How to Write a B2B Complex Sales Lead Generation

Special Report How to Write a B2B Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter That Attracts Sales-Ready Leads Using direct mail in B2B lead generation campaigns to create more sales opportunities and crush quotas 2nd Edition by Jim Logan Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd Edition Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 3 What's Wrong With This Letter?................................................................................................ 5 The Answer to What's Wrong With the Letter........................................................................... 8 Homework, Before the First Word Was Written...................................................................... 11 The Workhorse of the Letter, the Opening Paragraph ............................................................. 15 More Pressure and Positioning, the Last Paragraph................................................................. 18 The Letter on Benefits, Difference and Reason to Believe ...................................................... 20 The Letter and Gatekeepers...................................................................................................... 24 Sales Letters Sent to the Small Business CEO......................................................................... 25 Closing Thoughts on the Letter ................................................................................................ 30 New Questions and Answers for the 2nd Edition...................................................................... 33 Why use direct mail? What about other lead generation tactics and activities? ..................... 33 Why did you only ask for a 30 minute meeting?...................................................................... 40 What can you do to increase open and read rates? ................................................................... 41 What about dimensional mail? Does it work? What are the risks?........................................ 45 Should you call the addressee before or after the direct mail piece is read? Why? ................ 47 What is the best length of a lead generation and sales letter? .................................................. 48 Can direct mail be combined with other lead generation tactics? ............................................ 50 Should you test direct mail campaigns? ................................................................................... 50 How large should mailings be? ................................................................................................ 53 Closing Thoughts on Direct Mail ............................................................................................. 55 What You Should Do Next....................................................................................................... 56 About Accelerate Business Group, LLC .................................................................................. 57 Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd Edition How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads Introduction This report is a second edition. First published in November 2006, this report was downloaded nearly 3000 times the first 12 months of its release and forwarded to others countless times. To date, it’s the most popular report we’ve published. What’s most impressive about the number of downloads over that period of time is the report wasn’t marketed to any degree. For the most part, it merely sat on a download page, available to all who wished to have it. One blog post on our website and one post on a colleague’s site – that’s it. That’s hardly a big PR or marketing campaign. But that’s not the story. The story is numerous people who reached out to us after reading the report and the many conversations thereafter. Many people and businesses took us up on the offer to consult with them in free 30 minute meetings to discuss their lead generation efforts. I expect many more will request such a meeting after reading this second edition. Those meetings raised a lot of great questions and topics of discussion about lead generation in general and direct mail in particular. And that’s what led to the second edition of this report. What I’ve done in this edition is take the most common questions we’ve been asked since this report first published and answer them here for all to benefit. We picked the questions and offered answers we believe will be most beneficial to creating new direct mail lead generation campaigns. This second edition is organized in two parts. The first part is pretty much the same content as the first edition – a detailed breakdown of the most successful complex sales lead generation letter I’ve ever written - or for that matter ever heard of written. While the first part is pretty much the same, it’s not exactly the same. Since we’re publishing the second edition, we took the opportunity to review the first and add clarity to some of the elements of the letter’s success. If you read the first edition, Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 3 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads there’s enough new meat added in this second edition to make reading the first part of this report a worthwhile endeavor. The second part of this report is filled with questions and answers we’ve been asked most often in meetings and discussions following the first release of this report. This new section offers insight to many elements of a lead generation and direct mail campaign surrounding the direct mail piece itself. It addresses many common campaign implementation questions. I want to personally thank all of you who contributed to the success of this report and for taking the time to read and share it with others. I especially appreciate the volume of kind words and appreciation many of you expressed after having read the first edition. I hope you enjoy this second edition as much and find it as valuable. Thanks! Jim Logan February 2008 Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 4 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads What's Wrong With This Letter? The letter to follow in this report - and related analysis on its effectiveness - is an actual letter used in a B2G (business to government) lead generation campaign. This letter was sent in April 2004 to 40 of the largest counties in one of the largest sates in the United States. The letter was sent to County Supervisors, the highest elected official in county government. As I'll mention later, the same techniques detailed in this report were used to gain access to senior executives in F1000 offices across the country - same product, same approach, and same incredible result. The exact letter in this report resulted in a 75% response to its call to action! I titled this section What's Wrong With This Letter? because few people no one thought this letter would perform anywhere near as well as it did – especially in its target market. This letter breaks a lot of copywriting rules and conventional wisdom, yet it performed exceptionally well. As you’ll soon discover, this letter’s performance is no surprise. In this report I'll share all the secrets to its success. I am its author. If you aren't familiar with large county governments and their organizations, just picture a highly structured, hierarchical bureaucracy with numerous gatekeepers and protectors of it's always been done this way. This is bureaucracy near its worse and one of the most complex sales environments in the world with teams of people, multiple organizations, and bureaucratic red-tape involved in selecting vendors and evaluating strategic offerings. It's truly among the most complex of all sales environments. And it's historically among the slowest to act. This special report is offered as proof of how effective direct mail can be in a complex sales lead generation and sales campaign - few markets are tougher to penetrate than government. This report shows you exactly how it was done successfully with a single page letter and a first class stamp. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 5 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads Getting an appointment with a bureaucrat is one thing, but gaining access to an elected official and their office - without name recognition or political clout – simply by mailing a single page letter, is proof positive of how effective a well thought and constructed campaign can be. The letter in this report was written in support of a simple client task: As fast as possible, get as many face-to-face meetings you can with County Supervisors or executives (Chief Administrative Officer or County Counsel - the most senior nonelected officials in county government). This report shares the letter's success. Better, this document will breakdown the letter paragraph by paragraph and message by message. Each step of the way I'll share with you how and why decisions were made in identifying the addressee and shaping each word of the letter. Better still, I'll show you how this letter fits within a real-life lead generation and sales campaign. The offering is a web-based service that costs approximately $200K a year. The company making the offer had an extremely limited marketing budget and no name recognition however, they had several quality references I could leverage. To get started, read the letter on the following page. Read it in its entirety with a critical eye for what is being said and how the reader is being influenced. After you've read the letter I'll share with you some startling facts of its response and then breakdown the letter and share the thoughts behind each word and message. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 6 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads Dear Elected Official, I am writing you and your elected colleagues to determine who is the most appropriate person or people to meet with for 30 minutes during the weeks of either April 26 or May 03, 2004. Elected officials are surprised far more often than they should be by policies, initiatives, and budgets gone astray. Legal services are among the most difficult to control, yet are among the most expensive when services get off track. And they evoke some of the strongest negative visceral responses by constituents. This combination can lead to embarrassing and problematic surprises for elected officials. To eliminate the risk of such surprises, it’s important elected officials keep legal counsel focused on a single principal: Counsel’s greatest purpose is to protect and promote stakeholder value; outside counsel is an integral part of fulfilling this purpose. Monitoring, measuring, and managing outside counsel’s use of time, process, and accounting of activities is critical to assess their contribution. At Our Company, where I lead business operations, our business is providing oversight and accountability of public money spent on outside counsel, a large and growing expense. Coupled with managerial accounting, performance benchmarks, and performance metrics, these financial benefits deliver great value, particularly valuable in these budget constrained times. We're not in the software sales or consulting business and our service does not require any start-up fees, lengthy contractual agreement, minimum volumes or early termination fees. There is no software to purchase, install or maintain. The cost benefit of employing our service is real. By the mere presence of our service we are confident you can achieve a significant reduction in your legal spend; money that can be used elsewhere in your budget. This cost reduction can be achieved without disruption to the quality of service delivered by your outside firms. We currently do business with Reference 1, Reference 2, and Reference 3, to name a few. Using our service, our customers have established detailed cost accounting of their legal spend, saved considerable money on their legal costs, and established benchmarks of performance for their outside counsel. If this is of interest, I would like to schedule a thirty-minute meeting during the week of April 26th or May 3rd to introduce our service and discuss specific benefits to Your Constituency. My office will follow-up shortly with your administrative assistant to find out if you've seen this letter and if you wish to schedule the meeting. Please let them know your answer so we may schedule it through them. Thank you for your time. I look forward to meeting you. Sincerely, Bob Vendor Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 7 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads The Answer to What's Wrong With the Letter What's wrong with the letter on the previous page? Nothing. Here's why: The letter had a 75% success rate on its call to action! Try to beat that control. Thirty of the 40 prospective accounts agreed to face-to-face meetings. More amazing is the total sales activity in the time between the deliveries of the letter to the face-to-face meetings were one phone call to each addressee! We sent the letter as it's shown in this report and called the addressee's office five business days after mailing. Our only questions on the call were: 1) had you received the letter and 2) will you take our meeting. We refused to engage further than that. Here's an even more impressive statistic, 7 of the 30 counties that took the meeting called us to schedule it! They called us before the five business days had passed and we had the opportunity to call them. That's a little over 23% of the positive respondents taking action before we did! By all measurements that's an incredible response. In case you're wondering, the envelope and letter we sent had no teaser copy to increase open rates. As it's presented in this report, the letter was the only thing sent, there were no other offers. And there were no use of tricks, gimmicks, or misleading statements whatsoever. I did not even use a Johnson Box on the letter. The letter didn’t have any bold, highlighted, sub-titled, or bulleted text to boost its read ratio. The letter was truly sent as represented in this document. The only difference between the letter in this document and the one sent is standard business letterhead...void of any message other than company name and address. We printed the letters and envelopes in our office. This kept costs low and allowed us to manage the flow of letters being mailed. To allow time for telephone followups and meeting schedules, we sent approximately 50 letters a week. Altogether, approximately 350 letters were sent. All letters were self-stamped. Total hard-cost Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 8 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads per letter was one first class stamp, one #10 envelop, one sheet of paper, and ink – that's a total cost of less than $150 for the entire mailing. And yes, we closed new and repeat business with this campaign. The ROI was incredible! I assigned one person to make follow-up telephone calls. The person making the follow-up calls didn't know much about the service being offered and only identified himself as an office assistant calling to schedule the meeting. This was intentional as we didn't want to have the meeting on the phone - the task was to meet face-to-face. As such, I didn't want the person making the follow-up call to be able to address any potential questions. All questions would be answered at the meeting. In case you're wondering, we didn’t receive any negative feedback for refusing to engage in a discussion of our service when calling to follow-up on the letter. A big reason for this is how I positioned the caller – I established our caller as a peer to the person being called (office administrator to office administrator). The calls were truly to schedule a business meeting between two executives – the letter's addressee and me (I agreed to represent the company sending the letter). This is a key point to an entry strategy with executives. Executives are less likely to take a meeting with a sales person and more likely to take a business meeting with a peer. It's all about positioning. This same basic letter was later sent to the 20 largest school districts in the US, targeting school board members. The results were even greater. And a twist on this letter was sent to 30 F1000 companies, with comparable results. The bottom-line is this letter worked more than once. Our initial response wasn't a fluke. But this letter couldn’t be sent word-for-word to all markets and get the same results. This letter works because the markets we used it in had the same basic characteristics and potential leverage points. I’ll get into this in detail a bit later. Something important to mention is the company whose name this letter was sent from is not a big company. It has a handful of employees and was unknown to Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 9 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads each of the addressees before they received the letter. In each case, this letter was the first correspondence sent from this company to the addressee and their organization. At the time of this campaign, this company had no advertising, tradeshow, or other outbound marketing or advertising activities. They were completely unknown to their prospects before this letter. Each paragraph and message in the letter is intentional, intended to provoke a response or address a pressure point and concern of the reader. The letter is a combination of separate techniques and principals popularized by Doug Hall and Michael Boylan. I've been a fan of Doug and Michael's work for some time and combined some of their basic thoughts with personal experience and my own entry strategies. Then I integrated the concepts with complex sales analysis, the results of which I'll explain within this report. Something to note is as good as Doug and Michael's work is, its success here is its combined efforts integrated into a larger strategy. The letter is technically imperfect, but it works because it's spot-on the addressee's interest and concern and aligned to the sales and decision making process needed to favor our offer and shorten our sales cycle. In other words, this letter works because we understood our prospect and mapped the decision making process and influences ahead of time, before a single word was written. We did a heck of a lot of homework before we did anything else. The fundamental secret to the letter itself is it's all about the reader, not the writer. The writer – the company sending the letter – isn’t important at all. There's a lot more on this topic in subsequent sections of this report. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 10 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads Homework, Before the First Word Was Written Before we start breaking down the letter and examining the elements of its success, let me explain a little more about the thought that went into the letter and lead generation campaign, before the first word was written. The letter is a result and part of an intentional plan and as such the work prior to writing the first word is critical to its eventual success. Homework is the key to lead generation success. And it has nothing to do with copywriting, creative services, or sales techniques. This homework is all about getting inside the head of your target customer. A common mistake of copywriting is failure to do homework on the addressee and fully integrate the direct mail piece into a sales cycle. There's no chicken and egg question here. The sales strategy comes first. The copy comes later in the process and is nothing more than a tool to achieve a goal within your sales strategy. If you’re frustrated with your lead generation efforts to date and wonder why you’re not as successful as you should be in producing sales-ready leads and attracting new business, start here. Odds are great the problem you’re facing is you don’t understand your prospective customer as well as you should or you are implementing disconnected lead generation and sales campaigns. In the case of the letter in this report, the letter is intended to get the addressee to accept a meeting. The meeting is integral to the sale cycle. As such, careful and detailed thought were made on who the addressee should be, how they should be approached, how they're influenced, what pressure they respond to, and how the entire engagement with the addressee affects the entire purchase decision process. Here's how I addressed the above issues and concerns. This is a summary of my homework: 1. The company I wrote this letter for is legitimate. They have a legitimate product and offer a legitimate benefit. The sales position we took was one of honestly. No BS, no exaggeration, and no tricks, gimmicks or hype to open doors, present solutions, or close business. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 11 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads If the company, service, or benefit weren't real, none of this effort would matter. Prospects can tell when you're BSing them. They know when you don't believe. This had a heavy-hand in the decision to not use Johnson Boxes or teaser copy on the envelope. I didn't want to run any risk of being labeled anything other than sincere, honest, and trustworthy. Tricks and gimmicks of any kind were eliminated from our thoughts. The last thing I wanted was someone to look at the letter and think to themselves This is junk mail. That said, Johnson Boxes and teaser copy are legitimate copywriting techniques and are effective at increasing open and read rates. I write about this topic in detail later in this report and speak favorably of both techniques. I routinely use teaser copy and Johnson Boxes, as well as type treatment and other techniques used to increase open and read rates, but I never use tricks and gimmicks. The difference is huge. If the initial response to this letter were low, I would have first looked into the open rate and likely would have added teaser copy on the envelope in subsequent mailings. I’d have continued to work on the packaging of the letter until the open rate was proven acceptable and then turned my attention to the read rate. While this is all theoretical, I may have later implemented Johnson Boxes, customer quotes, type treatment, etc. Maybe. The results of the letter were such that no further tactics were implemented in this campaign. Testing was all conducted before this letter was written – in particular I tested the message and expected reaction of the addressee. 2. I spent considerable time profiling the sale - how decisions would be made, what concerns would likely rise, who would influence the decision, who would give final approval, etc. I determined County Counsel would make the administrative decision to purchase the service we offered, influenced by Risk Management (generally part of the County Administrator's office). The purchase approval would come from the Board of Supervisors. So, with that information in hand, where do you start? Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 12 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads Most sales people would start with a call to a staff member in the County Counsel or Risk Management's office. And this would be a colossal mistake. Never, ever, under any circumstance start a complex sale at the bottom of the food chain. Starting anywhere other than where the decision will be made is a waste of time. Worse, it's asking for extra work - multiple meetings, endless discussion of trivial features and functionality of your offering, and tiring request after request for more information from screeners and evaluators - people that can't make a purchase decision and are paranoid to recommend something until they understand every detail. 3. Related to the item above, I knew that by starting at the Board of Supervisors we'd eventually be directed to the County Counsel's office for due diligence. Knowing this, I wanted to make sure that once there, we met with Country Counsel directly, not a staff member. So, I decided we would be directed to County Counsel's office by their boss, the Board of Supervisors. And being directed there, they (County Counsel) would be obligated to report back on the outcome and evaluation of our service. I decided we'd sell benefits to the Board of Supervisors fist, then put County Counsel or the County Administrator in a position to confirm or refute these benefits, with a responsibility to report back to the Board, where the decision would ultimately be made. Remember, as cited earlier, this strategy only works because the offer is legitimate and we understood how decisions were made and by whom. 4. I reasoned the only way for a sale to close fast was to have a face-to-face meeting on the first encounter. The strategy was to have the first meeting at the top, sell benefits, and quickly go through due diligence. I added a consultative sales approach for the meeting and constructed a risk reversal guarantee. It’s worth repeating, the letter was all about getting to the top first - where the decision would ultimately be made - meet face-to-face, sell benefits, and position ourselves for quick due diligence. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 13 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads Something to note is when I say face-to-face, that wasn’t literally possible in all cases. Geography and time constraints meant some face-to-face meetings were figurative, not literal. When we couldn’t sit at the same table, I held private phone calls to introduce our service. Sitting together is always preferred, but reality is you sometimes can’t make that happen. When possible, I scheduled meetings with geographically similar accounts close together in date and time, making a few multi-day trips to sit with prospective customers one after the other. Occasionally, it made more sense to speak on the phone. The results were the same. The point I want to drive home is the letter didn't stand alone. It's an integral part of an account entry and sales strategy. This letter is not a picture perfect example of copywriting, it's a picture perfect example of a tool used to open doors and sell as part of a well thought sales plan. That's why this letter works. And why most professional copywriters would never write it. Lead generation isn’t a stand alone activity. One last thing before we move on. You may have noticed I italicized the words I decided a couple times within this section. I did that on purpose. I didn't do it because of ego, I did it because it's another point I want to drive home: you are in charge of your entry strategy, lead generation, and sales campaigns. By understanding the big picture of how decisions are made and the roles and influence at play with those taking part in a decision process, you have the opportunity to direct activity within your target account. You don't have to follow your prospect's process – in reality they have none. You have the power to create your own process. With this background in mind, in the next section I'll start analysis of the letter, beginning with the first paragraph, the workhorse in my entry strategy. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 14 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads The Workhorse of the Letter, the Opening Paragraph Let's start with the big one - the opening paragraph. The opening paragraph is the workhorse of this letter. Without it, I can't imagine the success we had. I am writing you and your elected colleagues to determine who is the most appropriate person or people to meet with for 30 minutes during the weeks of either April 26 or May 03, 2004. Most sales letters start with a story of some sort, an attempt to catch the reader's attention and engage them with intrigue. The thought is you quickly paint a picture for a reader, grab their attention, and hold interest to read further. This is often done in the form of a problem - the common formula is problem, irritation, solution. I didn't use this tactic because of time - the time of the reader. Busy people don't believe they have the time to read most lead generation and sales letters and are becoming numb to the problem-irritation-solution formula. Once numb, people jump through copy looking for what the letter is about, what's in it for them, and what someone wants them to do. What happens as a result is most direct mail pieces aren't read, they're scanned. Readers look for bullets, highlights, and sub-titles to get the gist of what's being said, then jump to the closing paragraph and PS to see what it costs or what's asked of them. I didn't use sub-headers or highlights to allow the reader to scan it. I did this intentionally. Professional copywriters have commented on this letter's lack of bullets and sub-headings as a weakness of the copy (comments made before the results of the letter were revealed). They're wrong. The reason I didn’t include any bullets or subheadings is because I didn't want the letter scanned, I wanted it read. I needed the reader to actually read the entire letter, then make a black-n-white decision to either take the meeting or not. I needed that kind of black-n-white decision because it adds pressure – pressure on the addressee to take my meeting as opposed to not taking it and later regretting it. So, how do I hold the attention of a busy executive and get their time to read the entire letter? Peer pressure. A tactic popularized by Michael Boylan. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 15 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads By telling the addressee up front that I'm sending the same letter to important people in his/her business life - peers, corporate enemies, superiors, etc. - I'm playing on the office politics that exist in every large organization. And I'm questioning who is best to speak to about this matter. Ego, arrogance, and fear mount pressure to read further. If not, the addressee may later sit in an internal meeting and hear about someone else taking my meeting, becoming the hero. The addressee has a lot of pressure to read the entire letter and make a decision to either disregard it or take the meeting to control the engagement with his/her company or organization. If not, his/her colleague may. In the case of this letter, I sent the exact same copy to each County Supervisor within a given county, letting each one know I sent the letter to the others, and asked a simple question - which one of you should I talk to about this. In a political environment like this, no puns intended, it's almost assured someone will step forward to investigate the offer. Again, this only works because the offer is real and the benefits are valued. And the offer is strategic enough to warrant senior executive involvement. If there is no perceived value in the offer, this tactic doesn't work. The important point to make is the first paragraph is what got this letter read. Without it, I doubt many would have read the letter in its entirety, no one would have called us to schedule the appointment, and we would have had only a handful of meetings. There are other elements of this letter that contributed to its success, but the first paragraph made it possible. FYI...In each mailed letter, I actually spelled out the name of each of the addressee’s elected colleagues. We wrote a script that handled this in a mail merge, rotating the addressee and other Supervisors for each country we sent the letter. Spelling out the names gets greater attention. I don’t use the tactics in this first paragraph in every lead generation or sales letter I write, but it works well when targeting senior executives. It's equally effective in both public and private sectors. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 16 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads You may think this tactic leads to poor meetings. It doesn't. Quite the opposite, it gets you to exactly the person that ultimately makes or most influences the purchase decision. Before we move on, I’d like to share some thoughts on not using text treatment or techniques to allow the letter to be scanned. If the letter were longer, say four pages instead of one, I likely would have used some bullets and subject headings. But I would have been careful to use them in such a way as to encourage the addressee to read the letter, not scan it. Scanning direct mail isn’t the objective. The objective is to have it read. Keep that in mind when tempted to over-summarize your copy. Next, I'll breakdown the second most powerful part of this letter - the close. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 17 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads More Pressure and Positioning, the Last Paragraph The last paragraph of this letter is interesting - it offers another element of pressure to accept the meeting. And it positions the person from the company that the addressee will eventually meet. Here's the paragraph: If this is of interest, I would like to schedule a thirty-minute meeting during the week of April 26th or May 3rd to introduce our service and discuss specific benefits to Your Constituency. My office will follow-up shortly with your administrative assistant to find out if you've seen this letter and if you wish to schedule the meeting. Please let them know your answer so we may schedule it through them. 1. Look at the first 5 words of the first sentence - If this is of interest. This is a pressure point. If the addressee doesn't take the meeting, they're taking a position that whatever is being offered isn't of interest. Combine that with the pressure of the opening paragraph and you have a lot riding on not giving me 30 minutes of your time. I normally hate closes like this. It appears I’m leaving the call to action vague and in the sole hands of the addressee. Asking someone to take action if they are interested is generally a poor technique and a sales-stopping tactic. The reason I used it here is because I’m retaining control over the next step – we’re calling in followup. The next step is already decided, our call is not an option. I’d never leave the decision on the next step in the hands of an addressee with a vague if you’re interested call to action. You shouldn’t either. 2. Notice that my office will follow-up with the addressee's office. This is a positioning technique. It signals the addressee that the author of the letter is important and busy. This gives the addressee a feeling they are meeting with a peer or close enough to being a peer they should give consideration to meeting with me. This is critical in meeting with executives, both in the public and private sectors. Executives rarely have time for sales people, but they always have time for a business meeting. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 18 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads 3. Now look at the last two sentences of the paragraph: My office will follow-up shortly with your administrative assistant to find out if you've seen this letter and if you wish to schedule the meeting. Please let them know your answer so we may schedule it through them. This is a blocking and positioning move. It signals there will be no meeting before the meeting. And we'll call everyone we sent the letter to, there's no stopping us. If we're even close to being on the mark with our offer - offering benefits that are valued - this secures the meeting. If you receive this letter and are the person responsible for the area of business we're inquiring about, you don't want to risk someone else taking the meeting first. Combined with the opening paragraph, the last paragraph helps seal the deal. What's between the first and last paragraphs can cause some problems for the reader - a wild card that presents a risky unknown. I'll cover that next. Something to note before we move on is the techniques and tactics used in this letter are not gimmicks. What you are seeing in this letter is implementation of a strategy based on understanding the environment we’re selling in. The pressure points I am touching are real, that is why they work. Knowing the reader and their environment is what makes this letter successful, not its copywriting. And knowing the reader and sales environment results from the preparation put into the campaign before the letter was written. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 19 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads The Letter on Benefits, Difference and Reason to Believe I have written a few times about the influence Doug Hall has had on my work. In particular, his book Jump Start Your Business Brain is a book I believe all marketers, business leaders, and executives should read and reference. It is that good. The middle part of this letter is how I have personalized Doug's principles presented in that book. Something to consider is how people make purchase decisions. Overwhelmingly, people put all purchase decisions through three simple filters. Each filter draws to the prospective buyer's attention a thought they consciously or subconsciously need satisfied before they are ready to make a purchase decision. Here are the three filters and how I used them in the letter: 1. Benefit. What's in it for me? A benefit only exists if the prospective buyer believes it to be one. The benefit has to be valued by the prospect or it doesn't work. And a benefit always has to exist for there to be a sales opportunity. It’s the single most critical element of an offer: Elected officials are surprised far more often than they should be by policies, initiatives, and budgets gone astray. Legal services are among the most difficult to control, yet are among the most expensive when services get off track. And they evoke some of the strongest negative visceral responses by constituents. This combination can lead to embarrassing and problematic surprises for elected officials. To eliminate the risk of such surprises, it's important elected officials keep legal counsel focused on a single principal: Counsel's greatest purpose is to protect and promote stakeholder value; outside counsel is an integral part of fulfilling this purpose. Monitoring, measuring, and managing outside counsel's use of time, process, and accounting of activities is critical to assess their contribution. Note the above benefit is implied. Doug Hall and many others would surely say implied benefits don't work. Normally I'd agree and have written about the reasons you don't want to imply benefits, but in this case it's appropriate. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 20 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads The reason I implied a benefit in this letter is because of the profile of the reader. Being publicly embarrassed is an elected official's greatest fear. Avoidance of a great fear is a benefit - a strong benefit. Some would think the benefit in this letter is saving money. Saving money and having more money to use elsewhere in a budget are benefits, but they're not compelling enough to take the meeting, saving your ass and looking good is. Some people have commented that when I mentioned cost savings in the body of the copy I should have quantified the savings to strengthen the statement. In other words, I have been told I should use a specific dollar value to define cost savings. This is conventional wisdom. And it would be wrong in this case. The reason you wouldn't want to quantify a cost savings in this letter is you might present a savings the reader doesn't think is significant. By leaving the number to the reader's imagination, the reader can't make a decision that the fiscal opportunity is too low for their attention. Let me expand on the point above, about not using a specific dollar figure when describing cost savings, and use it as an example of the importance of doing your homework before the campaign and copywriting begins. Part of the homework I did for this campaign concluded the cost of legal services isn’t widely known. While it is substantial, millions of dollars in most of the target accounts, it is often not listed as a line item in budgets. Legal is often accounted as a cost associated with another line item. That means a target account may be spending millions of dollars on legal services, but aren’t tracking it as a stand alone budget item at the Supervisor level, where the decision to purchase our service is made and who is the addressee of this letter. So, if I tell the reader they are spending $5M a year on legal services and we can save them $300K…is this good or bad? The reader may not know how much they spend annually on outside legal services or they may think $5M is a reasonable expense or the reader may think the savings aren’t that great. The point is I don’t know what they will think so, I left it vague. It became another pressure point to take my meeting. Lastly, note I’m not trying to convince the reader they should purchase the service. Remember, the purpose of this letter is to create a meeting, not solicit a purchase decision. Selling will take place at the meeting, not in this letter. This is a lead Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 21 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads generation effort, not a sales effort. The reader isn’t in a mind-set to purchase the service at this time. It’s a complex sales environment and as such, making a purchase can’t and won’t happen on the first contact. 2. Difference. Assuming you're not the only person on earth that offers me this benefit, what's unique about your offer? We're not in the software sales or consulting business and our service does not require any start-up fees, lengthy contractual agreement, minimum volumes or early termination fees. There is no software to purchase, install or maintain. This sentence does a few things: 1) it highlights a difference 2) it puts more pressure on the reader to take the meeting 3) it traps competition. All risk is shifted onto the vendor. If everything else in the letter is on target, this is the no brainer portion that makes it stupid not to take to the meeting. I made a risk reversal offer in this letter because of the homework I did before writing the letter. Studying my client's business model, existing customers, and work history with prospects, I was able to construct this offer and demonstrate to my client that the risk was very low to their business. This offer became a deal closer, a real no brainer that offered little risk to the company offering it - win/win. Guarantees close business and should be part of every offer. 3. Reason To Believe. Why should I believe a word of your offer and have confidence you can deliver on the stated benefit and difference? We currently do business with Reference 1, Reference 2, and Reference 3, to name a few. Using our service, our customers have established detailed cost accounting of their legal spend, saved considerable money on their legal costs, and established benchmarks of performance for their outside counsel. Each reference I used was someone the reader respects. This satisfies reason to believe and applies more pressure to take the meeting. If everything in this letter is true and others have taken the meeting and ultimately benefited, then you don't want to be known as the person that rejected the whole concept, without even meeting to investigate the offer further. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 22 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads Notice I mention benefits that result from the things the service provides, not the features and functionality of the service. So, that's how I addressed benefits, difference, and reason to believe. These three elements need to be addressed in every sales and marketing campaign. Believe me, your prospects are thinking in these terms and need satisfactory answers before they will purchase from you – whether it’s a literal purchase with money or the purchase of your meeting in exchange for their time. In the next section of this report I'll share some thoughts on how the letter handles one of the greatest fears of all direct mailers – the dreaded gatekeeper. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 23 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads The Letter and Gatekeepers A common concern with direct mail campaigns to executives is belief you have little chance of actually getting your letter read, let alone delivered, to the addressee. It's a reasonable concern. Many executives have little time to read all of the offers and solicitations their office receives so, they train office staff – gatekeepers - to sift through the things they receive and either redirect or throw away much of their mail. Only important things make their way through the human filter that manages their office. Knowing and accepting this reality greatly influenced the style and tone of the copy used in this letter. This letter is risky for a gatekeeper to make the decision of whether or not the addressee should read it. When you look at it, the letter appears professional. There are no yellow highlights, bold text or wacky fonts and images - the envelop, font, layout, and style is professional and business-like. A gatekeeper can't look at this letter and decide it is junk-mail, throwing it away before it is read. And the fact that it is being sent to all of the addressee’s peers makes it more likely the gatekeeper will forward it to be read. How would you like to be the gatekeeper that threw this letter away and later had to explain why they did it - after someone else took the meeting and became the hero? A gatekeeper’s job isn’t to filter everything; just the things that aren’t important or are better addressed somewhere else in the organization. Knowing this influenced the look-n-fee pf the envelope and letter, as well as the language used. Gatekeepers have a hard time throwing this letter away because they don't know what their peers in other offices will do. The safest thing to do is forward the letter to be read. That's why this letter is overwhelmingly passed along to the addressee or their designated representative. You can't avoid the gatekeeper. So, why try? Instead of avoiding them, make them part of the process. Understand they will read everything first and work that into your approach. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 24 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads Sales Letters Sent to the Small Business CEO When I first shared this letter and the secrets to its success, I received a couple handfuls of comments and requests for clarification on particular tactics. Most of these comments and questions I've already addressed. One such comment and question in particular is worthy of a section in this report. Here's the question: Great letter, but how would this approach work with small business owners where they often are more "loose cannons" than the typical structured org executive? I'd love to hear about ways to break through to the small entrepreneur and SMB owner? What this reader is asking is how the letter I used to meet with elected and senior non-elected officials at large counties, their school district peers, and executives at F1000 companies can be used to meet with small business CEOs. The short answer to this question is it can't, it won't work. Here's why. The letter in this report is based on a profile associated with a complex sale, where multiple individuals influence and sometimes collectively make a purchase decision. The letter is designed to work with the political, bureaucratic, and often dog-eatdog environment associated with large organizations and executive decisions. In small business, this environment doesn't exist. As such, the letter doesn't work. As an aside, this is why it's not a good idea to copy someone else's copy. What was designed to work in one market often doesn't come close to working in another. This is a perfect example of such a mismatch of markets and approaches. Going after the sole proprietor or small business CEO is different from going after a F1000 or large entity executive. The biggest difference with the small business owner is the profile of the individual you're approaching. In the letter in this report, we opened with peer pressure and influence to get our prospect's attention - the small business owner rarely has such a pressure point. Then we closed with more pressure to take our meeting - again, the small business owner doesn't acknowledge this pressure. And the letter Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 25 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads presented upfront information of concern in a bureaucratic complex sale. The small business owner usually makes decisions himself/herself and as such doesn't respond to these tactics and approaches. If this letter doesn't work with small business CEOs, what does? The key to getting in the door and gaining the attention of a small business owner is to present yourself as a peer. Small business owners have less time for salespeople than they do for business people, this is a shared characteristic of their big organization brothers and sisters in business and the key to gaining access. Presenting your offer, your value, and yourself as a business person seeking a business relationship is the right approach. You don't want to present yourself as a salesperson seeking a sales meeting in search of a sale. A standard sales entry of "Hi! I'm Joe salesman from Expensive Company. I'd like to talk you about our questionably-necessary widgets and support services. Blah, blah, blah...doesn't work well with any size business, small businesses in particular. With this approach, by the time the sales process has begun the small business owner is already tired of the spiel. If you think this is basic solution selling, you're mostly right. Small business owners respond best to business propositions that solve an issue of concern or create or enable an opportunity. Saving money and time, as well as enabling resources to achieve more, continue to be sound business approaches. And enabling or creating new revenue streams or greater cash flow are opportunities rarely ignored. Again, this may seem too simple, but simple works. You don't have to complicate anything, just map whatever product or service you offer into one of these basic business issues - solving a problem or creating an opportunity - and you'll get a business owner's time and attention. You may be asking why not use this direct solution selling approach with large organization executives? The reason this approach doesn't work as well as you'd think in opening doors at large organizations is because the large organization executive has more at play in their environment. The bureaucracy that exists in large organizations often eats solution sale approaches in their early stages. The Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 26 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads large organization executive has more structure and pressure points that can be tapped into to secure action – gatekeepers, influencers, corporate politics, battling egos, etc. The letter in this report was intentionally written to match the environment of that reader. The executive reader at a small company is significantly different; as such the letter in this report just won't work in small business environments. The pressure points and structure don't exist to make the tactics effective. Small business executives respond better with a basic solution selling approach. If it's this simple, why doesn't everyone have better success with solution selling? The reason many people don't find success with solution sales is because they don't take the time to do their homework before they launch. Homework is the key to every sales, marketing, and lead generation campaign. You can't position yourself as solving just any problem or creating just any opportunity. You have to solve the exact problem and create the exact opportunity your prospect values. That's the rub. When you profile a prospective customer correctly and hit the right buttons, solution selling is the best way to engage with small business owners. They want solutions to their business problems and opportunities. And they can only get them from other business people. Salespeople offer little value. This has been and always will be a fact. In large-organization complex sales, solution selling is a great approach once the door is open, but it's not as effective at opening the doors at the top of the organization and engaging with the targeted buyer as the tactics I've shared in this report. Solution selling is selling. In a complex sales lead generation campaign we aren’t selling, we’re working to create sales-ready leads. Selling will take place later. And when it does, solution selling is highly appropriate and effective. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 27 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads So, how does this all translate into a letter? Organize your letter the way the small business CEO thinks. Don't start with a tale like most copy does - the small business owner doesn't care. Instead give them the information they're looking for: Be direct and sincere: • Who are you? Without lying, position yourself as a peer. • Why are you writing me? Tell them how you came to get their name and contact information - profile, past experience, recent success, etc. • What is it you want me to do? Tell them upfront what you hope to gain from them having read your letter. Some people will tell you this is wrong. It's not. It works. Be direct. • Why should I do it? This is the basic question of what's in it for me. Tell them. • What does it cost? Time, money, and opportunity - they all are costs. Don't give enough information to let your reader make a decision unless that's what you want at this stage. • How much money will I make? Not just money, but how will the business advance as a result of your offer? Talk about the possibilities. But don't exaggerate. Be real about the opportunities you offer. • How long will it take? Offer a timetable, but heed the warning of giving too much information. You want to address concerns and pique interests. Only in rare cases do you want to give specifics. Specifics lead to decisions. And you rarely want an up/down decision after reading a sales letter. In most cases don't give enough information to make a purchase decision, unless you're willing to live with one from having merely read your letter. Give just enough information to legitimize reading your letter and taking whatever call to action you desire - meeting, phone call, etc. That's not to say you should hide anything, you shouldn't. But in few B2B sales do you want a reader to make a Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 28 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads purchase decision without having spoken with you. And you never want to push a purchase decision in a complex sale. Stay focused on your sales process and what you want the reader to do after having taken the time to read your letter. Write your letter to provoke the desired action you wish the reader to take and nothing more. A closing thought on sending letters to small business CEOs and B2B sales letters in general - I don't like letters as sales-closing vehicles. Letters are wonderful marketing tools and lead generators, and they do a great job setting the stage for a sales opportunity, but they aren't good as vehicle for closing business. A letter can’t replace a sales meeting. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 29 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads Closing Thoughts on the Letter Here are my closing thoughts on the letter in this report and its success: 1. Preparation. I mentioned several times that the success of the letter is due to the homework I did before a single word was written. This can not be overstated. Preparation is everything in writing any sales or marketing communication - know your audience and their hot buttons, motivation, biases, and influences. In the case of this letter, several white-boards were used over days of brainstorming, deep thought, and role playing to outline not just the letter, but the entire sales process. If this time and deep thinking hadn’t taken place, the campaign would have floundered. 2. Integration. This letter is one step in the sales process. Yes, this was a lead generation project, but it was one piece in a larger puzzle of acquiring new customers. The objective was to get face-to-face with our prospect and make a sale as quickly as possible. This letter got us face-to-face with decision makers and set the stage for selling. The letter was written with a holistic vision of the pressure put on the addressee to take the meeting, the person making follow-up calls, and the agenda of the meeting to follow. Ultimate revenue success was achieved because every piece of the revenue generation pie were reviewed and integrated before anything was written. No marketing communication should stand alone, everything should be integrated in a fashion that achieves whatever business purpose you're working to accomplish. 3. Conventional Wisdom. CW was tossed out the window a few times when writing and mailing this letter: no problem-irritation-solution formula, an implied benefit, no Johnson Box, no tease on the envelope, stated objective in first sentence, unskilled person handling the follow-up, no subtitles or type highlights, etc. A skilled copywriter wouldn't have written this letter. And they wouldn't have gotten the same results. This letter works because it's not a picture perfect example Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 30 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads of great copywriting. It's a sales letter written by someone who understands how to sell and who did the homework necessary to understand the sales environment. 4. The Author. The problem with the majority of B2B marketing communications I read is it is not written in a manner than supports the complex sale. And that's a problem of the writer's understanding and experience as much as the corporate structure - most B2B marketing communication is written by people that don't understand the complex sale, have no responsibility to make money for the corporation, and have never had the responsibility of exceeding an assigned quota. That's not marketing-bashing, it’s simply the truth. There are very few marketers in Corporate America that are sales oriented. That's a problem. In my experience, few B2B copywriters can envision the complex sale and write materials that support it - sales letters, brochures, presentations, lead generation, etc. That's my experience and sincere opinion. 5. Purpose. Every bit of copy you place in front of a prospect should have a purpose. If it doesn't, delete it. Don't worry about what's believed to be right or wrong, go with what works. Stay focused on your end result - getting a lead, scheduling a meeting, getting a recommendation, etc. Then write your copy and review it to make sure it supports that purpose. The writing is done when you have sufficiently built your case to achieve whatever goal you have set to achieve. At that point, stop writing. Don't over-sell. For example, if the purpose of your letter is to schedule a meeting, don't provide your prospect enough information to make a purchase decision. Stay focused on your call to action and be sure to only offer one call to action, not two or more. ===== Those are my final thoughts on the letter. So, what are your thoughts on the letter? Anything I didn’t address? Are there things I left out? Or are there things I got all wrong? I'd appreciate any and all Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 31 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads feedback you have. If you have any comments or criticism – yes, I accept them both – feel free to email me at info@acceleratebusinessgroup.com. Thanks for taking the time to read this report. I hope you found an idea or two to get more out of your sales and marketing efforts. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 32 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads New Questions and Answers for the 2nd Edition Since this report was first published in November 2006, it has been downloaded over 2500 times and shared countless times more. From those downloads, I have had numerous people and companies take me up on my offer to meet for a lead generation tune-up. These meetings have resulted in many new business relationships and a lot of great discussion on direct mail and lead generation tactics. What I've done in the second edition of this report is summarize and answer the most common questions Following are answers to questions I believe are most valuable to creating and implementing successful complex sales direct mail and lead generation campaigns. Why use direct mail? What about other lead generation tactics and activities? Probably the most common question asked as a result of reading this report is how effective direct mail is today and how it compares to other lead generation tactics. The simple answer is direct mail remains highly effective and relevant in 2008 and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. The reason is simple - there aren’t many ways to reach a B2B or B2G target account and prospective buyer. In complex sales, the universe of opportunity is pretty well defined. Organizations are relatively easy to research and target prospects are easy to identify. What results is a question of how best to introduce yourself and your company to a named and titled person. There are few ways to come into direct contact with a named account and person – you can visit their office, call them on the phone, email them or send them something in the mail. Other than that, there are no other ways to proactively come into contact with a person. Yes, you can schedule a meeting at a tradeshow or come into contact with someone following a Webinar, but you somehow have to invite them to the show or event first. That brings us back to physically Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 33 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads dropping by their office, calling them on the phone, sending them an email or sending them something in the mail. In other words, every lead generation tactic requires a contact method. And the only direct contact methods available to reach someone in particular are to call, visit, email or mail. Of the methods mentioned above, calling, emailing, and mailing are viable. Visiting someone in person – dropping by their office unannounced – doesn’t scale and is very limiting. How many offices can you drop in on in a single day? Door to door lead generation works for some B2B sales, phone systems come to mind, but we’re talking complex sales here. It’s not practical to base lead generation for B2B and B2G complex sales on dropping by offices unexpected in hope of creating a lead. So, we’ll forget dropping in on offices as a lead generation tactic and focus attention on the pros and cons of others. Cold Calling Although I don’t like it much, cold calling is a viable lead generation tactic. I find it awkward to start a conversation with a cold suspect at the other end of a mystery call. And as far as I’m concerned, the only thing worse than making a cold call is receiving one. No, making one is worse. Yes, I’ve read several books on cold calling. I’ve even attending a training session on creative and professional ways to call a suspect cold in a B2B markets. I even know a couple people who swear by it. But I still don’t like it. Most everyone successful at cold calling says it is a numbers game. You have to call a lot of people to get a few to agree. I don’t know what the numbers are behind your particular game - it varies with markets – but it doesn’t matter. I’m sure whatever your market; you have to call a lot of people to get one person to respond. That Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 34 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads means you have to lose a lot before you win. And any strategy that plans to lose more than you win is a poor strategy in my book. There are a lot of sales and business management that loves cold calling. It sounds good, like a quick fix for stagnate sales. “Just call some people…get some things going.” I find it interesting that most people who endorse cold calling generally aren’t the ones who have to do it and are the very ones who hate receiving cold calls themselves. If those who mandated cold calls had to make them, I wonder how long cold calling as a tactic would last? In reality, we all have to call suspects. At one point or another, picking up the phone and calling a new account is the right thing to do. The challenge is to not make it a shot in the dark. The opportunity is to eliminate the cold part of the call. Picking up the phone and blindly calling someone is a colossal waste of time. Rather, I like to call someone that already knows me, has a level of understanding of the things I can do for them, and expects my call. That’s a comfortable call to make and receive. And it’s a call with a much greater rate of success than calling cold. So, how do you warm a call? I use a combination of lead generation and PR activities to alert a suspect of my company, offering, and pending call. I seed them with meaningful benefits to create interest to take my call and entertain my offer. I set an expectation of what my call will be about, how long it will take, what the person gets from taking my call, what I hope to gain as a result of the call, and what is likely to follow. I’m up front, direct, and to the point. I don’t waste my suspect’s time...or mine. When we get on the phone, my suspect is near to becoming a prospect - there’s a level of interest demonstrated by taking my call. We can jump to the meat of the conversation and get to a meaningful dialogue much faster than cold calling. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 35 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads To be sure, I like inside sales. And I acknowledge calling suspects is a useful tactic and necessary fact of complex sales. But there's no reason to make the call and contact someone cold. Warming the call before the contact greatly increases your rate of success. For those reasons, I like teleprospecting in conjunction with direct mail, but rarely recommend cold calling as a tactic. As with the example letter used in this report, doing your homework before the call is critical to its success. Email If you have a correct email address and the recipient’s permission to send them email, email is an awesome lead generation vehicle. I work with customers who have great success and benefit tremendously with email lead generation campaigns. The benefits of email include immediate and low cost of delivery. URLs and hyperlinks make it incredible easy to integrate web marketing and convenient for the addressee to respond to polls, surveys, requests for information, registration, etc. And using email applications that provide open and click-thru stats makes testing and measurement of open and read rates a breeze – this is a huge plus in using email. The problem with email is not having verified email addresses and permission – usually a result of buying email lists or compiling lists from sources other than those using opt-in methods. SPAM is another challenge. Depending on your email title, format, and attachments, your email can be marked as SPAM and sent to a Bulk folder without the addressee even knowing it arrived. With the advent of white and black lists, it’s all the more reason to avoid sending email without permission. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 36 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads Here is a list of email Don’ts: • Do not send email to a list of people who haven’t already given you permission • Do not send an attachment in the first email • Do not use the words free, discount, no cost or other words likely to trigger SPAM filters • Do not use a title that sounds like marketing-speak • Do not use HTML without permission (you shouldn’t be sending email without permission in the first place, but…) You probably noticed I used the word permission a few times, it is a critical point. Permission means the person you are emailing has opt-in to your email list and has the ability to opt-out. This is important for two main reasons: 1) it’s a courtesy 2) it’s the law. If you have a large list of email addresses you’ve collected over the years from various means and you can’t resist the urge to use it, be sure you use it as part of a program that allows the recipient to remove their name from your list. Creating opt-in lists is beyond the scope of this report. That said, you can build a list a number of ways: • • • • • • • • • Ezine Blog Point of sale Seminars Webinars Conferences Newsletter White papers And many more… Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 37 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads If you are interested in learning more about building opt-in lists, feel free to contact me to discuss a means particularly well suited for your business: info@acceleratebusinessgroup.com A quick note on list management – AWeber, iContact, and GetResponse are wonderful email list management services. If you want a good list manager capable of sending sequential messages (autoresponder), ezines, and periodic email, I suggest Aweber. Direct Mail Direct mail has a few pros – it scales, integrates well with the web, integrates well with teleprospecting, and is a proven means to communicate. Cons are led by the challenge to be read before being thrown away. There’s a lot to be said about the challenge of achieving acceptable open and read rates. If your direct mail piece isn’t opened and read, it doesn’t matter what you have to say or offer. Beginning on page 41 of this report I’ll discuss this critical point in greater detail. No matter how much technology evolves, people still enjoy receiving something of value in the mail. There’s something in our nature that enjoys holding information, knowledge, and opportunity in our hands. The physical aspects of direct mail can’t be replaced by electronic messaging. The way your direct mail looks, feels, and even smells tells a lot about your company and offering. I don’t want to appear to be espousing direct mail as the end-all of lead generation. It’s not. But it’s obvious direct mail remains a highly effective way to contact a named person, organization, and company. In my experience, the combination of direct mail and teleprospecting is by far the most effective way to reach a B2B account. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 38 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads Another Lead Generation Approach – Blogs and Ezines Although I didn’t list it as a means to reach named account or individuals, I believe it’s worthy and appropriate to mentions blogs and ezines when discussing the ability to reach prospective customers. Blogs and ezines are rarely a vehicle to reached named people and organizations, but they are effective at proactively reaching a target audience – the reason for this is the ability to subscribe. Although greatly anonymous, people who subscribe to a blog and ezine are suspects in they are demonstrating an interest in the subject matter you are offering. A person who subscribes to your online publication does so because they are interested in learning more about what you have to share. And their subscription comes with permission to market to them. This too is a subject outside of the scope of this report, but here is a brief explanation of how to use a blog or ezine to attract prospective customers: Your strategy is to offer information, knowledge, training, tips, etc, on a subject or range of topics your ideal customer is interested in receiving. You use your blog or ezine to attract an ideal reader – a suspect – who opts-in for periodically updates on your written topic. With this permission, you are able to communicate with your subscribers whenever you wish, nurturing their interest and occasionally inviting them to engage with you in a business opportunity. While blogs have entrenched themselves with many, they haven’t fully caught-on in B2B markets. Concerns over control of the corporate message, informal sharing of information with shareholders and stakeholders, competitive intelligence, and potential liabilities has been cited as barriers to corporate blogging. All are valid concerns however, I believe each are manageable and are outweighed by the benefits of attracting a targeting online audience. I don’t want to detract from this report by venturing off into the pros and cons of blogs and ezines so, I’ll stop here. Without digging deeper into the subject, it’s something you ought to consider. In particular, blogs can be highly effective at Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 39 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads attracting targeted prospective customers to your website and the permission associated with subscription can lead to new sales opportunities. Blogging in support of complex sales lead generation is underused and a green field opportunity for many markets and industries. If you are interested in learning more about using blogs and ezines as part of a lead generation strategy, feel free to contact me to discuss how these marketing tools may be able to boost your business: info@acceleratebusinessgroup.com Why did you only ask for a 30 minute meeting? I’ve been asked a number of times why I requested a 30 minute meeting instead of a hour or more. The logic in the question is that a substantive meeting has to take longer than 30 minutes – strategic offerings can’t be discussed in a mere 30 minutes. That logic is wrong. I had two reasons for making the 30 minute request. And I would never ask for anything longer or shorter. • It’s easier for an executive to say no to a one hour meeting than it is to say no to a 30 minute meeting. A good meeting can always last longer. In the case of the letter in this report, I can’t think of one meeting that took less than one hour (some lasted two hours), but I never asked for anything other than 30 minutes. • I would never ask for less than 30 minutes because the perceived value of a shorter meeting is very low. Thirty minutes is a hard meeting to refuse, especially with the pressure and risk I placed on the addressee, as detailed in the report. The key is to know your prospective customer and understand their challenges and opportunities. Once you speak your prospect’s language, mapping your offering to benefits they value is easy. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 40 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads What can you do to increase open and read rates? No matter what type of response you get from your mailing, we all want more. More means more response to our call to action. And that generally means we need more people opening and reading our direct mail campaign. No matter how persuasive our copy, if it’s not read or read enough, it’s of no use. So, how do we increase our open and read rates? The first thing is to treat the two separately. Increasing Open Rates Open rates are important because if addressees don’t open our envelope or package, we can’t expect them to respond to our call to action. It makes sense and it’s obvious. And it’s too often overlooked and not given its proper level of attention. Consider for a moment what causes you to open mail - this is the easiest way to look at your mailing and test methods best to increase your open ratio: You know the person who is sending you something Obviously, you’re more likely to open an envelope or package from someone you know. Recognizing the name of the person or company name greatly increases the likelihood of opening your mailing. Using this fact to your advantage, you should think of ways to make your name and business name known to the addressee. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg scenario, but you may find simple mailings such as postcards or flyers sent before larger campaigns work to increase the latter’s open and read rates. Having seen your logo, name, and taglines a number of times, an addressee is better prepared to open and read something more substantial form you and your company. This type of lead nurturing should be integrated into your overall lead generation campaign, working ahead of your sales efforts to ready a prospective customer for an invitation to engage with your company. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 41 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads Nurturing a target market leads to a number of PR activities – speaking engagements, studies, articles, panel discussions, trade events, etc. All of these activities work to help your addressee be aware of you before your direct mail lead generation campaign hits their desk. This is where calling the recipient ahead of time can come into play. Alerting them a mailing is coming their way. Packaging We often take a second look at a colored, decorated, and odd sized envelope before we decided to read its contents. Tasteful use of color and 9”x12” envelops are highly effective in some markets and campaigns. When using color, I suggest you not go overboard – don’t send hot pink envelops to traditionally conservative companies and markets. That said, if you can work a color into your campaign, go for it. I always begin campaigns with simple, professional #10 envelops and standard company marks. I do this for two reasons – 1) it establishes a control you will later work to beat 2) it is professional, direct, and void of gimmicks. I don’t like the use of gimmicks and trickery to open an envelope. And I don’t think legitimate products, services, and companies need tricks to create leads and make sales. After you have a control using #10 envelops, I often try 9“x12” envelops and compare the response. The increase in cost is marginal. Envelope Copy I like the use of copy on the outside of an envelope. It’s proven to increase open rates. Although I like the idea, I encourage you to use caution and not tease so much as to cross the line of trickery. For example: Don’t do something like tell the reader there’s $10 inside the envelope to get them to open it, only to find inside a $10 coupon on their first purchase. To me, that’s a trick. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 42 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads I use copy on the outside of the envelope to open the discussion. I may do this by asking a thought provoking question or share a bold answer contained inside. Or I might highlight two conclusions and lead the addressee to a third inside. The key is to remain professional and tie the envelope copy to the contents. Dimensional Mail Dimensional mail is envelopes of varying size containing an unknown lump. The lump creates curiosity, resulting in an open letter. Dimensional mail is highly effective. And it’s dangerous. I get asked about dimensional mail enough – and have strong enough opinion on the subject – that I want to address it as a separate issue. Please see the next heading on this subject – page 45. Increasing Read Rates Now that the envelope is open, how do we get the letter read? Getting the package open and its contents ignored is as worthless as leaving the envelope closed or thrown away. So, we have to check, measure and work to improve the number of times the contents are read. There are a number of school’s of thought on how to get copy noticed. And there are a number of different thoughts on what gets copy read. I will stay focused on what I believe works best in complex sales and experience has taught me. Fonts I like the judicious use of fonts to emphasize a point or draw attention to a critical thought. Use of italics, bold, underline, and strikethrough can both draw attention to copy and help convey an important thought, idea or action. Johnson Box A Johnson Box is copy found at the top of a letter or in the middle of copy. The “box” of text can be anything, but is often a testimonial or summary that support the body copy theme. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 43 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads The Johnson Box is effective in that it draws a reader’s attention to a particular sentence or two of copy. Used effectively, its contents compel the reader to want to read the copy surrounding it. A caution in using a Johnson Box is it can make letters appear salesy. As with all attention grabbing tactics and techniques, you need to use Johnson Boxes judiciously. Bulleted Text Bulleted text draws a reader’s attention to a list of ideas, whereby a reader may skim multiple pages before reading. I like to use bulleted text in letters longer than one page and usually don’t use bulleted text in a one page letter. I haven’t found readers needing such nudging when reading a one page letter. One page letters have scarce space to begin with. Every bit of room is necessary to present an idea and offer a call to action. As such, I don’t write many one page letters with bulleted text Highlighted Copy I never highlight text. It gives copy a cheap look-n-feel. Enough said. Subheadings and Titles Subheadings and titles are good to use to break long copy and draw attention to changing themes. They are good to use in long copy and can even help you with your writing – serving as an outline of sorts to organize thoughts and assure the smooth flow of thoughts and ideas. I like to use headings and titles when changing the pace of copy or moving the reader from one reading point to another – information sharing, facts, background, calls to action, etc. As with most text treatments, I generally don’t use them with short letters. Postscript I have mixed feelings about adding a PS at the end of copy. As a general rule, I use postscript in long copy and exclude it in short copy. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 44 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads Especially in long copy, many readers will skip the entire copy body and read the PS first. We’ve all be trained to skip to the end and find-out what it costs or what action we’re being asked to take. Since we’re all trained to skip to the end and read the PS, we need to include it in long copy letters – it’s a part of the letter we expect the readers to read, if nothing else. So, the thing to think about is what do we want them to read in the PS? Most copywriters use the PS to reaffirm the desired action and call to the reader’s attention a deadline or other faux motivation to act. I like to use the PS to draw the reader’s attention to the body of the copy, a place I want the reader to jump to and read. I might remind the reader of a list or topic in the body of the letter, serving as a reminder to those who read the entire letter and a prompt to the reader who skipped to the end. For example: I might reference the guarantee, gift, deadline, or some compelling topic or information within the body of the copy, without explicitly restating it. The purpose is to use the PS to create interest to read the letter. I don’t like multiple postscripts – PS, PPS, etc. They cheapen the look-n-feel. Judicious is an important word to remember. All techniques above should be used judiciously. Too many bullets, fonts, highlights and text treatments can produce a distracting look to your copy and less than professional appearance. What I often do is print a copy of the letter and place it a few feet away, studying how it looks. Do the pages look busy, crowded, and non-businesslike? If so, I change it. What about dimensional mail? Does it work? What are the risks? You’re probably familiar with dimensional mail, it’s a direct mail piece sent in an envelope, usually oversized, that contains a lump inside – something you can feel, but not clearly identify without opening. You can hold it, lay it flat, and shake it, Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 45 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads but for the life of you can’t identify what the lump is until you open the envelope and look inside. Curiosity mounts and you open the envelope. What you find inside is often nothing more than a wad of paper, a toy, bubble wrap or some other worthless item. It’s a gimmick, some would argue a trick, intended to increase open and read rates. It works. I received two such lumpy mail letters last year. One had a hard lump, it turned out to be a ceramic bird glued to a letter. The bird was supposed to symbolize a profit of some sort flying my way. Something like that…I really don’t remember. The second lump I received was soft and round. It turned out to be a wad of paper – a coupon for a discount on an information product. The coupon said something like make this the last thing you throwaway. I tossed it in the trash after reading it. Here’s the problem I have with lumpy mail: On one hand, lumpy mail creates a curiosity factor that gets envelops opened and its content seen, if not read. On the other hand, it’s too often a gimmick, maybe a trick. And I hate tricks and gimmicks. They smack of something a con man would do. If I had a third hand, I’d point out that as tricks and gimmicks go, lumpy mail is no where near the worst type of direct mail – I give that honor to mail disguised as a tax document or invoice. So, that’s my dilemma with lumpy mail and the risk you run in using it. Sure it’s a gimmick, but it’s usually innocent and it’s not starting a relationship on a lie, as sleazy junk mail does. It can be cleaver, which means it can backfire. If the addressee feels foolish once they open your envelope and find something as stupid as a cheesy tagline and ceramic bird, you can be forever labeled in their mind as a sleazy marketer. When using dimensional mail, make sure the lump is relevant and don’t reduce the quality of your image and offer by making the lump a mere trick to get the addressee Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 46 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads to open your envelope. It’s ok to be creative and cleaver, both can earn respect, but stay shy of sending cheesy ceramic birds and bubble wrap. If the lump isn’t relevant, it’s nothing more than a trick. And who likes being tricked into opening something? Should you call the addressee before or after the direct mail piece is read? Why? As I mentioned earlier, I’m not a fan of cold calling. But I love teleprospecting in conjunction with direct mail campaigns – resulting in greater open and read rates. Calling an addressee as part of a targeted direct mail campaign is proven to increase open, read and response rates which means the effectiveness of your direct mail campaign increases. Each campaign is different and as such it’s difficult to give you a hard-n-fast rule it’s best to call either before or after a direct mail piece is delivered. But there are considerations that can indicate a best practice for each campaign: • If you already have a relationship with the addressee, calling both before and after is preferred. The first call is to touch-base and alert the addressee they will soon receive a to a mailing from you – in a call such as this you merely want to alert them, don’t drive for the response. The second call, after the direct mail piece is delivered (a couple days at most) is to assure they received the direct mail piece and ask if they have any questions – again, no need to press on the call to action, just make sure it was received, remind them of any deadlines to respond, and make yourself available as a resource. • If you don’t have a relationship with the addressee, I prefer a call after the direct mail piece is delivered – typically contacting the addressee no more than two days after the piece has been delivered. In this case, calling afterwards give you the opportunity to learn about the mailing’s open and response rates. Be sure to be ready to resend the mailer immediately if the addressee doesn’t remember receiving your mail - email and fax is ok. If asked, share with the person what the mailer is about, but stay shy of Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 47 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads pressing for the mailer’s call to action. Stay informal, confident, knowledgeable, and position yourself as a resource. Above all things, remember when you’re making telephone calls that you’re prospecting, NOT selling. In complex sales you can’t sell in this stage of a customer contact. Stay focused on building interest and getting people to engage with your company. If I’m calling in follow-up to a direct mail piece, how soon after mailing should I call? When calling an addressee after a mailing, you ideally will reach them no more than two days after they receive your mail. The reason for calling within two days is any longer runs the risk of losing momentum you may have within the account and your campaign. If you call too soon after delivery you may reach an addressee who has received your piece, but hasn’t taken the time to fully investigate it. This may miss an otherwise great opportunity to answer immediate questions or schedule a follow-up conversation. What I’ve found best is to call about two days after delivery. This keeps your campaigns moving ahead and capitalizes on momentum gained from a direct mail piece already read. What is the best length of a lead generation and sales letter? Another common question I’m asked is how long a lead generation or sales letter should be. It’s a great question with a simple answer: The letter should be as long as it needs to be to support your call to action. And not one word more or less. Just as a 300 page book isn’t inherently better or worse than a 200 page book, a four page sales letter isn’t inherently better or worse than a one page letter. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 48 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads Although the letter profiled in this report is a one page letter, I didn’t intend it to be - a number of early drafts were two pages or more. After editing and removing language and information that served no real purpose, I arrived at one page. In this case, one page held the information I thought necessary to compel the reader to answer my call to action. And as the report states, a huge number did. The last sales letter I wrote for my own business was four pages in length. An early draft had two pages, but in editing I added two additional pages of copy because I thought I hadn’t sufficiently built the case to act in just two pages. Although I believe there isn’t a right answer to the question of the length of a sales letter, I’ve clearly seen a greater number of poorly written short sales letters than long. The reason is it’s harder to squeeze enough information to support a call to action into a short letter – not impossible, but tough. Authors of short letters often artificially limit the length of the letter and as a result don’t build their call to action to a compelling level because they’re mostly worried about limiting their copy to one or two pages. Conversely, the problem I see most with longer sales letters is they wander in their message – giving a lot of superfluous information that isn’t necessary to support their call to action. Another mistake is presenting two calls to action, resulting in a confused reader. This is like the salesperson who doesn’t know when to stop talking and ask for the order - talking beyond the sale and inadvertently killing the deal. The bottom-line is it doesn’t matter how long or short a sales letter is, as long as it builds to and supports a compelling reason to act. A simple formula I use when writing sales letters, white papers, special reports, case studies, etc. is to first write the call to action and then write whatever volume of copy is necessary to make the call to action compelling. If it’s one page, that’s fine. If it’s four pages, that’s fine as well. Don’t worry about copy length or number of pages. Instead, focus on your message and presenting your reader an overwhelming case to act. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 49 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads Can direct mail be combined with other lead generation tactics? YES! Direct mail can and should be combined with other lead generation tactics. As a general statement for all lead generation efforts, no single tactic should only be used in a campaign and no single campaign should only ever be used. Lead generation is an ongoing business function and all viable tactics should be used, tested, and improved. The key concept to understand and embrace is you should use whatever lead generation tactic reaches your target prospect, effectively communicates your story, and conveys a compelling reason to act. In that regard, all lead generation tactics should remain on the table and used in conjunction with each other: • Direct mail • Teleprospecting • Pay-per-click (PPC) • Edu-marketing • Email • Landing pages • Blogs • And more… For example: You can use direct mail to open a conversation and invite a prospective customer to engage with you in a web environment. Postcards are effectively used this way – opening a conversation and leading the reader to a specific URL where the conversation continues on a landing page and the call to action is presented. Should you test direct mail campaigns? Like all other marketing activities, direct mail should be test – continuously. And each test should be measured and compared to previous results. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 50 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads Every direct response marketer and copywriter knows testing is the secret to success in any marketing and sales campaign. As professionals, we can leverage our experience and reason why a campaign should be successful, but until we execute the campaign, establish a control, adjust, re-launch, and measure response again…we really don't know much about the effectiveness and full potential of the work we've done. We all need to test more. And then test again. Every element of a campaign should be test on an ongoing basis: • Title • Sub-title • Body copy • Image • Color • Font • Text formatting • Guarantee • Call to action • Testimonial • Leading benefit • Envelope and packaging • And more… Everything should be test to measure for a greater response. Changing merely one word can move response from nothing to something meaningful. It’s commonly thought direct mail is expensive and time consuming to test, but reality is it’s not as expensive or time consuming as many believe. The key to Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 51 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads containing cost and time is mailing in small groupings, timing your mailings to your pace and ability to follow-up, and incorporating new knowledge and lessons learned as they occur. This approach makes testing easy, less time consuming and less costly than blasting hundreds or thousands of letters or other mailings at a time and waiting months for a response to draw conclusions and launch again. Smaller mailings allow greater levels of response and minimize the cost of testing. Multivariate Testing Depending on your direct mail piece, you may be able to leverage multivariate testing on-line. In this case the cost of testing is nearly non-existent and time is greatly reduced – eliminating the expense and time associated with printing, publishing, and distribution. If you’re integrating direct mail with landing pages, squeeze pages, and sales pages, multivariate testing is an ideal tactic to employ. Multivariate testing allows you to test multiple variables at the same time, recording which versions of different variables and combination of variable versions produce the best results. It's like testing on steroids. Automated testing such as this can quickly result in copy optimized for maximum performance. Any page with an action can be optimized - purchase, registration, vote, selection, etc. While there are variations dependent upon the multivariate testing solution you use, the principles are the same - you load versions of each variable you wish to test and read the results as they happen. As each visitor lands on the page under test, your multivariate tool serves a different combination of variable versions and records the result of actions taken. Some multivariate solutions learn along the way and serve winning combinations of copy more often while still testing new variable combinations. There are a number of multivariate testing solutions available. I use MuVar and Google's Website Optimizer. Both work well and have a number of plusses and minuses when compared to each other. You should give both an investigative look if multivariate testing is in your future. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 52 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads For now, I just want to be sure you're reminded of the importance of testing in general and are aware of multivariate testing and its benefits in marketing on-line. If you market your services on the Internet, you ought to look into multivariate testing. The benefits are huge and support a time-tested principle of marketing testing. How large should mailings be? I’ve mentioned control a couple of times in this report – it’s an important concept to understand and one of two parts relating to the size of your mailing: Control You need to establish a control for your lead generation efforts. A control is a baseline of tactics and response – an effort by which you can measure future success as you test variables in your campaign, including your message. For the sake of simplicity, think of your control as your best mailing - a result all mailings to following will attempt to beat. If you get one response in your first mailing, your control is one response. In your subsequent mailings you’ll test variables of the campaign in an effort to beat your control – title, packaging, guarantee, testimonial, benefit, call to action, etc. So, when establishing a control, you need a control group – a small portion of your overall list of target prospects. Your control group should be large enough to represent your target market and small enough to quickly walk-thru your lead generation process and quickly learn lessons you can use to improve response. The exact number will vary by the size of your addressable market and list. In your initial efforts you want to come into contact with prospective customers and gain first-hand experience telling your story – benefits, difference, and reason to believe. As you learn from your first encounters, you’ll incorporate your new knowledge into subsequent mailings. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 53 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads In the case of the letter highlighted in this report, I had several conversations with my target audience before the first mailing. A control group of a dozen or so organizations refined our messaging and enabled greater success. Ongoing Size You should limit the size of your subsequent mailings to no larger than your ability to follow-up and complete your lead generation cycle as part of your campaign. For example: If you’re calling addressees in follow-up to your mailing, you don’t want to mail more letters or pieces of mail than you have ability to timely make follow-up calls. If you’re only able to call 30 accounts a week, you need to make sure you don’t mail to more than 30 accounts. If your campaign requires follow-up, a tactic I use is to schedule daily mailings and list them for follow-up two days after delivery. For example: I may prepare 100 letters for mailing, but only mail 10 each day – the greatest number of letters we may have determined we can reliably follow-up on in a day. It’s worth noting, if you use the circle of leverage technique I used in this report, it takes some time to follow-up on each organization you mailed. Calling five or more executives, leaving messages, returning calls, etc. can take more time than some people believe. But don’t let the time to follow-up influence you to cut corners or avoid follow-up altogether. Following-up and working your lead campaign to a close is critical to lead generation and ultimately sales success. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 54 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads Closing Thoughts on Direct Mail The bottom-line on direct mail as a complex sales lead generation tactic is it’s viable and effective. If you know who you want to contact and have an understanding of the complex sales environment you’re attempting to conquer, direct mail remains one of only a handful of ways to reach out and deliver your message to a named person and account. But direct mail isn’t the end-all of lead generation. It would be disingenuous to crown direct mail as the only or best lead generation tactic for all companies, offers, and markets. It’s not. It is what it is, as all marketing tactics are – direct mail is a tactic that’s no better or worse than all others. Should all B2B companies engaged in complex sales use direct mail? Probably. But exceptions and circumstance may suggest other more effective lead generation tactics. At a minimum, direct mail should be given serious consideration as an active part of your lead generation activities. Thank you for taking the time to read this report. I greatly appreciate your time and interest. To your lead generation and sales success! Jim Logan Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 55 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads What You Should Do Next Specifically for business people who read this report, we developed a free 30 Minute Lead Generation Tune-Up, which we conduct over the telephone with you and your top staff members. All you have to do is request the meeting. Please request a meeting today: info@acceleratebusinessgroup.com. Here is what we accomplish together in this fast-paced, zero-nonsense session: • Effective Lead Generation Tactics: There are countless things you can and may be doing to generate leads, but as with all sales, lead generation, and marketing activities it's not what you can do, it's what you should do. We'll explore a range of activities best suited to your offer, target prospect, and sales cycle. • Positioning: Successful lead generation and sales is all about positioning. And positioning has little to do with your actual product or service. Positioning is about the space you create within the mind of your prospect. We'll evaluate your positioning and offer suggestions as necessary to best capture your prospect's time and attention. • Call to Action: Every lead generation, sales, and marketing activity has to have a call to action. Without one, you're basing your success on the chance your prospect gets it on their own. We'll discuss your call to action in your existing lead generation efforts and offer ideas to increase response rates and tightly integrate it into a holistic sales campaign. Jim Logan will personally lead this free 30 Minute Lead Generation Tune-Up. Jim has personally led countless successful lead generation campaigns, reaching executivelevel decision makers in both the public and private sectors. Please be assured that this consultation will not be a thinly disguised sales presentation. This meeting will result in the best intelligence and advice Jim can lend you in a thirty minute time span. There is no charge for this call whatsoever. This consult will typically take place within 1-2 weeks of your request. To secure a time for this no cost consultation, please email info@acceleratebusinessgroup.com and express your interest in a meeting. Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 56 How to Write a Complex Sales Lead Generation Letter that Attracts Sales-Ready Leads About Accelerate Business Group, LLC We are in the business of growing your company's revenue - in the time-frame business leaders, investors, and shareholders measure most - this quarter, this year. We will accelerate your revenue by increasing your number of customers, increasing your average sale, and creating repeat business. We are a company of sales and marketing professionals focused on addressing the only three ways to increase your business revenue - earn more customers, increase your average sale, and increase the rate and volume of repeat business. We're focused on generating immediate revenue, developing our services around the process of acquiring customers with existing services, products, and feature releases. We believe the key to revenue success is shaping the rubrics cube of existing features and functionality into real customer benefits, wrapping it with true differentiation, and clarifying reasons to believe in your company. With extensive experience in working with both domestic and international Fortune 500 companies, government, and multi-national enterprises, we have the demonstrated ability to position solutions in support of business and revenue objectives. We have extensive experience working in high-profile complex B2B sales, business, and operational environments. Our sales, business development, and marketing know-how and expertise are instrumental in increasing revenue and growing a profitable business. Accelerate Business Group, LLC PO Box 1024 Meadow Vista, CA 95722 www.acceleratebusinessgroup.com info@acceleratebusinessgroup.com Copyright 2008 – Accelerate Business Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 2nd- Edition Page 57