How the Seasons Affect Your Direct Mail Campaigns

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For the best results from your direct mail campaigns, learn how responses vary according to the time of year.

Some direct mail marketers focus so much on what they mail to whom, that they lose sight of another variable that’s just as important: when they mail. In my experience, most industries have a good time of year to mail (when they get stellar results), and a bad one (when you wonder if anyone out there is listening).

Do you know which season is best for you?

While you may have a general idea of good times to mail, you may not know those weeks or months to avoid – when your response rate falls like a stone. As an example, one of my clients mails sales letters about commodities. You know, corn, wheat, sugar, etc. They teach people how to trade commodities based on technical principles.

As you can imagine, one of our target prospects for this offer is farmers. The idea is that they can learn how to “hedge” their crops by buying and selling commodities. This makes them less vulnerable to changing market conditions. When I first started mailing this commodity offer to farmers, I had tremendous success. But…it didn’t last! After a few months, the response rate dropped off the table, to almost zero. Why?

After testing exhaustively, month after month, I figured out the problem. It was very simple. Farmers were NOT responsive during their harvest season.

Why? They are working 20 hours a day, 7 days a week. They don’t have time to read the mail. Or think about learning something new. But…they are HIGHLY responsive in the off-season, after the harvest. Knowing about this seasonality allowed me to aggressively mail farmers in the off-season, and avoid mailing them during harvest season.

Here’s another example. If you are a financial planner, do you know the best and worst times of year to mail?

Financial planners get the worst response rates during holidays – Memorial Day, Labor Day, 4th of July, etc. Their response is especially poor in November and December when most families are super busy planning and spending their money on gifts, travel, and food. What’s the BEST time for financial planners to mail? The first quarter of every year. January is best since families are evaluating their finances, and trying to find better ways to save and manage their money.

I send out over 250 mailings per year. I ALWAYS have something in the mail – every day, every week. I’ve identified money-making seasons for dozens of industries. And by mailing at just the right times, we are able to make the most out of our mailing. Experiment with small mailings and compare responses over time.

Armed with information on the best times to mail, you can make the best use of your advertising budget.

Saving the Earth, One Email at a Time

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Traditional marketing practices tend to use a lot of paper. Consider how you can make operations more sustainable with digital communications.

Marketing is not exactly known for being an eco-friendly industry. In fact, the U.S. uses about 68 million trees each year to produce 17 billion catalogs and 65 billion pieces of direct mail, according to the American Forest and Paper Association. However, as the world becomes increasingly more digital, marketers have an opportunity to use digital tools to boost their environmental sustainability and turn this reputation around.

Many businesses plant trees to celebrate Earth Day; however, marketers who instead champion digital communication within their companies will benefit from a sustainable practice that can become a foundational part of their business. Consider the following best practices to help your company become more environmentally friendly for a sustainable future.

Move from direct mail to email.

When it comes to eco-friendly behaviors, some industries are better — and some worse — than others. Real estate, for instance, is notoriously old-fashioned in its marketing habits, relying predominantly on direct mail to reach customers. On the other hand, retailers who have embraced the shift to ecommerce tend to lean toward digital marketing to communicate with their customers. Internet retailers, in particular, generate very little paper across their business practices, delivering receipts, catalogs and other solicitations electronically.

Reducing your reliance on direct mail to reach customers will have a significant impact on the amount of paper waste your business creates. Shift your focus toward email, and consider how your current marketing content could be delivered electronically. Could a digital newsletter replace a brochure, or an emailed promotion replace a print mailing? Begin introducing QR codes to your print mailings that, when scanned on a smartphone, lead prospects to a landing page where they can easily enter their email address to receive digital communications. Use your traditional marketing pieces to promote your email list generation, and show your customers how they’re supporting your commitment to the environment. Taking that first step to digital might keep thousands of trees firmly rooted where they stand, and drastically reduce paper mailings from ending up as landfill.

Switch to scannable content.

While the restaurant industry has, for the most part, made the initial transition to electronic communication, they’re still lagging behind other industries in how they’re using it sustainably. Restaurants frequently send digital coupons and promotions to their customers but require customers to print them for redemption. While the communication to the customer has minimal environmental impact, the customer becomes the culprit doing damage to the environment.

Make sure the coupons and offer codes you distribute via email can be scanned and redeemed directly from a smartphone or other mobile device. Use responsive design tools to ensure your entire message and the offers it contains are easy to read and scan regardless of the device. Think about ways you can entice your customers to use digital devices for redemption, such as extending a better offer like free delivery to those who don’t print. If your business has an ecommerce site in addition to a physical location, consider whether that promotion can be used online as well as in store, and give clear instructions for both use cases.

Transition processes to an online portal.

Amazon is a force of nature, driving seismic shifts in the ecommerce, marketing and fulfillment industries. The company is setting the stage for how to do business digitally today, and one way Amazon’s influence has reduced paper waste is through the company’s online portal to manage workflow processes. Rather than mail hard copies of receipts and product manuals with new purchases, Amazon gives customers access to digital versions of these materials through their online accounts. These records can be accessed anytime and anywhere, and they track a deep purchase history so customers need not worry about losing documents.

If your business has an online component, consider how building out a customer-facing portal could cut down on overall paper waste. Migrate workflows for receipts, instructions and manuals to this portal, and make it accessible through many mediums like web browsers, devices and even apps. Help your customers understand that they’ll always have access to the documents they need and that their use of your portal is benefiting a greater good — the environment.

Transitioning your marketing efforts to be digital-based might take a bit longer than planting a tree, but the impact on the environment can be similarly enduring. If you can’t get your hands dirty this Earth Day, think about how a few changes to your marketing practices can affect the world around you. We can all do our part by taking steps towards an environmentally sustainable future.

New Study Shows Business Owners How to Reach Gen Y Consumers

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New research from suggests that mobile and social media marketing to play even greater role in the future.

It’s important for every business owner to be constantly thinking about and planning for the future. No matter how large and power a company is now, if they don’t adapt to changing market trends or consumer expectations, they are doomed to fail in the future. Blockbuster Video, Circuit City and Yahoo are examples of companies that went from being the leaders to the losers of their industries when they failed to adapt. To help business owners plan for the future, a new study highlights what is known about the up and coming shoppers of tomorrow, Generation Y.

Generation Y consumers are often thought to be shoppers who are between 20 and 34 years old. This may just seem like an unnecessary subdivision of Millennials, but there’s a reason it’s valuable to look at Generation Y consumers on their own. The Savvy study estimates that this group currently represents around a third of shoppers, but by 2022, they will account for nearly half (47 percent) of shoppers.

Though this may seem like an obvious place to start, one of the key takeaways from the report is that mobile marketing will be integral to reaching audiences in the future. Four out of five (80%) of Generation Y saying they look at their phones multiple times an hour.

Generation Y consumers are attached to their devices and use them in many shopping situations. According to the Savvy report, 66 percent of Generation Y shoppers say they regularly use their smartphone to buy products and nearly half (49 percent) regularly use their smartphones while in the supermarket.

This is group is also highly active on social media. The lion’s share (97 percent) have accessed social media in the past month. And 95 percent have used messaging services like Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger. By comparison, only a little over half (55 percent) of this group had read a printed newspaper (including free papers) during the past month.

“The rapid rise of the connected shopper reflects the enormous influence technology now has in our lives as shoppers – digital media inspires us, is our go-to place for product research and, in many cases, is where we buy products,” says Alastair Lockhart, Insight Director at Savvy Marketing. “Shopper behavior is evolving more quickly than ever before, and the onus is now firmly on retailers and brands to keep up and be fit for the future.”

Business owners who use this advice to help create better campaigns for young adults will benefit from more than just increased business from Generation Y consumers. Mobile, social media and search marketing are useful to all consumers.

Even Savvy reminds business owners that 80 percent of all shoppers own a smartphone, 86 percent access social media, and 61 percent have searched for a product using a search engine in the past month. This is truly a situation where ‘a rising tide lifts all boats”
There are many ways business owner can use mobile marketing and social media to improve the shopping experience for their customers. As has been discussed in many articles in the past on Inc.com, businesses that effectively use data and technology can give customers the information they need to convince them to buy a certain product or make shopping easier with in-store pickup for items bought online.

Technological advances have been driving much of the change in marketing and business, in general, and this study on Generation Y shoppers shows that this will probably not change anytime soon. For more news about the best way to use technology to improve your business, read this article on creating a better business website.

15 Ways to Scale Your Business and Make More Money

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Taking your business to the next level is a step-by-step process.

There are two things that every entrepreneur wishes for: more time and more money. We yearn for more time because balancing any semblance of a career with the demands of a family life, friends and other interests, becomes overwhelming.

We desire more money so that we can run ads or pay for employees or expand our operations, and everything else in between. Yes, having more money would be great but it’s wasted if you don’t know how to spend or properly invest that money on marketing or growing your business.

The truth? It’s often hard to find time to do anything when you’re enthralled in the perils of building or scaling a business to any degree. Not only do you need to effectively bootstrap your growth by wearing many hats, you also need to constantly work to increase your skill set while struggling to wrangle sales, dealing with customer service and tending to other tedious issues that tend to take up a large chunk of time.

If there never seems to be enough hours in your day, join the club. If you’re not properly managing your time with an effective time management system, or you’re immersed in one bad habit after another that seems to be eating away at all the precious moments you do have, then the problems compound on themselves.

Setting proper goals is necessary for anyone who’s serious about scaling their business, making more money, producing more product or achieving any other dream. They need to be smarter goals and there needs to be powerful reasons behind why those goals absolutely must be achieved.

By creating a plan, taking action and staying persistent no matter what, you can leverage the following strategies and methods to scale your business. It’s not easy. No one ever said it would be. But it is well worth it.

1. Leverage legitimate SEO techniques.

SEO seems complex and confusing, but it really boils down to a few fundamental principles. Those principles are the bedrock for over 200+ rules that go into Google’s current search algorithms. Learn SEO the right way, leveraging the proper techniques, while adhering to Google’s many rules, and you’ll succeed. Your visibility will eventually grow, resulting in a natural increase in leads and sales.

2. Create and share content on a blog.

Starting a blog is simple and straightforward. What isn’t simple and straightforward is actually posting useful and unique content that adds a tremendous amount of value, and doing that consistently. However, blogging is one of the best ways that you can build authority and create an organic audience over time. By becoming an authority, you’ll end up attracting customers rather than chasing after them.

3. Answer questions on Quora.

Quora offers up a great opportunity for online marketers to connect with a massive audience by answering questions and engaging with like-minded individuals from around the world. Use Quora to spread value and further establish yourself as an authority, effectively helping you to scale your business by boosting your visibility through the platform’s massive footprint.

4. Connect with influencers.

I’ve long been fascinated with the concept of influencers, gravitating towards them to uncover the secrets behind how they’ve built such massive audiences. It’s not easy to become an influencer, but if you have a small budget, one near-instantaneous way you can scale your business is to get influencers on board to champion your products or services. This is a quick way to get out in front of a very large audience. But not the cheapest way.

5. Run a contest or giveaway.

Contests and giveaways offer another quick way to market. The word free is very enticing, and people will naturally want to sign up for anything that involves a potential windfall prize. Your giveaway needs to be worth it if you’re going to collect that all-important contact information. However, be sure to pay homage to local laws and regulations when running any kind of contest. FTC regulations run fierce in this arena.

6. Post content on Medium.com.

Medium is by far one of my favorite sites for content marketing. This authority site offers up the ability for anyone to post useful content to market anything online. However, don’t use this to spam. Instead, create useful discussions and tutorials that will further enforce anchor-content on your website. The goal is to market your site the right way and not by spamming links through thin content.

7. Setup a social media content channel.

Social media offers one of the most abundant opportunities for scaling any business, no matter what type of business you’ve started. It also offers an avenue to tap into the world’s connected population, quickly and effectively. Clearly, achieving a massive following is no simple feat, but that shouldn’t deter you from establishing a content channel where you can spread value throughout social media to raise the awareness and visibility of your offers.

8. Build in-depth YouTube tutorials.

Deep-dive into the world of video with YouTube tutorials. Creating a popular YouTube channel isn’t easy, but it is well worth it. To do it, you have to provide in-depth tutorials, helping people to really understand a niche or solve a problem. Whatever it is that you do, help to educate the world on how best to do it. In turn, you’ll become an authority and an industry leader, ultimately leading to greater exposure and eventually, more sales.

9. Create a lead magnet and sales funnel.

Ask any smart online marketer about how they scale out a business, and they’ll tell you the same thing: build an effective sales funnel. Draw them in with a value-laced lead magnet and drop them into a funnel where you can sell them on autopilot. The right sales funnel, split-tested to oblivion, with a clear understanding of your cost-per acquisition, can be scaled infinitely. Not only will you grow your business by leaps and bounds, but you’ll make tremendous amounts of money no matter what business you’re in.

10. Deliver real value through email marketing.

Email marketing is the most powerful driver of sales for leading online marketers and businesses the world over. This isn’t just about your email drip-campaigns that go out automatically; this is about truly reaching out and connecting with your subscribers. It’s that connection to you that will help sell whatever it is that you’re selling on auto-pilot. However, it has to be done the right way. Not by spamming but by genuinely sharing and trying to help others.

11. Hire commission-based sales reps.

Most businesses can’t afford to keep a large staff of sales people on board. Instead, they turn to commission-based sales reps to help provide a stepping stone to the next level in their business. However, those sales reps need to be effectively trained; they can’t simply be hired and forgotten about. Take the time to create training videos and helpful guides to walk them through your entire system and business, and use it to quickly scale things out when you need to bring on more members of the team.

12. Advertise with AdWords or Facebook.

Conversion-pixel tracking is a great way to grow your business online by targeting the right audience. You can do this with a Facebook conversion pixel, while also tracking any event such as shopping cart abandonments or products that were added to a wish list but not purchased and so on. You can then directly target these individuals with ads, enticing them to come back. Similarly, on Google’s AdWords platform, you can use re-targeting through contextual or search-related ads as well.

13. Create coupons on RetailMeNot.

RetailMeNot is a massive online repository for coupons and offers. Companies turn to the site, which is the biggest in the United States for aggregating coupons, in order to help drive traffic to their offers. If your store isn’t already listed, you can request to have it added, then post your coupons afterwards.

14. Setup an affiliate program.

Affiliate programs can drive a significant amount of traffic. In fact, some of the biggest online marketers rely heavily on affiliate income generated through email marketing or pre-existing website or blog traffic. However, setting up an affiliate program isn’t always simple, since there are so many facets involved. If you’re an absolute novice, turn to some of the leading affiliate sites such as Link Share, Impact Radius and Commission Junction. to quickly build an affiliate program.

15. PR outreach via HARO.

If you’re looking to scale your business through the press, utilize HARO, a platform where reporters seek experts and business sources for comments on articles that they have in the works. HARO, which is short for Help A Report Out, is a great forum for connecting with reporters, writers and contributors to some of the leading publishing platforms, without attempting to come in with a “cold” message or contact, which often doesn’t pan out.

Outstanding Sales People Possess These Unique Character Traits. Do You?

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What separates an average sales person from a highly successful one? Experts say to look for these 12 qualities.

Whether you want to grow your own sales abilities, mentor an employee, or hire the best candidate, these experts volunteered their informed opinions to help. Ranging from middle market and corporate CEO’s, sales trainers, award winning sales people, and psychologists, here is a list of qualities they say outrageously successful sales people share.

Have strong intuition.

One of the hardest traits to obtain is the ability to know when to keep your feet planted and when to walk out the door. If you want success, you have to listen to your gut instincts in a practical way.

CEO, Marc Cenedella, Ladders

Provide clear value.

We’ve got a team of 20 salespeople, recently reduced from 30. We kept the star performers, who share one thing in common: an unshakable desire to provide clear value to the customer from the very first contact. They have a core attitude of wanting to help, whether it leads to a sale or not.

Seb Dean, Managing Director, Imaginaire Digital

Believe whole-heartedly in your product or service.

Successful salespeople must have knowledge and belief in what they’re selling. If you know your product and believe in it, you’re more likely to be genuine and speak from the heart. People will pick up on that because people often buy the why, not the what of a product or service.

Courtney Gaines, President, CLEAR Property Management

Develop an alter ego.

If you are not who you want to be yet, develop an alter ego. Call upon it when you’re facing a challenge. It’ll allow you to be bolder and more tenacious. It’s much easier facing rejections when they are rejecting your alter ego and not you.

Nalie Lee-Wen, CFO, The PPA Group

Possess a sense of humor.

Successful sales people are not only emotionally intelligent, extremely extroverted, and have a high general sense of well-being, but, in my experience, they typically have a great sense of humor as well.

Christine M. Allen, Ph.D, VP, Insight Business Works

Don’t hear objections.

Objections can throw salespeople off guard and make them lose objectivity. Successful sales people consider the buyer’s objection as an opinion. They don’t try to overcome opinions, they simply conduct mature conversations that take the buyer’s perspective into consideration. They show empathy and curiosity towards the customer’s concerns and validate the importance of them.

Joe Zente, CEO, The Alternative Board Austin ​

Be willing to accept ultimate responsibility.

Sale people with this quality take ownership of their goals and what they want to achieve. They take ownership of who they need to become to achieve their goals, thus they are constantly learning, adapting, and growing. Lastly, they take ownership of the challenges they encounter; thus they focus on finding solutions rather than getting lost in all of the problems.

David Naylor, Executive VP Global Leadership and Learning Development, 2logical

Never stop asking questions.

Great sales people know that buyers aren’t interested in features, they’re interested in finding out whether or not your company can really solve their problem. The best sales people aren’t satisfied until they get to the root of a potential customer’s problem.

Hannah Write, Co-founder, HR Partner

Have courage.

Sales people with the best results are those who have the courage to feel the fear and ask anyway. They win more by being willing to push the envelope. This doesn’t mean that they are being obnoxious or taking advantage of people, it means they don’t compromise. Know your product and what you are selling, and ask for what you really want.

Linda Swindling, Negotiation Expert, and author of Ask Outrageously! The Secret to Getting What You Really Want

Follow the 80/20 rule.

A seasoned professional can tell how well the meeting is going by the percentage of time the prospect is talking. I strive for an 80/20 breakdown. In a great meeting, the client is asked proper questions, allowing them to express their needs, which they may not yet be aware of. Don’t make the mistake of spending too much time selling and not enough time diagnosing the problem that your products may be able to solve.

Adam Torres, CEO, Century City Wealth Management

Collect the right data.

People who are very successful in sales have the ability to collect the right data and interpret it to make meaningful conclusions. Externally, the ability to collect data and critically interpret it allows a sales person to uncover, understand, and address the true pain points of customers. Internally, it improves the sales flow process.

Josh, Content & CommuniManager, Fieldboom

Develop an emotional common ground.

This enables good salespeople to use conversation, body language, other social cues to quickly establish a sense of trust and understanding when cultivating new relationships. The talent required to build that trust and confidence in you as a person, and to find that emotional common ground with people from all backgrounds and walks of life, is what differentiates good salespeople from outrageously successful ones.

Zach Olsen, President, Infinite Global ​

Well, how do you and your team measure up? Let us know in the comments section below. And, add or comment on the character traits that you believe are important.

Your Competition Wants Your Customers

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Competition is a part of business life. Some would argue that competition forces businesses to strive to get better at what they do for the fear of losing customers to rivals. Losing a few customers periodically is inevitable. However, losing too many (especially your best customers) must be avoided at all costs.

For most businesses, the top 20% of their customers account for 80% (or more) of their profits. While much thought and strategy typically go into bringing in new customers, not enough is spent on retaining existing customers. That’s where the real gold lies.

It may be a little uncomfortable to think that some of your best customers might be looking at making a change, but it’s something you must consider if you want to avoid having it become a reality. Everyone talks about taking care of their customers, but in many instances that’s a phrase not truly backed up with action. To build a fence around your customers and keep them far away from the prying arms of your competitors, you mus truly care, protect, and guide them.

Gather customer feedback on an ongoing basis.

Most businesses put a lot of hard work into getting a new customer. But after they become a customer, little effort is put into nurturing that relationship. A customer should never be taken for granted.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the day-to-day operation of your business and lose touch with what’s happening outside your doors in the marketplace. Phone calls and emails to customers can be a great way to communicate and stay connected. But to do it on a large scale can be unrealistic. Informative company newsletters and surveys can help keep your customers up-to-date and give them a way to express their needs and concerns. These efforts can provide an early warning system to catch a customer jumping ship before it happens.

Tell them what you do.

Your competitors will do anything to steal your customers, including promising the moon. You know that some of these are false claims or teasers to get their foot in the door. Some of your customers may not know that. Your job is not only to provide a great product and service but also to continually remind customers about the value you provide that your competitors can’t match. If you don’t tell them, no one else will either.

Informing your customers through educational marketing content is a powerful way to keep them engaged while differentiating your company as one that truly cares about their success (not just your own).

Where are the weaknesses?

To help plug the holes in your business, start thinking about things from your competitors’ point of view. After all, they’re always looking for any weaknesses they can exploit, so you should, too. That way, you can shore up your weak spots before they get out of hand and, in the process, strengthen your position in the marketplace.

To discover your weaknesses, talk with your customers. Ask them about the areas you could improve. Stay up-to-date with industry trends that could create a possible gap in your defenses, too. You can’t buy every bit of technology as soon as it hits the market, but you can stay informed so you can address concerns with your customers when they arise. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. Be proactive in your customer communication.

“There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” ~ Sam Walton, Wal-Mart

Customer retention starts with providing great service and value. Getting to the top is hard work, but staying there requires just as much effort. Being aware of the competition while shoring up the weak areas in your business can go a long way in helping keep your customers coming back.

Monopolies and the lack of competition aren’t in anyone’s best interest. Keeping your best customers satisfied is. Use competition as a motivating factor to continually improve your services. Communicating with and showing appreciation for your customers will give you an invisible force field to keep the competition out of your backyard.

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.