In Part 1 of this how-to to supercharge your marketing with a direct-mail program, I presented four proven methods for grabbing prospects attention. Now that you have their attention, today, I’ll share four proven ways to make them take action.
5. Mail regularly. Once is never enough. The first mailings in even wildly successful campaigns will net nothing. Over time, however, more eyes will see the promotions, and your brand and message will gain prominence (yes, even in the mail).
6. Limit the offer with a deadline or a set number of first responders. Create urgency wherever you can. Your offering will eliminate his pain. Encourage him to make the right decision in a timely manner.
7. To increase your response, give something of value for free. I’m not talking about tchotchkes, but something that has worth to the prospect – a white paper, an e-book, an hour’s consultation, a webinar or access to the members’ section of your site. Of course, you’ll want to capture contact information, but just for what you must have. If you’re going to mail, you need their mailing address, not their telephone number or email address. You can capture that info a little at a time as the relationship builds.
8. Test and track all responses, and adjust your campaign accordingly. This is a must. If you don’t test your message or call to action, and it’s ineffective, you’ll continue to fire bullets in the air with each campaign. One of the easiest ways of testing is to mail an initial small sample with different messages to see which draws the better response. Then, you can make educated adjustments to the copy.
That’s it, the eight rules that will get any direct-marketing campaign successfully off the ground. Once you have this foundation in place, you’ll be able to evaluate the myriad of other options with a more strategic eye.
After you’ve implemented a couple of these ideas, let us know below how it went and share some tips.
Thanks to Péllo for this chance to share what I’ve learned and I hope that it’s been helpful. You might want to submit a blog also? If so, just give Péllo a call.
Even the seasoned direct marketer can become confused with all of the promotional options available today. If you’re just expanding your promotional program to take advantage of direct-marketing, you’re likely not just confused, but chin deep in a quagmire of indecision and uncertainty. Where do you start?
This cornucopia of options enables direct marketers to more personally, memorably and compellingly fix their key products and services messages into prospects’ minds. They need to be adopted into programs already built on a solid foundation. So, start with the basics – a program built on proven methods – and build from there.
Here are my top eight essential steps to developing any successful direct-marketing program. These will get your program running successfully.
1. Develop a hook that gets responses. This is your key message, designed to speak to the prospect’s pain points and differentiate you from the competition. It’s about the customer, not product features or benefits. This is your prospects’ vision of how his life should be. That’s why he’ll call you.
2. Offer a trial. The idea is to eliminate the fear of risk. Department stores with easy return policies do far better than those with you-bought-it-you-keep-it policies. The stores know that people keep good products. They just don’t like to take chances.
3. Success stories and testimonials work magic. Everyone knows that. However, I’m frequently told that it’s difficult to get customers to endorse products. More often, I find the difficulty is not in customers’ lack of willingness, it’s really the seller’s reluctance to ask. As I was once told, Go ahead. They can’t eat you.
4. Offer must be easy to understand and obtain. To most seasoned marketers, this means writing in plain English. No jargon. No acronyms. Writing simply is very important. However, writing briefly is just as important. You want to capture the customer with your single key message, not explain everything about your offering. Pique his interest and he’ll call you for the details.
These first four steps alone solve the most common hurdles direct marketers face. They whet prospects’ interest in your offering, and then resolve their chief concerns risk free.
In Part 2, I’ll show you the final four steps, these aimed at keeping your offer in front of your potential customers and then providing an irresistible call to action.
Meanwhile, pull out your most recently completed direct-mail project and examine it against steps 1-4. What would you change? Let us know what jumps out at you – good and bad.
As I mentioned in my previous post, it’s critical that you find where the buyer’s pain lies because people only buy to relieve that pain. Once you find what’s causing the buyer pain, your next step is to uncover the buyer’s budget.
Many sales people are uncomfortable when it comes to talking about money, and, frankly, that makes sense. Most of us from childhood have been taught that it’s rude to talk about money. We’d horrify our parents if we asked someone, How much did that cost? Or, How much do you earn? They taught us that discussing money is taboo.
As tough as it may be to bring up the cost, you need to get over it.
At this point, traditional salespeople try to make buyers curious about the features and benefits of their offerings. They never bring up budget. As a result, buyers lose interest in salespeople’s dog-and-pony shows because they’re wondering: What’s this going to cost? Will I have to go back to the board, committee or my wife who might say that it’s too much?”
In a typical sales scenario, when a buyer asks, How much is this going to cost? The salesperson has to scramble for an answer.
As soon as you discover where their pain resides, find out if they can afford the solution. Get to the answer with questions such as: John, have you put a budget aside for this project? Or, Dave, when I work with other companies your size, I find that they usually have funds allocated for each phase of such projects. Has your company done that?
When the budget question is asked, you’ll likely get a tentative yes, no or not sure. The latter, usually marks a stall or objection that you need to handle.
From time to time, you may come across buyers who are willing to invest in your product or service, but unwilling to commit fully. Rather than all or nothing, split the sale into two parts.
Part one can be a trial period. Let the buyers get comfortable with what you’re offering with limited risk and become comfortable with committing to the rest of the purchase. This will build buyers’ confidence in you and, you’ll stay clear of the buyer/seller situation where you yield control to the buyer.
You are now working together.
Most salespeople are afraid to discuss budgets, fearing that they may offend the buyer and loose the sale. It is best to face the issue head on. Get the financial information right.
At that point, both you and the buyer can be confident that budget won’t be an issue. So, you can move forward with an undistracted buyer. If there are financial hurdles, you and the buyer can either resolve them or, if the numbers don’t add up, part company, saving the time and frustration of further doomed negotiations.
Try this pro tactic on your next sales visit and succeed in two moves. Let us know how it goes. I’m confident it will get you to success twice as fast.
These rudiments will be most useful in helping those of you who are beginners to sales leapfrog to new levels of success. They also provide a foundation for you veteran businesspeople who, commonly because your expertise lies in another field, have never been exposed to any sales systems.
For experienced salespeople, this is a refresher, though I frequently find even the best let a rule or two slip over the years.
You can apply these rules in many selling situations. Whether you’re pitching Fortune 500 vice presidents in their offices or designing a mailer aimed at community dog owners, these steps will work for you.
These are just the basics. To refine your skills, there are countless books, websites, webinars and conferences devoted to selling. You’ll also find qualified professional coaches in most communities. If you’d like some recommendations, reply at the bottom or feel free to contact me directly.
Here are the six steps you should check off in every sales situation:
Demonstrate a strong value proposition based on the applicable six areas wired to prospects buy buttons – costs, revenues, ROI, productivity, customer satisfaction and strategy – covered in my previous blog.
Show you understand prospects’ businesses to generate confidence. If the industry is foreign to you, review “About Us” and “Products” on prospects’ websites, then browse through a couple of the prominent industry sites for relevant trends and issues. Don’t pretend to be an expert if you’re not. Instead, use your research to show prospects you understand them, and bring up examples of similar situations where you’ve succeeded as proof-points.
Leverage data to demonstrate the merits of your offering. Provide hard proof-points – a 30-percent improvement in clients’ sales, reduction of a similar business’s expenses by $10 million or study results reflecting significantly improved customer satisfaction.
Overcome objections with facts that will refute concerns. Ask questions to get to the bottom of prospects’ fears and respond to them with concrete evidence. If you frequently hear the same objections, bring them up yourself early and handle them so they don’t become an issue when you’re trying to close the deal.
Conclude with a compelling call to action. It’s crucial to guide prospects toward what you want them to do next. Never walk away leaving the next step up in the air. Can I show you a demo next week? Take a look at the data I’ve given you in the next couple of days, and then can we meet on Monday to cover any final questions you may have? Click here to see exactly how much you might save.
Be persistent whether you’re talking to a prospect in person or sending flyers to 10,000 businesses. By persistent, I don’t mean be a pest. Propose next steps that keep the prospect moving forward and that advance prospects’ agendas. With direct mail, PR or email programs, only persistent repetitive efforts will yield desired rewards.
Bookstore shelves are filled with various methods of selling. Some work well overall. Some work with specific audiences or in particular types of sales. Some don’t work at all and are just plain silly.
Let’s hear from you. What’s the best and worst sales advice you’ve ever been given?
As always, we encourage guest bloggers. If you’d like to share your expertise, contact either of us.
In a recent series, I explained how to identify prospects. Now, that you’ve found them, the next question is, do I have something they’d be interested in buying?
There are six reasons that people buy a product or service. To get their business you’ll need to demonstrate how you can solve their problems – provide real value – in one of these areas.
If your offering doesn’t add value in in any of these areas, you have no chance to make a sale. That’s perfectly fine. Part of finding quality prospects is eliminating as quickly as possible those who are least likely to buy. You’re then focused where the odds are heavily in your favor.
At any given time, 3 to 5 percent of your target market is ready to buy. So, sorting them from the rest comes with the territory.
Let’s say you’ve just picked up 15 business cards from people at a networking event. Before you schedule a cup of coffee with every one of them, take a few minutes to rank them on the likelihood that you can accomplish one of the following:
Reduce their business costs.
Increase their company’s revenues.
Provide a better return on how they invest, leverage or spend their money.
Improve their employees’ productivity.
Enhance their customers’ experience and satisfaction.
Strengthen a new strategy or initiative.
Each reason suggests an objective to guide your approach to each prospect. It’s not building a relationship, gathering information or showing them your wares. Though those tactics may make up some part of the relationship, they’re not the primary reasons.
You’re main objective is solving customers’ problems and bettering their business efforts. If you can’t identify a specific way you can fulfill one of the six reasons that they’d spend money, then you have no chance of making a sale.Sizing up your prospects according to this list will dramatically increase your productivity. You’ll spend more time taking checks and more time over coffee with those who enrich your life in other ways.
The morning after your next networking event, evaluate each of the people you took a card from and make a list of the most promising prospects. Then, let us know how it went.
Thank you to our recent guest bloggers and those in the queue for sharing their experience. If you’d like to share your know-how, consider becoming a guest blogger. If you’re interested, contact either of us.
Layout or desktop publishing is a primary task for many of us in preparing printed promotional materials. It’s often a challenging puzzle that tests our creative and communication abilities as we precisely weave graphics, photos, charts, pictures and text into an attractive page design that perfectly articulates our message. Normally, our job is done.
But what happens to that work if in addition to its domestic purpose in the U.S., you’ll use it in other countries – maybe a product brief for a trade show France, a request for information from a Japanese conglomerate or sales collateral for your reps located throughout Europe?
When faced with this dilemma, companies frequently turn to language agencies to get their pieces translated and laid out for their foreign audiences. It’s crucial that both the companies and agencies act in a single coordinated process.
Translation has the least impact the layout for Chinese and Korean. Their character strings are usually shorter and require less space than English. Japanese too can be shorter, though sometimes it can be longer than English if it’s a translation in a very honorific style.
The big challenges arise for European languages. German translations often require about 10 percent more space than English. Layout gets tougher in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian, which take 20 percent more words to get the message across.
There are three solutions for these languages: build extra white space into the design; use a large English font to be replaced with a smaller, but still adequate, foreign font; or eliminate page-count restrictions. These scenarios afford ample space for language expansion, although the original English design may flow over onto additional pages.
What happens when the English page design is already tight? Or, when it just barely fits into the allocated two, four or eight pages? Now what do you do with the additional translated text?
In these cases, your language localization company needs to draw from a variety of skills as well as exercise some creativity. You’ll need to work closely with your agency to assure that the methods used still achieve your communication and graphic objectives.
Here are a few of the methods that our Auerbach team has developed over the years that you and your agency might add to your practices to avoid losing anything from your original design:
Reduce the point size of the type…as long as it is still legible.
Use a smaller or tighter font on the translated versions.
Reduce the top, bottom or side margins to expand the print area.
Reduce the kerning, the space between letters and lines.
Add an extra page or two. (Note that this can increase print costs and change the design.)
Shrink one of the graphics or pictures.
Eliminate one of the graphics or pictures, assuming that the words are more important.
If all else fails and the page count must be maintained as is, cut the extraneous English text by 10-20 percent, providing sufficient space for the translation to expand.
Conceiving the foreign layout in advance when you design an English template is just one of the many issues you’ll confront in a global business strategy. In future blogs, I’ll address more of these issues.
Are there some problems you’re currently wrestling with? Let us know with a comment below and I’m sure the combined know-how of the community can solve your problem.
In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, I showed you how to create a persona that reflects all of the pertinent traits of your ideal customer, and places to go to fill a list with lots of people just like that. I’ll finish this series today with some more proven sources that most people don’t think of.
4. Network to grow your target list. Joining organizations and attending lunches is a great way to add qualified prospects to your list. Social media enables you to network without ever leaving your desk. My first choice is LinkedIn Groups. It offers the benefit of networking on a sufficiently large scale, albeit virtually, in narrowly focused groups. Join the same groups as your persona.
There is one BIG difference between networking online and live. Most online groups are forums for sharing information, providing veteran advice to the novice, and discussing mutual problems and issues.
Working your elevator speech into the conversation will likely label you an opportunist. Never pitch. Instead, participate. Join in several days a week and comment whenever you can advance the conversation. You’ll become a valued member of the group. And when any members are looking for your type of offering, what trusted person are they going to call?
Trade shows promise access to new prospects. Yet, I’ve seldom found them successful. People go to learn, not buy, and the decision makers with the checkbooks are seldom among them. Nonetheless, if you are trading stress balls for business cards, devise one more step to qualify prospects and then follow up. That said, trade shows are an ideal opportunity to meet prospects face to face.
5. Don’t forget the obvious. Live personas walk through your door every day. Add the best to a special list and treat them well.
Now, with a solid list in hand, you’re ready to develop plans to reach those prospects with a high chance of success.
While homegrown lists pay off handsomely, they often involve a lot of work. Can any of you share tips for making the process easier? Also, I’m sure many of us would be interested in stories about list building gone wrong, so we don’t tread the same path. Anyone have anecdotes about things to avoid?
What other problems are you facing? Are you expert on a topic that will interest this community? Contact us. We’re always looking for what interests you and for expert guest bloggers.
In Part 1 of this series, I showed you how to develop a persona, a composite, which we called Donald T., that reflects the pertinent characteristics of your target customer. Today, I’ll begin showing you how to find and contact all of those who exhibit the characteristics of Donald T. or any other persona.
When you’ve rounded up their contact information on a spreadsheet or customer relationship management program, you can communicate with them as if they were a single person, who shared the same needs, pain points, buying habits, budgets, etc. Armed with such a list, personalizing direct-mail or email marketing programs, for example, becomes a snap. More important is the vertical direction the line takes on your response-rate chart.
2. Begin your search online free. A friend’s father advised him, If their free, take two. Well, here are five places to start searching for specific people free. Simply apply the information from Step 1 in my previous blog. Popular resources include Jigsaw.com to find specific names and contact information, Manta.com to locate small businesses, and ZoomInfo.com for contact information of people and companies.
Yahoo! Directory is great for discovering websites for thousands of businesses by industry categories. LinkedIn enables you to search its database for individuals and companies (and what individual or company is not on LinkedIn?) according to a number of parameters. If you search about, you’ll find other free resources online.
3. When to buy a list. Man, this is a lot of work. Why don’t I just buy a list? The best lists are always home grown. Always. However, sometimes you have no other choice than to purchase a list. In that case, describe your customers’ persona very specifically. You want to buy a sniper’s bullet, not a shotgun shell.
Is your offering for businesses or consumers? City or zip code? Age range? Sex? Income or revenue? Job title? Industry? Car model? Own or rent? Belong to a club? A ballet regular? Address? Telephone prefix? You’re after a list targeted for the sweet spot. Be specific, but know when to quit. More criteria tighten the focus, but increase the cost. So, request only what you need.
In Part 3 I’ll take you from in front of your computer to research a couple of places that are often overlooked. You have a few days until then – yep, here comes the homework – during which to take the characteristics from your persona and build a list or two using at least two of the five online resources in Step 2. Then, share with us how it went and any tips you discovered.
If you already have experience in this area, consider becoming a guest blogger and share your know-how with the rest of us. If you’re interested, contact either of us.
Whenever I meet clients for the first time, I ask them to describe their ideal target customer. I’m surprised how often I hear, “I don’t know. I sell to everyone.”
Marketing to everyone is a doomed effort. If you don’t know who and where your potential customers are, you can’t sell them anything. Marketing and PR promotions will never influence them.
If you can’t reach them, they must find you. Cross your fingers that they stumble on your company before they find your competitors.
Identifying your customers isn’t complicated. Your objective is to identify those with the highest potential. Once you know who they are, you can communicate with them as if the conversation was one on one. If you can handle more business, target the second-highest potential market segment in the same manner.
Don’t worry. The walk-ins will still find you. If you’re the best at therapeutic beds that eliminate back problems, others will assume that you’re likely a good person to ask about beds that induce sleep.
Here are five steps to guide you in identifying the sweet spot in your market. You’ll be amazed at the fantastic response you get when you’re marketing “face to face.”
1. Draw a picture of the ideal customer. Use traits and characteristics common to buyers in the market segment you’re targeting, frequently called a “persona.” Let’s randomly call our persona Donald T. What do you know or are able find out that would help you communicate and convince this typical persona. A place to start is to conduct an evaluation of your existing best customers.
Things that could help create the persona for Donald T. might include: his industry, company size, geography, location, title, role, sex, wants, needs and cares-abouts – to start.
How does he make his purchase decisions? Does he buy entry-level products or is he an early adopter of the latest technology? How does he most often find you? Which model and feature set of your product does he most often buy? Is he partial to a certain class of travel? Is fussy about his hair stylist?
This takes a bit of thought. Pretend you’re prepping for a one-on-one meeting with Donald T. When you know enough that if he walked in the door you could greet him with a slap on the shoulder and hand him the exact product he’s looking for before he asks, your ready for the next step.
In Part 2 of this series, we’ll begin address the entire market segment as if it is Donald T. and learn how to find him. Meanwhile, give some thought to your own Donald T., Bill G. or Warren B.
What other problems are you facing? Are you expert on a topic that will interest this community? Contact us. We’re always looking for what interests you and for expert guest bloggers.
Dread making telephone cold calls? Avoid them like a spring cold? Call me crazy. I love cold calling. In fact, I love it so much I get on the phone several times a week to call 50 of my soon-to-be best friends and customers. Why my infatuation with a process that most consider akin to asking to be slapped hard? Because it’s all about ME!
I don’t say that because of any narcissistic tendency. It’s strictly business. Let me explain by asking a question. True or false? When I’m cold calling my objective is to sell the prospect on the value of my products or services. If you answered yes, you missed the hint. My objective is to sell the prospect on the value of ME!
If I’ve opened the conversation correctly, he should be shaking with excitement over the value of meeting ME. What’s not fun about doing that 50 times before lunch?
The prospect isn’t expecting my telephone call, doesn’t know me from Zig Ziglar. My product is nowhere in sight. The only thing keeping the phone to her ear, is to become completely enthralled with . . . you’ve got it, ME!
I don’t have 3 minutes or even 30 seconds. This is speed dating for dollars. I have 5 to 10 seconds max to make the prospect fall head over heals, longing for a meeting with ME.
Still think I’m whacky? OK, then let me tell you how I do it. First, I dredge up one of the prospect’s most heartfelt pain points and associate it with quickly with a suggestion of hope. Here’s how a typical conversation might go.
“Hello, my name is Péllo Walker. I’m president of Daily Digital Imaging. If I could double the response rate of your current direct mail program as I routinely do for others, would you be interested in meeting with ME?”
“Well, yes, I would. How do you do that?”
“I know you’re busy and I wasn’t planning to go into details. If Monday at 10 would work for you, we can go into more depth then.”
“Monday at 10 it is.”
That’s it. Mission accomplished. Notice I haven’t said anything at all about my products or their benefits. I said something right away that grabbed the prospect’s attention. As soon as she agrees to the meeting, I end the call. I save anything more for the face-to-face meeting when I’ll be prepared to deal with her specific needs. The important thing to notice is that my offerings were never even mentioned.
As I said, when it comes to cold calling it’s all about YOU.
Your assignment (yep, more homework) for this week is to place 10 cold calls. Assuming you score a meeting on each one – and I have confidence in YOU – that should take 10 minutes. As the person I learned from would tell me when he’d see me procrastinate even a bit, “Get going! They can’t eat you.”
Afterwards, respond with how you fared in the comments below. And don’t forget, we’re always looking for your expertise as well. Let us know if you’d like to be a guest blogger.
