Can Consultants Help You Connect?

How Can They Help You Step Up Your Game?

Everybody who has a radio station says they want to win. To achieve that goal, ownership must make a sizeable financial investment and have a realistic long-term strategy with knowledgeable people in place, making the right decisions. Should one of these people and part of that budget include a consultant?

Like research, good consultants can make a difference and should offer stations a chance to make more informed decisions. With the ever changing the landscape of today's urban radio, more and more owners and managers are turning to consultants for help. Why, you may ask? The biggest reason is that the cost of failure is so great that stations are looking for hands-on people who shave the skills, background and training they haven't found in program-directors. There are reasons for this, not the least of which is stations have allowed the PD to be the person who happens to be the best in-house at scheduling music and not much else. It's sad, but in 2007, there are too few people who have the total menu of skills and experience required to make stations work.

I know of a major station in a major market that has invested better than $150,000 a year on research and they remain at a 3.2, which places them out of the top ten in that market. They're looking at what they're getting and they're not pleased.

There are still those constant bashers who say that consultants are really just program-directors who are temporarily out-of-work, often operating out of their garage or spare bedroom - that they don't really know any real secrets or they wouldn't be consulting. They'd be programming. And as soon as they find a gig, they're gone.

Those who constantly skewer consultants usually do so because they, personally, have had a bad experience or because they've been replaced or had their programming strategies severely altered by one. What's up with that? Why is the profession that gave us Tony Gray, Harry Lyles, Ray Boyd, Robert Scorpio, Steve Smith and myself, that taught us about cume-building and quarter-hour maintenance and super serving the core audience, are under attack?

Many consultants claim that it's not their fault. They say it's those PDs who they have had to replace, those music-directors who moved up but failed to move on, who are most responsible for stirring up anti-consultant sentiments. Many of these PDs are the same ones who because they don't fully understand how to use research, are convinced they can win without it. Still others accuse their own clients of not following through on their advice. But there is a more fundamental reason for consultants being bashed.

In an era of unprecedented complexity and competition, the demand for consulting services, syndication and single source image building has exploded, outpacing the supply of qualified consultants. Now, we don't mean to imply that consultants overall are in short supply, but those specializing in urban formats are a very slim group. The unquenchable thirst for management advice has allowed mediocrity to thrive.

Some broadcast groups have halted the use of consultants and instead boosted or hired their own in-house experts. But a knee-jerk ban is unwarranted - and risky. Even those companies that are vilified in books have many clients who praise them and point to competitive breakthroughs they have engineered.

In our view, those looking for consultants should do their homework. They should seek consultants who follow three basic, but important rules:

1. Avoid Generic Solutions One CEO recent explained it this way. If your consultant promises an innovative approach to your unique problem, that should raise an immediate question. "I was skeptical and I soon realized he was simply trying to force-fit his standard solution." claimed a one Urban GM in the southeast. He might as well have said. "The solution is to update your music selection system, allow us to do a series of verbatims and auditorium tests which will require at least a two year commitment. Now what was your question?"
2. The truth is that all good consultants have strong points of view about how to improve your station's performance. But all too often consultants get too caught up in methodology. What's more, some consultant companies are set up so that senior, experienced consultants sell the work, then had the project down to newly minted novices, who are themselves just learning, to execute. Lacking experience, the front line consultants often rely on standard approaches and get standard results. This is a far cry from the promised breakthrough.
3. To avoid off-the-shelf answers, look for a consultant that offers a good mix of experience, combined with skills appropriate to the uniqueness of urban formatted stations. You need highly specialized expertise. I'm personally connected with a network of external experts. Nobody has all the answers. Question them to understand their points of view and to determine if they in turn, understand your problem.

In these discussions, the consultant may even decide they don't have the right answers for your particular problems or format. Indeed, the best consultants will turn away business when it makes sense.

Focus On Outcomes

Another common complaint: "Throughout the project my consultant seemed obsessed with a series of activities, not my bottom line. In the end, all I got was a fancy binder that was an inch thick, loaded with boiler-plated slices of statistical data which neither I nor my program-director completely understood or could apply. This very expensive project is now collecting dust on my bookshelf, right next to the latest Arbitron e-book filled with dwindling digits."

The root of this problem lies in the way some consultants plan, conduct and measure their work. They take their client's objective and budget and develop a list of activities. The consultant in charge of the project tracks the checklist and the number of hours the team works. When the checklist is complete and the budget runs out, the project is complete.

There is a better way to collaborate with your consultant in advance to pinpoint a set of desired outcomes and identify who will be accountable for achieving them. Then, the project plan becomes a living, working document. Any activities that aren't achieving the desired outcomes are quickly dropped.

Demonstrate Results

One general manager recently recounted: "I'm paying a kings ransom for my consultants. (He had several.) But if their recommendations don't work, they still get paid while I could be out of work and out of business."

Consultants can be expensive. But as with other types of investments, the return is what counts. Go beyond checking references and find out what kind of results they have achieved for other urban clients, if any.

Better yet, ask the team to share examples of where and why their recommendations didn't work. This way, you'll better understand the conditions for success. Then look for a commitment to results. Some consultants will quantify their value, promising, for example a measurable increase in the station's ratings. Some accept a pay-for-performance plan in which part of their fee is tied to achieving specific objectives, with the roles and accountabilities of the consultants and the client delineated up front.

Some recent criticisms of the radio consulting industry is indeed justified and the failures certainly remind us of how important it is for the consultant to be able to work with the on-site program-director so that their combined efforts will produce the kind of achievable results that work.

Can Consultants help you connect with your audience and build a better brand? Absolutely. Keep in mind the information we've shared with you and remember by hiring a consultant who truly understands your problem, one who joins you in focusing on outcomes and solutions and who demonstrates they can get the results you want, you can get the invaluable advice that made consulting a respected industry in the first place. And now a word to the consultants who are reading this. Just remember sometimes no one is listening until you make a mistake.

Word.