Offline marketers - how long do you wait before ringing the prospect?

[MrYossu]

Hello,

For those of you using direct mail to try and win new offline clients, I wondered how long you wait after posting your letter/report/barf bag/etc before ringing them up.

I sent out a pile of letters last Sunday, so they will have been picked up in the first collection on Monday morning. Given that the Royal Mail (UK) say that 2nd class post takes 3-5 days, they should arrive around now. In practice, local post (which this all was) often gets there sooner, many of them will probably have arrived by now.

On the one hand, the sooner I ring, the more likely it is that the business owner will remember my letter, but on the other hand, if I ring too soon, it looks pushy and doesn't give them chance to read what I sent at their leisure. In some ways, leaving them for a few days and then ringing seems more sensible - but then this could just be a subjective excuse to justify my dislike of picking up the phone and ringing!

Any comments? Thanks

[Lou Diamond]

Hello,
I have run many successful offline marketing campaigns,the best results that
I have had is that I call even before they get the letter.
I let them know to watch out for my info and then I give them a call the day after
they get the letter.
The call before is to let them know that they are just not getting another piece of junk mail.
Good luck.

[chrisnegro]

Originally Posted by Lou Diamond

Hello,
I have run many successful offline marketing campaigns,the best results that
I have had is that I call even before they get the letter.
I let them know to watch out for my info and then I give them a call the day after
they get the letter.
The call before is to let them know that they are just not getting another piece of junk mail.
Good luck.

Nice little tip actually Lou !

Success to you,

Chris Negro

[MrYossu]

Originally Posted by Imran Naseem

Do not rely on Direct Mail.

These business owners are constantly bombarded with thousands and thousands
of letters. What difference would your letter make to them?

That's why I'm following up with a call. I know direct mail on its own is very ineffective.

Originally Posted by Imran Naseem

I think you should do them a favour, pick up the phone and actually talk to them.
It does not look too "pushy". These guys need to be told how to "market online" effectively and you will only be doing them a favour by helping them make more money.

The sooner, you do this the better.

Darn, there goes my excuse! I suppose I better bite the bullet!

Originally Posted by Imran Naseem

I would focus on one category of business and call them.

Yup, I'm doing that already. I sent out the letters, and am going to follow up with calls.

Thanks again

[MrYossu]

Originally Posted by Lou Diamond

Hello,
I have run many successful offline marketing campaigns,the best results that
I have had is that I call even before they get the letter.
I let them know to watch out for my info and then I give them a call the day after
they get the letter.
The call before is to let them know that they are just not getting another piece of junk mail.
Good luck.

That's an interesting idea. What sort of line of chat do you give when you ring?

I was working on the assumption that they are highly unlikely to remember my letter, even if they bothered reading it, but being able to say "I'm just following up the letter I sent a few days ago, and wondered if you would like any more details" is less likely to elicit an immediate "No."

I would be interested to know how you engage their interest in a letter they haven't yet received.

Thanks

[michael074]

You will get a no to that question because it is an open question with a choice of answers...and the popular answer is no.

Try a statement like this,

"Hello Mr business Owner, I'm just following up on the letter I sent you and would like to sit down with you for a short time to discuss your needs for attracting more buying customers to your shop/factory/office, would tomorrow at 2:00pm be suitable or would you prefer Thursday at 10:00am?"

Then say NOTHING.!!!

That way you have cut his choices down to a yes or a yes.

Regards,

Mike.

[Danny Turner]

When calling businesses it's important to have a script,
write it down and practise it
- Briefly identify your area of expertise
- outline the benefits of your service
citing an example of how you have helped someone else
- make a clearly defined proposal - even if it's asking for an appointment to discuss further
- be brief and to the point
- if they decline accept graciously and ask if you can call back in a month or so
then get off the phone
create a list for call backs with dates called
I run a small business
and get sales calls everyday - it can be so frustrating when people start rambling on without clearly stating their offer - even worse if they start asking a lot of questions
some marketer probably teaches this a a tactic - by question 3 all they will hear is a dial tone from me
- time is a valuable commodity to small business owners - respect it
oh - if your selling youself as an online service and can't point to a succesful website you own/created/promoted then your wasting everyone's time!
cheers
Danny

[MrYossu]

Mike,

That's excellent advice! Thanks.

Danny,

As it happens, I was just sitting here reading my script, before getting around to ringing some of the businesses I mailed. I think I have most of your points covered, but I'm going to read it again and double check.

Trouble is, you've just given me a reason to put off ringing for a bit longer! I need to work on my script

Thanks again to both of you.

[MrYossu]

Just had a thought. This...

Originally Posted by michael074

Try a statement like this,

"Hello Mr business Owner, I'm just following up on the letter I sent you and would like to sit down with you for a short time to discuss your needs for attracting more buying customers to your shop/factory/office, would tomorrow at 2:00pm be suitable or would you prefer Thursday at 10:00am?"

...works great when you get through to the business owner. What happens if you ring and speak to an employee? I'm not talking about a receptionist here, so gatekeeper stuff doesn't really apply. Say you rang a shop, and one of the staff answered. They are often told not to pass on any calls to the boss, so how would you rephrase the above to try and convince them to put you through?

Thanks

[MikeHumphreys]

Originally Posted by MrYossu

That's why I'm following up with a call. I know direct mail on its own is very ineffective.

Not necessarily. It depends on how well the direct marketing piece is written... how it is presented... and the offer you made.

There's a whole strategy to how you write and present just the envelope portion of a direct mail piece so it gets opened. The best marketing in the world is useless if it's stuck in an unopened envelope that gets thrown away.

For example, using an over-sized postcard eliminates the worry about getting a prospect to open a letter to get to your marketing message. That is a marketing tactic that I frequently like to use in the offline world.

Back on topic.

What are you selling? What's the typical project price that you bid? For me, a bid is frequently thousands of dollars because I'm writing marketing (offline and/or online) and sales letters for them.

It's about ROI, not conversion rates with the offline world. If you're selling a service that costs thousands of dollars, then you can pull a 0.1% conversion rate (or less) and still make a lot of money.

Offline business owners care more about turning a profit on anything that they do and not conversion rates. A cosmetic dentist knows that a new patient is worth thousands of dollars for his practice... do you think he cares if a marketing piece pulls a 0.1% conversion rate if it produces $50,000 in new billing? I doubt it.

Online marketers frequently worry about conversion rates... I've heard online marketers complain about a sales letter of theirs only converting at 4% which is FOUR TIMES better than the internet average.

Does following up with a phone call work? Yes... if you have the time, the right sales script, and the inclination. I would recommend 1-2 days after you estimate they received your mailer. Calling beforehand can work as well.

At this point in my consulting business, I rarely follow-up on the phone to check on a cold-mailing or bid. I will follow-up by email to confirm they get it but that's usually it.

My reason being is that my billable time is 100+ times more than what it costs me to send out a prospecting mailer... so it's not good use of my time to get on the phone unless it's for a limited duration and on a specific topic.

In fact, I usually reserve the phone access to my paying clients and everyone else gets email access only. It's an easy way to show your clients the VIP treatment.

By the way, I'm not bragging when I throw out these various numbers. I'm just giving a bit of contrarian advice from some of the other posts so far.

Hope that helps,

Mike

[michael074]

Originally Posted by MrYossu

Just had a thought. This...



...works great when you get through to the business owner. What happens if you ring and speak to an employee? I'm not talking about a receptionist here, so gatekeeper stuff doesn't really apply. Say you rang a shop, and one of the staff answered. They are often told not to pass on any calls to the boss, so how would you rephrase the above to try and convince them to put you through?

Thanks

You can always try the old

"Can you let Mr Business Owner know that Mr Yossu is on the phone?

It implants in the mind of the person answering, that you are already known to Mr Business Owner.

Regards,

Mike.

[MrYossu]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the reply. I know that direct mail can be effective when done really well, but for the most of us, it's very hard to make it a success. Having said that, my previous attempt was using David Preston's Cash Cow letter. I sent out 100, didn't follow up at all, got one call, but that turned into a customer. Given the total cost of the mailing, the one client more than easily paid for it in the first month. Hopefully this client will stick with me for years.

So even a poor conversion rate can be very profitable as I am dealing with an ongoing stream of revenue, so the client pays me month after month.

However, I wasn't talking conversion rates. I'm struggling with the basic issue of getting to talk to the business owner for more than five seconds! To be honest, I only sent out the letters to give me an excuse for ringing, as it's a little better to follow up a letter than to cold call.

My problem is that I find it very hard to get through to the business owner, and then hard to get over those first few moments. They are hardened to react negatively to cold calling, so it's tough to get their attention. Once you have it, then the material is powerful enough to keep them listening. I have a script which I use (loosely, I don't read it verbatim), and it's focused on showing them benefits.

Where I'm going with all this waffle, is that I could do with some help in getting to speak to the business owners and getting them to give me a chance.

I know you say it's not worth your while to ring them up after mailing, but I'm not in your position. I need the clients. I can mail and sit back, or I can mail and ring until I get someone to talk to me. Right now, the latter seems to be my only option.

Thanks again for your reply. Any further comments would be welcome.

[MrYossu]

Originally Posted by michael074

You can always try the old

"Can you let Mr Business Owner know that Mr Yossu is on the phone?

It implants in the mind of the person answering, that you are already known to Mr Business Owner.

What if you don't know his/her name? In most cases, the business has been found by searching Google, and it's rare to find the owner's name. I tried ringing to ask for it, but I only got about a 50% response from that, so there are still a lot of times when you have to ask for the owner, as opposed to Mr Whoever.

How do handle that?

Thanks

[AndrewCavanagh]

Originally Posted by Lou Diamond

I have run many successful offline marketing campaigns,the best results that
I have had is that I call even before they get the letter.
I let them know to watch out for my info and then I give them a call the day after
they get the letter.
The call before is to let them know that they are just not getting another piece of junk mail.

Absolutely PERFECT advice.

Of course most people on this forum won't do the first part...even though if they did their response would skyrocket.

Calling the day after they get the letter is enough if you do it consistently.

But calling them when you send it and a day after they get it ... that's going to get some real results.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

[MrYossu]

OK, so if I understand you correctly, what you are saying is that I should call them the day I post the letter and say "I've just sent you a letter that I think will interest you. I'll ring you back in a couple of days to discuss it with you" (or something, I just made that up on the spot), and then ring back a couple of days later and ask them what they thought.

If so, you still haven't really answered my question. Your method may get a higher response rate, but you still have to know how to capture the owner's attention in the first place. Let's face it, they are still expecting to be sold to, you can't get away from that. Unless they know you, or you are ringing as a customer with a question, they will smell you a mile off.

So how do you engage their interest before the automatic "no thanks, I'm not interested" kicks in?

Thanks

[MikeHumphreys]

Originally Posted by MrYossu

My problem is that I find it very hard to get through to the business owner, and then hard to get over those first few moments. They are hardened to react negatively to cold calling, so it's tough to get their attention. Once you have it, then the material is powerful enough to keep them listening. I have a script which I use (loosely, I don't read it verbatim), and it's focused on showing them benefits.

Any of us would react the same way to a cold-caller who called us during a busy moment at work or in the middle of dinner. It's an unwanted pest, not a welcome guest.

If you have the powerful material to share with them, why change your tactics slightly and go for a more qualified lead?

Do a basic lead generation piece for a free report... get them to contact YOU. Now you have the decision makers name. Now you have their permission (and desire) to talk to them. Now when you call them, you can mention you're following up to make sure they got your free report.

Another option would be to hit local business meetings like your local chamber of commerce. No gatekeepers... you're face to face with the decision makers 95% of the time. I've gotten countless new leads and clients this way and I am not someone who likes to network.

I know you say it's not worth your while to ring them up after mailing, but I'm not in your position. I need the clients. I can mail and sit back, or I can mail and ring until I get someone to talk to me. Right now, the latter seems to be my only option.

Use as many marketing, networking, business generation methods as you can to get qualified prospects in your marketing funnel. Relying on one method, regardless of what it is, is business suicide. If that method ever has a bad month or loses it's effectiveness then you're in deep trouble.

[MrYossu]

Originally Posted by MikeHumphreys

If you have the powerful material to share with them, why change your tactics slightly and go for a more qualified lead?

Do a basic lead generation piece for a free report... get them to contact YOU. Now you have the decision makers name. Now you have their permission (and desire) to talk to them. Now when you call them, you can mention you're following up to make sure they got your free report.

OK, you lost me! What do you mean by "Do a basic lead generation piece for a free report"? I would LOVE to have people contact me, but I have yet to find an effective way of doing it. I was hoping that mailings might bring some contacts, but so far it has been a very poor way of getting interest.

By the way, my mailing last Sunday was a report. It was intended to identify some of the problems they are likely to be facing, and give an idea of some ways to get over them. It ends with a call to action to ring me for a free consultation.

Originally Posted by MikeHumphreys

Another option would be to hit local business meetings like your local chamber of commerce. No gatekeepers... you're face to face with the decision makers 95% of the time. I've gotten countless new leads and clients this way and I am not someone who likes to network.

I haven't tried this yet, partly due to lack of time, and partly because the people I've discussed this with who have tried it all say that these meetings are full of people doing the same. No-one is interested in what you have to offer, they are only interested in pitching their services at you - which is of course exactly what I would be doing as well!

Originally Posted by MikeHumphreys

Use as many marketing, networking, business generation methods as you can to get qualified prospects in your marketing funnel. Relying on one method, regardless of what it is, is business suicide. If that method ever has a bad month or loses it's effectiveness then you're in deep trouble.

I'm on my own here, so I have to try one method at a time, and put all my effort into it. I've tried multitasking before, and it's not a good way to get anything done (for me at least). I need to concentrate on one idea until I've either got it working, or convinced myself that it doesn't work.

Yes, in time I intend to build up multiple streams of new business, but right now I need to concentrate on one at a time.

Thanks for the reply. Any further comments would be very welcome.

[joshril]

You should ring them now... I have not seen a huge improvement in calling after sending a letter vs calling cold.

[MikeHumphreys]

Originally Posted by MrYossu

OK, you lost me! What do you mean by "Do a basic lead generation piece for a free report"? I would LOVE to have people contact me, but I have yet to find an effective way of doing it. I was hoping that mailings might bring some contacts, but so far it has been a very poor way of getting interest.

No problem. In the online world, a lead generation campaign would look something like this:

Targeted PPC Traffic --> Squeeze Page --> Free Report To Download or Is Emailed To Them.

99% of online marketing techniques can trace their origins to the offline world. So in this case, the offline marketing version could look like this:

Classified Ad --> Prospect Goes To Web Page to request report --> Free Report Is Mailed.

By the way, my mailing last Sunday was a report. It was intended to identify some of the problems they are likely to be facing, and give an idea of some ways to get over them. It ends with a call to action to ring me for a free consultation.

But you didn't qualify them as a prospect. Just because someone *might* need the solution you offer doesn't mean they are aware of it or can afford it.

I haven't tried this yet, partly due to lack of time, and partly because the people I've discussed this with who have tried it all say that these meetings are full of people doing the same. No-one is interested in what you have to offer, they are only interested in pitching their services at you - which is of course exactly what I would be doing as well!

Anyone who is just pitching at networking events is doing it wrong. The idea is to establish the initial contact. Ask them about their business. Ask them what an ideal customer looks like. If they are a savvy networker, they will reciprocate and ask you the same. That's your cue to explain to them what it is you do.

Anyone who wants to just pitch you right away... just make an excuse to walk away from them. Don't let them waste your time!

I'm on my own here, so I have to try one method at a time, and put all my effort into it. I've tried multitasking before, and it's not a good way to get anything done (for me at least). I need to concentrate on one idea until I've either got it working, or convinced myself that it doesn't work.

I didn't say multi-tasking. I said multiple marketing weapons in play. Schedule time each day to work on a specific marketing weapon. You can schedule "work time" for more than one marketing weapon over the course of a week or even a month.

It might be one hour of follow-up calls. It might be one hour of setting up pay-per-click ads that target your ideal prospects. It might be two hours at a networking event. It might an hour of setting up an autoresponder series.

Some of your marketing weapons can be automated... especially anything that is online-related.

Yes, in time I intend to build up multiple streams of new business, but right now I need to concentrate on one at a time.

Thanks for the reply. Any further comments would be very welcome.

No problem. I'm just sharing what has worked for me and that I continue to do.

Best of luck,

Mike

[prosperwithdnb]

Try using this script it works well. You are asking them question and 90% of the time they will say yes because you are a business owner just like them.

Hi Business owner my name is XXXXXXX I am a local business owner just like you.
Do you mind if I can ask you a question?

How are you keeping in contact with your current customers?
(New customers, potential customers and currents customers that give you money regularly basis,)
What I would like to do is stop by and show you something that can cut your advertising cost by much as 50% and increase your revenue at the same time!
Is that something you would be willing to talk about or not? If they say yes continue

I don’t have a lot of time right now. I got other clients to see today, the only time I got this week is
end with
(Please understand I do not take every Client. We want to make sure your company is a good fit with us.) this line will boggle there mind because you are offering them something but also taking away something you are offering, making you stay in control of the potential client

before hanging up confirm date and time, and if anything comes up tell business owner to give you a call if they have to cancel.

[prosperwithdnb]

One more thing I am doing a mailing next week. I have created a 5 page report which talks about SEO, Lead Capture mechanism, Videos. I used example key phrase houston lawyers and houston lawyer each key word cost over 10.00 pay per click. I took an image and put it into the report and showed them how it can get costly with that route. Also in the report it explains auto repsonder and videos and how all this tied together will explode there business.

First line of the report i put "Picture this" and last line i put "Get the Picture" I got this idea from another fellow warrior so i did not think of this idea. But it will work.

Then get some photo enevlopes and put your report inside and I will go to local businesses and hand them out.

[prosperwithdnb]

While i was reading this post another idea popped in my head. This offline marketing is crazy on ways to get new clients. I think this one is a home run.

In your mail out put special offer. This month Only " I will be providing you a free 30 sec video promoting your business. Please call with this code CXVDFG to claim your free video.

This will get you in the door, when they call tell them i need to come in person to take some pictures to create the video, this way you can meet the owner and talk to him about auto responder SEO and video marketing.

If they don't want your services no big deal just go home put the pictures in animoto business version and email them the video it only take like 5 mins max.

You kept you end of the bargain even if they dont buy and it took you only 5 mins and your time to meet the business owner to pitch them on your services. They may call you back after you email them the video and asking you to install it or they may even feel guilty that you created the video for free and honeslty tried to help them