Direct Mail Is Alive and Well, Thank You

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Marketing fads come and go. Marketers today have a bewildering array of choices never seen before. Consequently, busy business owners don’t always know who to listen to in order to find what is working most effectively right now. Everyone can claim their systems and tools are the secret to a never-ending stream of prospects and customers.

Is Direct Mail Worth Exploring For Your Business?

Have you noticed that many of the Internet companies (like Google, among others) have been increasingly turning to direct mail to advertise their services? The reason is that old school direct mail worked long before the Internet and has been working for smart marketing in businesses all along. It just happened not to be the flavor of the day, thereby not getting much attention.

Now that the furor and publicity surrounding the “free” aspect of social media marketing has settled into the reality that free doesn’t necessarily equal real customers, smart marketers are looking for real campaigns that result in real customers.

Living Together in Harmony

Leveraging one proven marketing channel is great, but taking advantage of two or more is better. As effective as one channel may be, you limit the potential impact when using a single platform. With an integrated marketing strategy, you position yourself to maximize the real potential of your campaign.

The truth is that direct mail can still deliver real results when done correctly. In fact, direct mail works even better when coupled with email marketing and Internet marketing. When coupled with other channels, direct mail has the capacity to be even more targeted, personalized, and effective than when any of these channels are implemented alone.

To make this work and deliver results, it’s very important that the messaging and branding be consistent across all the channels you use. The logo, tag line, messaging, design, and colors used in one campaign should be reinforced across all media to generate stronger results and a more powerful impression. Consistency allows each campaign to feed off the other and deliver a bigger bang for the investment.

This is how big brands are able to leverage the power of multimedia messaging. Today, with the availability of affordable, short-run digital printing, you don’t need a large budget. It’s realistic and available for businesses of all sizes.

An example of a campaign that works extremely well is a new customer campaign. Nothing shows appreciation like a nicely designed, professional-looking direct mail piece delivered to your new customer soon after they become a client. People know that an email costs nothing to send but that a direct mail piece has a real cost.

Now you can follow that up with some informative emails to educate your new customer about how you can help them solve their problems. In the emails and direct mail pieces, ask your new customer to also connect with your brand on social media. Now you can further develop a bond with your new customer by sharing your values and core messages across all media.

Marketing success is about momentum. An integrated, multidimensional campaign, implemented consistently throughout the year, keeps the marketing ball rolling forward. This allows your business to be fresh on prospects’ minds when they’re ready to buy. The more consistent your brand, marketing message, and integrated approach, the better your results will be.

Your customers consume information in different ways. You can’t guess or assume one is better than another. Showing up in the physical mailbox, in their email inbox, and on the web assures that your brand is leaving no stone unturned. Having an integrated marketing strategy assures your business will be seen and heard. If just showing up is half the battle, then implementing this multidimensional approach is your call to action to make yourself ready for new customers on the business battlefield.

5 Words That Can Change Your Business

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140259547Behind the scenes of your business, you make products or deliver services. But on the front lines, where interactions with customers occur, you have to deliver more than that in order to have a dynamically growing company. You must deliver a promise and hope.

The promise revolves around the benefits your actual products and services deliver. The hope is what can set your business apart from all the other companies that promise to deliver the same things you do.

People want to believe in your company and what you can deliver, but many have become jaded due to the culture of over-promising and under-delivering that is all too common in the marketplace. To get past this wall of skepticism, you have to deliver more.

Companies like Coca-Cola, Apple, Starbucks, and Disney World took off when they figured out they were selling much more than a soft drink, computer, coffee, and theme park rides. These businesses understood that in order to stand apart from their competitors, they had to tell their brand stories in a way that resonates with customers.

Coca-Cola sells refreshment, happiness, and harmony. Apple sells a delightful user experience to consumers in a hip, cool way. Starbucks sells the “third place experience” — a place to get away outside our home and business. Disney World sells memories that last a lifetime.

The common theme among the great brands of the world is that they have found a way to transcend beyond their products by asking this simple, yet powerful five-word question:

What are we really selling?

People aren’t really interested in what you sell, but they may be very interested in the benefits you can deliver. These benefits in turn must be told in a way that attracts and connects with your target audience.

How You Can Apply This in Your Business?

You’re probably thinking to yourself that this may do wonders for big brands, but how does it apply to my small business?

  • Take a step back from the day-to-day operations of the business, and think about what you’re really selling. Railroad companies thought they were in the rail business, when they were really in the transportation business. Think about the larger implications around the results you deliver to your customers.
  • Next think about this question: What do my customers really want from our products and services? Ask your best customers why they really do business with you. Look for common themes in the answers.
  • The final step is to take the concepts you’ve arrived at and focus on what would move your best prospects to buy what you sell. Put yourself in their shoes. Ask some friends and associates if your idea would move them to act. Then test your ideas by presenting them in your ad copy in print, on the web, and in all your other marketing channels. Test until you find the winners. The sales result will show which one is the winner.

Take these five words: “What are we really selling?” Print them out and put them in a prominent place you can see every day. Your answer to the question will form the core around which your business and your marketing should revolve. Answer this five-word question in a way that exceeds the experiences your target market is seeking, and you’ll see your business grow like magic.

Do You Have a Foot-In-The-Door Strategy?

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There’s an extremely powerful strategy to grow your business called the foot-in-the-door (FITD) strategy. FITD plays on psychology to get to the sale. This strategy works well because it gets past the prospect’s natural resistance to being sold.

The process starts with getting a person to agree to a small request that doesn’t take them outside their comfort zone. From there, you build up to larger requests and bigger yeses.

Savvy business owners, marketers, and salespeople have used FITD in one form or another for years, whether they have knowingly defined it that way or not. Some may refer to this strategy as a “loss leader.” The difference is that a loss leader typically involves selling something, often at a very low price or below cost. Retail businesses have used loss leaders successfully for many years. FITD works best when the first offer is for something free.

<strong>Examples of FITD</strong>
If you’ve ever been to the mall food court around lunch or dinnertime, you’ll often see savvy restaurant owners assign an employee to offer a small sample tasting of some of the food items on their menu. When passersby accept the sample and taste it, they’ve taken the first tiny step toward a possible yes.

One interesting side note with this example: Notice that the employees handing out the samples aren’t going all around the mall or outside in the parking lot at various hours of the day. They pass out the samples to people walking through the food court at lunch or dinnertime. The marketing takeaway: offer your services to people who are most likely to need what you sell when they need it the most.

FITD has been used for many years by door-to-door salespeople in many industries, from the person offering to clean a dirty spot on the carpet to the days of the encyclopedia salesperson (remember those?) who would offer a free three book starter set.

Perhaps the most notorious example is from the timeshare industry. In exchange for 90 minutes of your time, the FITD offer is a free resort stay or perhaps Disney World tickets. Does it work? Billions of dollars in timeshares sold would seem to indicate a big yes. These techniques are meant to persuade and work extremely well. The danger comes from unscrupulous sellers who abuse the power.

FITD has been used in the pharmaceutical industry with enormous success. Pharmaceutical sales representatives leave samples of the drugs their companies sell with the appropriate doctors. The physicians in turn give their patients a free sample along with a prescription that will lead them to become a customer of the pharmaceutical industry.

<strong>What kind of FITD should you offer?</strong>
Your best FITD strategy should probably be not to “sell” anything at all. Only 2% of prospects are ready to buy at any time and less than 1% will typically buy anything on the first contact. Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer and ask yourself: What would I need (if I were a customer) to choose this company over the competition? What service or product can you use to let prospects ‘test’ you out that will put your best foot forward and help you make the best first impression?

<strong>Conclusion</strong>
The FITD strategy is an extremely powerful technique. If you’re not currently using it or have used it in the past and forgotten about it, it’s time to visit it again. Put together a plan to utilize FITD in your favor.

Selling successfully for the long term requires building trust with your prospects and even existing customers. The FITD strategy allows you to begin building that trust. But be careful. If it’s done incorrectly or not done at all, then you may experience the door-in-the-face result which is what you want to avoid.

Educating Your Way to a Sale

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Your target audience is being bombarded by sales and marketing messages every day. Some estimates state that a person is exposed to more than 3,500 messages on average every single day! No wonder we develop strategies to filter out the hype and all the noise so we can get our work done. Otherwise our days would be consumed with sales presentations and various pitches to buy something.

This constant barrage of marketing has taken a toll on salespeople, too. Traditional sales methods that once worked well have been losing traction and are not effective anymore. But you still need to sell — and you need to get your message across to your prospects. How can you do that without alienating them at the same time? One way to do that is to educate and help your prospects instead of simply selling them.

Educating your audience with relevant and useful information that will help them make a more informed buying decision allows you to establish yourself and your company as an expert who provides value before ever asking for a sale.

Establishing trust in this manner brings respect. Trust and respect open the way for your prospects to listen. Listening gives you access to valuable time your prospects reserve for those they believe will not waste it with hype and useless pitches.

To decide what kind of information your prospects find useful, you need to put yourself in their shoes. Developing a buyer persona on your most ideal prospects lets you get insight into the information, ideas, and advice that could make a positive difference in their lives and actually help in their decision-making process.

Selling is not a bad thing. Short-term thinking while selling, however, is not sustainable selling. Long-term selling is about nurturing, gaining trust, and establishing rapport. Doing this will lead not only to a first sale but also to a relationship that will garner repeat sales and referrals.

Establishing a strategic sales funnel allows you to introduce your products and services as a solution to a prospect’s problem at the appropriate time. Nurturing relationships will lead to sales more naturally and organically, instead of taking a straight, forced path with a low chance of making a quick close.

One great example of this can be seen by walking into any Apple retail store. From the moment you walk in, the Apple employees are trained to educate you about the products in the store. No pushy salespeople. They actually want you to touch and test all the products on display.

In the back of the store, the “Genius Bar” provides technical help and in-depth training to encourage users to use Apple products. This in turn leads to more sales. Over 50,000 people visit the “Genius Bar” every day, and the majority who have used the services state that they are more likely to buy another Apple product as a result.

Educating your prospects and your customers is a long-term business sales strategy. It requires some time and resources. But if it is done well, the results will far outweigh the costs.

Finding Your Next Great Employee

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“To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace.” – Doug Conant, CEO of Campbell’s Soup

Great companies need outstanding employees in order to grow. The problem is finding and retaining that caliber employee. Most small businesses don’t fully understand the process of hiring top-notch employees.

“Effective organizational leadership is simple: 1. Have a vision of where you want to get to. 2. Clearly and persuasively communicate that vision to employees. 3. Be consistent in your behaviors as you strive to achieve that vision.” – from A Roadmap for Employee Engagement by Andy Parsley

Many make the mistake of hiring an employee without clearly thinking the process all the way through. They neglect to think about what they actually want from the new hire. Hiring in this way sets the new employee up for failure before they ever walk in for their first day of work. This turns out to be a waste of time and resources for everyone.

To help avoid this, you need to go through the interview process. The first and most critical step is to write an advertisement that attracts great people in the first place — one that encourages the kind of candidates who want to work for your company.

Thinking this through will also make you consider the short-term and long-term responsibilities and tasks required for this position.

The challenge of finding great job candidates starts with the ad itself. Mediocre job ads attract mediocre workers. To improve your placement ad, you should incorporate the following in the description.

  • Make your company sound innovative and interesting. This will help attract more dynamic applicants who want to work for a fascinating company.
  • Let the applicant know with whom they will most likely be working. Candidates will look forward to learning from someone who is the expert in their field.
  • If the location of your company is a plus for applicants, make sure to mention it. The more benefits you can mention in the ad, the more attractive your ad becomes.
  • Make sure to mention that the position offers growth for the right candidate. Everyone wants to know that they can grow with the company. This also implies that they will be able to make more money as they grow.
  • Include the total compensation and benefits in the offer. Paid holidays, flexible hours, and other perks can be very attractive.
  • Mention that the position requires hard work and dedication. This can help filter out the lazy applicants before time is wasted with the interview.
  • The ad should stand out from all the others. If you want creative, superstar applicants, the ad should be creative, too.

Finding and retaining top talent is one of the most important tasks for any growing company. A strong recruitment ad is just the start but one that can’t be overlooked. Include these tips in your next ad, and hopefully you will attract the type of superstar employee you desire.

Where are the budding stars at your company?

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The answer is simple: They’re everywhere. And it’s up to you to find them.

In his biography of Bill Russell, author Murry R. Nelson writes about the NBA legend’s athletic struggles in high school and about one teacher/coach who helped to bring out the best in the young man others had overlooked and taken for granted.

After failing to make the school’s football team, Russell decided to try out for basketball instead. There were 15 spots available on the junior varsity team, and Russell, who had never played organized basketball before, was number 16 on the depth chart. But his coach “saw something in him as a person” and allowed him to split time with another player in order to make the team. He also helped Russell join the local Boys Club, where he could “practice his game on an indoor court.”

“In return for the faith and ‘investment’ [the coach] made in him,” Nelson writes, Russell “provided a constant drive and energy on the basketball court.” What’s more, he began practicing hard throughout the year and was able to make the varsity team his senior season.

Bill Russell would go on to enjoy a Hall of Fame career in the NBA, where he led the Boston Celtics to 11 NBA titles over the course of 13 years.

Just as faith from a coach helped to mold a young Bill Russell’s career path, guidance and mentoring are valuable training tools in business, too. Providing team members with the resources and skills training needed to succeed at their jobs can make a difference not only for the individuals you’re helping but also for the company (and team) as a whole. After all, who knows what potential “all-stars” might be waiting to be discovered on your team. All they need is a chance to shine.

What is Your Sales Process?

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You may have the greatest service or product in the world, but if you can’t sell it, how much good will that do?

The good news is that small improvements in your selling can have exponential effects on your bottom line. Focusing on the factors that can increase your selling efficiency or selling effectiveness will have a far greater impact than changing prices or reducing overhead.

The path to selling efficiency and effectiveness starts with proper planning. Begin by focusing on the factors you have the most control over:

  • The quality of your prospects
  • The quality of your sales pitch
  • The cost of the sales process itself
  • How you use your time
  • Your sales process

The quality of your prospects depends on how well you qualify them. This is one of the most important factors in improving your selling effectiveness. You have complete control over this part of your process. Begin by asking if the prospect truly is a good fit for what you sell.

When determining the quality of your sales pitch, remember that your prospects are too busy to pay attention to generic sales speak. Find a way to quickly show them how your product or service has delivered measurable results for people just like them. You need to prove that you know your stuff and that you can help them solve their problems.

The cost of the sales process is another area where you have control. Tracking expenses in both hard costs and time spent provides benchmarks that will help you determine just how much it costs to acquire a customer. You can’t improve what you don’t measure.

Effective time management skills separate the top sales superstars from everyone else. Finding the right customer acquisition techniques and tools is essential… and well within your control. Nothing is more valuable than your time. Learn to use it wisely.

Do you have a sales process in place, or do you handle sales in a piecemeal and patchwork manner? A strong, systematic sales process can take much of the mystery, magic, and waste out of selling. Track it, measure it, and tweak it until you have a dynamic process that can be replicated by every new salesperson.

There is one last item that binds all of these together, without which none of them will work. That is productive activity. Nothing can replace the actual work it takes to generate a sale. Phone calls, direct mail, networking events, emails, and in-person sales calls are all productive sales activities. They all work when they’re part of an overall strategy and plan that leads a prospect to a sale.

Sometimes it only takes small improvements to get big results. Take a closer look at how you’re currently selling. Shorten your sales cycle by improving your process, and watch your sales grow.

 

Is Your Business Sellable?

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One of the goals of every business owner should be to build a company that is worth selling. Whether it is actually put on the market or not is another matter.

A business that is worth selling is growing, vibrant, and healthy. That’s why it’s in the best interest of everyone involved in the company to continually work toward building a sellable business.

Many metrics are used to measure the worth of a sellable business. One of the key metrics is the ability of the business to generate recurring revenue.

There are several ways to achieve a consistent, recurring revenue stream. Not all will work for every type of business, product, or service. Here are a few ideas to consider, depending on the types of services and products you provide.

Long-Term Sales Contracts

One method of building recurring revenue is to offer contracts that tie a client to a long-term engagement. A customer could be enticed to sign a contract if they are offered preferred pricing and services. An example of this can be seen with most cell phone contracts. The multi-year contracts are offered as a way to get a free or discounted cell phone in exchange for signing a two or three year contract. The buyer gets the cell phone quicker, and the cell phone provider locks in a guaranteed, predictable revenue stream.

Service and Maintenance Contracts

Some businesses can offer service contracts for after-sale support. For example, an IT company will charge for installing and setting up a network in a business but could also charge a yearly support fee to keep the network up and running free of viruses. Maintenance contracts can be a great source of additional revenue throughout the year. In many automotive dealerships, the service bays bring in much higher profits than the car sales departments.

Product and Service Training Fees

If your product or service involves a learning curve, customers would get more value from their purchase if you also offer training and certification after the sale. Product training becomes a true win-win, as the customer gets better use of their purchase, while you get additional revenue from an existing client. Many software companies offer training for their products to help their buyers understand and use the software to its potential.

When your business can generate sales from multiple revenue streams that support each other, the risk to a potential buyer is reduced dramatically. The business becomes a much more attractive candidate.

Predictable, recurring, multiple income streams make a business seem less risky to a potential buyer. So the sooner you start building recurring revenue streams in your business, the better your position will be if and when the time comes to sell.

How to Be the Master in Your Field

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Pablo Picasso created paintings the world has marveled at for decades. Looking with awe at these masterpiece creations, it would be perfectly logical to imagine that the distinctive brush strokes were made by someone with a natural gift — a gift not achievable by most.

Although Picasso’s talent is undeniable and his style unmistakable, that genius was actually developed in a surprising way that many don’t realize.

From the time Picasso was a young boy, he was formally trained by his father in oil paintings and figure drawings. And what method did his father use to train young Pablo? Jose Picasso was an artist who believed the best training for his son required formal and disciplined copying of the masters’ work. For many years, young Pablo Picasso fervently reproduced paintings, drawings, and plaster casts of the masters. He not only copied religiously but also experimented with a variety of styles, theories, and ideas, until he developed his own voice and distinctive style.

So what does this have to do with business?

The ideas of meticulous practice and of learning a skill by emulating the leaders in a field are not as common today as they were in the days when apprenticeships were more common. In a world that craves instant gratification, people often overlook the hard work required to develop any talent and simply assume it just comes naturally to those who are gifted.

The good news is that there is a short-cut. The bad news is that even the short-cut requires some sweat equity.

Not everyone can become a Pablo Picasso. Not entirely because of the natural talent gap (though that’s part of it), but also because of the not-wanting-to-put-in-the-hard-work-required gap.

There’s incredible power available to you in muscle memory. Muscle memory is “consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition.” When any task is repeated over and over, a muscle memory is created which allows one to perform the task almost effortlessly.

Olympic and professional athletes, concert pianists, and all other performers in the top of their field are perfect examples of muscle memory in action. They have practiced and performed so often that their performances seem to be effortless. That is the power of muscle memory.

Muscle memory can also apply to business mastery. It requires finding the leader in the field, analyzing and dissecting what they have done, and then recreating and reproducing those skills, often while adding your own unique style and flair. Practice often until muscle memory takes over. If it worked for Pablo Picasso, it can work for you.

Introducing: Your Next Sales Super Achiever

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We all want to increase sales and grow our businesses. We also know that hiring and grooming a sales superstar is one surefire way of achieving those goals. Unfortunately, finding and retaining a sales superstar is a difficult task. Until you find the secret to make that a reality, here’s an alternate path to consider for reaching your sales goals.

Self-publish a book!

You read that correctly. One of the best ways to increase your sales and grow your business is to author and publish your own book. Self-publishing your book allows you to present your points to your target audience in an authoritative way — just like a sales superstar would.

Now, to be clear, we aren’t talking about writing a novel the size of War and Peace. Nor are we talking about writing a prize-winning book. This type of book is written specifically to bring you leads and the types of customers who are looking to buy what you sell.

They say everyone has at least one book in them, but no one tells you how to go about writing it. Being an author is on many people’s dream lists, but few go about actually accomplishing the tasks needed to bring a book to life. Perhaps that’s because writing a book seems so overwhelming. “It will take many years.” “I don’t know how to write a book.” “I don’t know what to write about.” These are some of the many excuses that stand in the way of making authorship a reality.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Here are five simple steps to get you going:

  1. Pick your topic title.
  2. Make an outline of your main topic and sub-topics.
  3. Choose three main subjects to write about.
  4. Think about ways you or your products/services go about solving your customers’ problems. Come up with 10-20 solutions.
  5. Write about and expand on one of those points one hour every day.

It really can be as simple as that. Within a few weeks, you’ll have the main part of the book finished and ready for editing. Finding nice cover graphics and having it printed is not difficult.

Imagine being able to hand a prospect your own beautifully printed book. Do you think that would establish credibility and open some doors?

Your own self-published book is the ultimate business card — and the sales superstar you can use to grow your business in ways not otherwise possible. What’s more, this kind of sales superstar has no ego and doesn’t call in sick either. There’s at least one book in you. Start writing it today.