On January 27th and 28th, we had the honor to host our second-ever Rising Above virtual sales and management media summit. For those of you who are not familiar with Rising Above, we partner with the best in media to provide a virtual day and a half training experience that is designed to teach, coach, inspire and motivate attendees to rise above the challenges of today’s sales and management environment. 

In addition to our hosts, Speed Marriott and Derron Steenbergen, we once again heard from Chris Lytle and Laurie Kahn who joined us back in June for the first-ever, Rising Above virtual summit. New to the summit we had leaders in management (Bonnie Hagemann), sales (Joe Jordan), digital (Jessica Jett-Hill), and audio branding (Jamie Aplin.)  The summit keeps growing as we had over 30 state broadcasters associations participate resulting in over two thousand attendees over the two days. Here’s a quick run-down of the event…

Day One

The virtual summit kicked off with management training with Speed Marriott from P1 Learning and Derron Steenbergen from Swagger Institute, their topic was “Preparing for the Recovery.” During their session, they spoke on the four “R’s” from the previous summit (Reassure, Reassess, Reinvent, and Reignite) and introduced a new concept called F2B or Forward to Better. Where they outlined the first five (5) moves to get back on the road to success:

1. Energy, Activity and Daily Accountability
2. Re-define the workplace
3. The Believer’s Funnel
4. Annual Business Reviews
5. Take Responsibility for your own mental health

Next up was Laurie Kahn with Media Staffing Network, where she discussed how to onboard and keep good talent within your company. She also spoke about the importance of making sure your new hire has all the tools they need to be successful, how to make them feel welcomed and she highlighted the 4 Steps to Onboarding which are:

1. Attraction
2. Initial Development
3. Ongoing Development/ Retention
4. Separation

After Laurie, we had Bonnie Hagemann with Executive Development Associates who discussed how one emerges from the fog of 2020. Bonnie went over the importance of learning from our employees and letting them know about the vision and mission of the organization. Employees will not be able to fulfill the companies goals without having clear communication as to how they fit into the big picture. This is done with a conducive environment as employees love culture’s not companies. Employees want work to be enjoyable on a daily basis so it is important that you are capturing their hearts so they want to work for you. Bonnie also highlighted how company leaders must stand behind their mission and vision and have the courage to know that things may not always go to plan. But, if one stays true to the mission it will work out in the end.

Day Two

We began day two with Derron and Speed where they followed up on a topics that they highlighted back in July titled, “Saving Main Street”. Both Derron and Speed gave a progress report on where we are by revisited the four R’s (Reassure, Reassess, Reinvent, and Reignite) and provided a fifth “R” to the mix “Repeat!”. They discussed that it is time to pivot out of the old way of thinking and move into a new mindset. Today’s client is not the same as they were pre-pandemic. They continued with the Forward to Better campaign from day one and provided a challenge to all attendees called the “Just Ask Initiative” which consists of the following:

• 75 Discovery Calls
  • Over 3 to 4 Weeks
  • Focus On Those Inactive For 1+ Year
• Listen/Learn/Recommend
• Just Ask!

Next up was Jamie Aplin with CreativeReady, where he spoke on Audio Branding and how important having quality branding is to keeping your clients. He outlined three areas:

• A Broken Model: Clients That Leave
• A Proven Model: Clients That Stay
• Comparing The Two With Examples

Further, Jamie provided examples of the best audio branding around from McDonalds to Farmers Insurance and shared how this can be done for the local clients in your community.

After lunch we met up with Jessica Jett-Hill from Advantage Systems Interactive where she spoke on the power of digital sales and how to reach your customers. Jessica discussed her digital tools which included the following steps:

1. Creating Demand / Need or Want
2. Gathering Information
3. Evaluating Options
4. Buying Decision Happens
5. Post-Purchase

Jessica also covered how to perform a quick digital evaluation for your clients and what you should do to better strengthen your relationship with your clients.

Following Jessica, we had Joe Jordan with Executive Development Associates. Joe discussed ways you can get in front of the top people in a company where he then went over his five actions to improve engagement, including:

1. Develop Expertise
2. Think Like an Executive
3. Quantify to Qualify
4. Present Outcomes, Not Capabilities
5. Adapt How You Present

Further, Joe hit on the theme of “if you want an executive to listen to you, communicate the way an executive listens”. Or in other words, think as they think.

Last but not least we had Chris Lytle close the day with Instant Sales Training where he shared his best practices over his 20+ years in the business. He provided a comprehensive handout that shared his favorite books, and tips to be successful in sales through all market conditions.

After a brief Q&A with Chris, we turned to our virtual cocktail hour featuring BMI artists LOCASH and Patrick Woolam who performed songs for broadcasters joining us from across the country.

In short, it was a remarkable and inspiring day and a half… and I know what you are thinking, how can you get the recordings of these amazing sessions to watch again or for the first time? Our team is actively editing the 12+ hours of training content and we hope to have them available to the participating state associations ASAP. For more information on how you can access these recordings please visit RisingAboveSummit.com and register today through your association.

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We hope that you will join us in the future for our next Rising Above virtual summit (yes, the rumors are true, we’ll be back). To learn more about this event or other ways that we can work with you and your organization, we’d love to chat! Give us a shout at 888-944-9377 or toss us an email at support@p1learning.com