April 2-8, 2012
Elements from the past 20 years you can use for the next 20 I’m celebrating my 20th year subscribe, and you will immediately of writing about sales, networking, begin to genuinely differentiate. loyalty, trust, attitude, leadership, 28. TAKE ACTION. Put away business social media and personal the remote. I know you take action development. during the workday – it’s before and My core of information after the workday that I’m talking transformed into a body of work that about. Allocate 30 minutes in the includes 11 books – all bestsellers. I morning and one hour in the evening did it while you were watching TV. I to improving one of these imperatives chose to write instead of watch. each day. Last week was the second part 29. CONSISTENCY OF of the celebration talking about the ACTIONS. Get up earlier every day, evolution of the selling process and and do something for YOU. Exercise. how it will affect you and your sales Read. Think. Write. Every day. That’s for the next 20. This is the been one of my “obvious” third and final part. If you 20-year secrets. missed the first two, you can 30. NEXT-LEVEL get all three parts at Gitomer. ACHIEVEMENT. Study com, by entering the word your business, your market, “twenty” in the GitBit box. your competition, your Here’s the conclusion of customers and yourself. Jeffrey what’s now and what’s next: When you do, what’s Gitomer 19. UNDERSTAND next for you will become CREATIVITY. Most people obvious. say they’re creative, but they have 31. FAMILY SUPPORT. never read a book on the science of Nothing and no one is more important. it. That might be a good intention You need their support. They need for the remainder of 2012. Start with yours. Best advice: Give genuine anything by Michael Michalko. support, and yours will follow. 20. CONVERT LEADS TO 32. WRITE EVERY DAY. SALES. This is as challenging as Writing leads to wealth. Not money, any sales activity in the cycle. Sales wealth. Every penny I have earned have been dangling in the wind for since March 23, 1992, I can trace back years. Decisions are finally picking to something I wrote. But MUCH up speed. Now is the time to stay in consistent “value-based” follow-up MORE than money, I have gained mode. Stay on track and sales will reputation, recognition and rewards that have enhanced my success all the follow. 21. YOUR ATTITUDE. You way to fulfillment. And I promise that have COMPLETE control and choice writing every day will do the same as to the way you dedicate yourself for you. to the way you think. As you emerge 33. CELEBRATE. OFTEN. from the economic depression of the Please do not wait to celebrate. Life’s past four years, it is IMPERATIVE short. Celebrate every thing, every that your attitude (both at home and sale, every victory, every day. And at work) is set on YES! This one don’t be cheap about it. element will enhance everyone’s TAKE ACTION NOW, NOT communication, morale, service and TOMORROW: Go back over the sales. entire list of 33 imperatives and rate 22. EARN TRUST. You don’t yourself 1-10 on how well you stack ask for trust. You can’t force trust. up against each element that I have You EARN trust. How are you presented. That will give you the earning it? most realistic picture of where you 23. EARN SALES. You don’t are versus where you need to be. And ask for sales. You can’t force sales. You EARN sales. Still asking? Still it will give you a clearer vision or where you’re going. All you need to trying to “close?” 24. EARN LOYALTY. You do is make a plan of “how.” Dedicate an hour a day to you. don’t ask for loyalty. You can’t force In 20 years, you’ll be an "instant" loyalty. You EARN loyalty. Loyalty comes from service and value success. I’m proof. received. Where’s your value? 25. EARN REFERRALS. You Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The don’t ask for referrals. You can’t Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is force referrals. You EARN referrals. Priceless, The Little Red Book of Referrals are not just leads, they’re Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales report cards. Answers, The Little Black Book of 26. EARN TESTIMONIALS. Connections, The Little Gold Book You don’t ask for testimonials. You of YES! Attitude, The Little Green don’t force testimonials. You EARN Book of Getting Your Way, The Little testimonials. Testimonials are your Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little ONLY valid proof. 27. DIFFERENTIATE IN Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer. THE MIND OF THE CUSTOMER. com, will lead you to more information Differentiating is the key to winning about training and seminars, or e-mail on value over price. Your branded him personally at salesman@gitomer. e-mails can differentiate you from the com. © 2012 All Rights Reserved others. Go to www.aceofsales.com,
The Enterprise
Why snail mail beats e-mail six ways to Sunday
15
If you’ve shifted to e-mail as your primary it’s not inexpensive. Still, for all that, snail mail has a tactile marketing medium, indeed, if you’ve switched to almost any form of electronic marketing as your advantage that two-dimensional e-mail will never primary marketing channel in your brick and have. You can touch, heft, examine, mull, if you mortar business, you are almost certainly costing will, with snail mail. No matter how compelling the video, it is stuck in the two-dimensional plane yourself thousands. behind (on) a screen. Untouchable. Here are the facts: E-mail simply doesn’t get opened. It just Now, I understand the expense arguments. I doesn’t. People who give us permission to e-mail understand that when you’re looking at sending them — or even ASK us to e-mail them — don’t almost unlimited e-mails for $15 a month, and a open our e-mails. At least at nowhere near the single snail mail envelope can cost you 89 cents rate they open snail mail. or more, the temptation is to forget the snail and Yes, you can send an almost unlimitstick with the e. ed number of e-mails, virtually for FREE, And I’m not saying you should and at that rate, if you send enough of abandon e-mail. You shouldn’t. them, you can generate some sales, even But snail mail remains a proven at their pathetic open rates. But beware the winner for business — small busimotivations of the e-mail buyer. You may ness, in particular — and the costs get the same number of sales, but will they of acquiring transactions through the be for as much, will the new customer conmail remain very competitive indeed. vert to a long-term client, and won’t you So, here are some tips for lowering Jim Ackerman have spent as much in time, energy and, the cost of acquisition of a transaction yes, even money, to get these few, lower by using snail mail. volume, less loyal sales? • Don’t use a #10 envelope. That’s the stan In addition to the “spam effect,” which dard size of “business” mail and open rates will causes us not to open e-mail even when it’s not go down. spam, there is also the inherent difficulty of get- • Do use “announcement size” envelopes ting people to open a document with just a few and greeting card-size envelopes. Doing so could characters of introduction in a “subject line.” Are increase your open rates by a factor of 10 or you that good a headline writer? Humbly, I must more, which, with a good offer, could dramatisay I think I’m a great headline writer, and I’m a cally decrease your cost of acquisition. long way from consistently cracking the code on • Do use e-mail and telemarketing as a this one. follow-up, to increase open and response rates. And since the headline is the ad for the ad, People need to be told what to do, more than if you can’t get people to open your e-mail from once. • Do focus on your existing customer lists your mini-headline subject line, it ain’t gonna get and specific segments of it for specific offers. opened at all. Contrast both of these inherent weaknesses This is part of the “small ball” approach I talked of e-mail with good old fashioned snail mail. about in a recent column. While we largely ignore most of what we • Use multiple offers to multiple mini-segget in our e-mail inbox, everybody goes to the ments of your list, running concurrently. You can mailbox once a day to see what they got. I even send a promotion to one segment of your list, and have six and eight year-old grandkids that ask me another promo to another segment, based on your if they got any mail today. knowledge of what they have, what they like, etc. And while little or no formal “sorting” takes You could mail to as few as a couple dozen or to place in the e-mail world, every piece of mail as many as a few hundred. • When you find something that works, that comes into your home commands at least a glance from at least one person in the house. keep using it. Don’t make the mistake of doing That means somebody looks at and evaluates the something successfully and then asking yourself, relevancy to them of each piece of snail mail. “what do I do now?” Do the same thing again … And they decide whether the piece goes into the and again and again. • Test small and scale up when you achieve “must open” or “maybe open” pile. Whichever pile you make, at least you got your shot. Not so success. If something works on a small scale it with e-mail. will likely work on a larger one, and perhaps on And with snail mail, you’re not limited to a the largest one. few characters blandly presented just like every • Keep tweaking and testing to “genetically single other piece of mail in your inbox. No engineer” your marketing for ever-increasing limitations on size, font, style length or materials. success. Each piece of snail mail looks different. E-mail These aren’t the only things you can do, can’t match that. but they’re a great start. As you experiment and With snail mail, you can use color, illustra- refine, I’m guessing your shift back to snail mail tions or photography, size, shape, dimension will put a nice stamp on your success. and bulk to get your piece opened. What do you think your odds are with that kind of creative Jim Ackerman is a Salt Lake City-based marketing flexibility, compared to that dull, boring e-mail speaker, marketing coach, author and ad writer. For his speaking services, go to www.marketingoffering? speakerjimackerman.com Subscribe to his VLOGS I’m not saying e-mail doesn’t have its at www.YouTube.com/MarketingSpeakerJimA, strengths. Economy of delivery is certainly one. where you get a video marketing tip of the day, And if you can get your package opened, you can and at www.YouTube.com/GoodBadnUglyAds, do some cool stuff with it that’s tougher to do where Ackerman does a weekly ad critique and with snail mail. Add video or audio, for example. lets you do the same. ©2012, Jim Ackerman, All Rights Reserved These things CAN be done with snail mail, but