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24/7 Answering Service Can Keep Customers Happy and Facilitate Sales
Many businesses stimulate their market round the clock. Whether sales literature, web sites or advertising, prospects are reached frequently overnight and on weekends. What do you do when your customer is ready to buy and your doors have closed for...
40 Essential Communications Pieces For Your Sales Arsenal
I often get asked what sorts of sales pieces does a business need to maximise their sales conversions and repeat sales. Well - every business IS different, but here is a good starting point. Generating leads 1. A Yellow Pages ad that sells (if...
INCREASE YOUR SALES AND PROFITS WITH PERSONALIZED MESSAGES
I paid bills last night. After writing checks on the business account I noticed a little sticky note on the next check reminding me to get more checks printed. My mail this morning included a sale catalog from an office supply company I use. The...
Sales 101
For many individuals in business the hardest part is selling. For the majority of business owners, the jobs they had before don’t prepare them for dealing with selling products. So, this article will deal with some basic tips to help you with sales....
Ten Ways To Multiply Your Sales
Here's ten simple yet POWERFUL ideas for you to reflect on. This will help you adjust your marketing strategies, which will have a GREAT effect on everything you sell. 1. When you make your first sale, follow-up with the customer. You could...
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Seven reasons to use direct mail for sales lead generation.
1. Personal
Unlike an advertisement in a trade publication, which can be read by anyone, your sales letter arrives at your prospect’s place of business as a piece of personal communication from your mind to his. Also, unlike any other medium, direct mail can be personalized (Dear Mr. Smith) and customized to each reader (“As an IT manager, you know that . . .”), showing your prospect that you know about him by name and understand his business in particular.
2. Cost effective
Advertising by its very nature is expensive. To reach a lot of people, you need to spend a lot of money. Direct mail, on the other hand, only targets the prospects you want to reach. Instead of pitching your product to a huge audience of potential buyers, you aim your sales message only at prospects most likely to buy.
3. Breaks through the clutter
Your ad can easily get lost among dozens of competing ads in a trade newspaper. Your sales message is also easily forgotten on radio or television unless you repeat it many times, which is expensive. But a simple letter, addressed to your prospect by name and arriving on her desk in the morning mail (which she must open), cuts through the media clutter and gets her attention.
4. Measurable ROI
Direct mail is one of the best mediums for measuring the return on your marketing dollar (or pound or yen). Simply code your business reply cards, and count how many return to you in the mail. Then calculate how
many of those replies generate a sales meeting or a sale. Now you know immediately--and exactly--how effective your mailing has been. Direct mail numbers never lie.
5. Predictable
One advantage of knowing the success rates of your past mailings is that you can predict the success of future mailing. If you mail the same package with the same offer to a similar group of prospects at the same time of year, you can predict how many responses you will receive, and how many of those will translate into sales.
6. Can be improved through testing
Because you can measure your direct mail results, you can also test your mailings. Test one package against another, one list against another, one offer against another, and you’ll discover what works and what fails. That way you’ll spend your marketing dollars where they are most effective (without relying on guess work or hunches).
7. Immediate
General advertising builds brand awareness. Sales brochures inform. But a direct mail letter asks for action now. So if you need to generate sales leads, and don’t have time to wait for your ad to appear in “IT Buyers Quarterly,” send a direct mail letter and wait a week or so for a response.
About the Author
Alan Sharpe is a business-to-business direct mail copywriter, sales lead consultant and owner of www.sharpecopy.com. Alan helps businesses attract qualified prospects using creative, compelling, cost-effective direct mail marketing.
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