What is the best way to share rates with your sellers?  First, it’s imperative to call the demand in the market to ensure we are pricing to optimize revenue based on current conditions.    ShareBuilders has fantastic tools that can help you determine a realistic forecast based on history while also evaluating the current business climate.  Next, you need to assess your people’s ability to negotiate.  Do you have an experienced team, or is their first inclination to dive to the lowest level?

In our business, not all weeks are created equal.   Most buyers flock to mid-month weeks and show less interest in the end or beginning-of-the-month options.   Because of these buying patterns, offering the same rate for all weeks does not make sense.   We need to capitalize on high-demand weeks while moving as much inventory as possible in the lower-demand time periods.   Knowing your staff’s strengths and market demand will help determine the best rate card options for your team. 

Our Weekly Bottoms card is an excellent tool for managers but probably not a good option to share with AEs.  Weekly Bottoms display the lowest rate that should be offered each week and can help managers decide which orders to allow or reject.  

An easier option to share with AEs is our Tiered Card.  These can be grouped by high and low-demand weeks.  It’s less complicated and much easier for AEs to navigate. 

A Submit Column can be added to either the Weekly Bottoms OR the Tiered Card.  This is an easy way to see the rate that will clear in all weeks we are pricing.   We can also provide simple Grid Cards for political rates with a percent markup between P codes. 

Does your team tend to go low in the first round of negotiations?  We can always add a mark-up to our rate cards to help overcome that tendency until they get more experienced.    

While we can save you time by providing rates for all your programming, you may disagree with a rate here or there.  We offer the ability to edit rates or add minimums to keep pricing above a certain level for late-breaking, high-revenue shows. 

Take some time to review all your rate card options with your ShareBuilders Consultant.