had been run on a candidate who was particularly suited for the position of Traffic Manager.

When I asked what was being done about this applicant, the Business Manager said, “Oh the General Manager hired her for sales.”

I was flabbergasted. “What! Please tell me you’re joking,” I said.

“No. Our General Manager is really confident in his ability to train people.”

“Yes.” I said, “But she is the exact opposite of what she needs to be to succeed. Please, this is a joke right?”

She assured me the candidate had, in fact, been hired for sales.

I asked to be transfered.to the GM’s office and got his voice mail. I left a frantic message, “please call me before you waste your time and money.”

Last Friday the General Manager acknowledged that hiring the candidate had been a mistake. He had wasted his time, the hire’s time and of course, thousands of dollars in salary, benefits and training.

Scientific Hiring is not something you can take or leave.

The Validity Study shows when you hire the wrong personality type they will fail 95% of the time.

The Advanced Hiring System is not a nice theory — it is based on Scientifically validated research. As you use the system to hire salespeople, you’ll find your staff will improve. You’ll have less turnover and more productive team members.

We’re looking forward to working with your company to help you improve your sales hiring.

Outstanding new work from Gavin Ingham. Take a look.

I’ve spent May traveling the East Coast of the US from New York to Virginia. I have a lot of friends and relatives I hadn’t seen for years, so decided to take a month and visit.

I’ve had some very good meetings in NY that will result in some real opportunities to expand our AHS service to you, our valued clients, as well.  More to follow on that later…

My 32 year old daughter joined me for a full week of the trip. She and I have not had that kind of time together in more than 14 years.

Being on the road, I’ve been looking at the newspapers along the way. Some of the targeted ones – those that are specific to a group, are full of ads.

I am shocked at how empty most general newspapers are of ads. Most newspapers who are not clients of ours are totally sleeping. I turned page after page without one single ad!

My friend, Scott Wolf told me that newspapers spend 20x what it costs Google to deliver an impression. This is somehow supposed to be an explanation.

I think the sales departments are asleep all across the newspaper industry.

Google would think they’d died and gone to heaven if they could do what a newspaper does: drop a physical ad on a prospect’s doorstep.

Jeff Bezos is no dope. Many say it’s some sort of hobby to have bought the Washington Post. Ha. He can now put a physical ad on a doorstep and if you don’t realize the value that brings, you are missing the point.

In a virtual world, physicality is still preeminent. If you doubt that, imagine kissing your lover virtually compared to the real thing – lip to lip.

When I was in Franklin, Virginia my friend Jim Ellenson said Union Camp shut down the paper mill which killed the town. He said, “no one uses paper anymore.”

Ha. Maybe the little kiddies in college have something against paper but paper production is at 80% of what it was and that is still a huge number. (And don’t worry about the trees — they grow back.).

So what is the problem in the Newspaper business? In radio, we had a rate card based on demand. As more advertisers buy ads the price goes up due to increased volume.

Newspapers need to do the same thing. Drop the price until advertisers buy.

I would love to make a sales call on the local Italian Restaurant in any city saying “we see how over the past few years Subway has been ‘eating your lunch’ so we want you to put a printed ad in our newspaper that says “Bring this coupon in Wednesday from 1:30-3:30 for a business lunch special 79 cents with the purchase of a drink. If it works we want an over the top testimonial.”

Or go to a bar and offer a coupon “Bring your wife in for a Free Drink on Thursday night. Buy one get one free for the less expensive drink. When you pack your bar, I need a testimonial.”

You get the idea. Unless newspaper closes their doors this week, their sales team needs to get some ads in the paper – and newspaper better than any other media delivers a physical ad to the doorstep.