JS Logan | The Sales Acceleration Company

Here is a simple way small businesses can offer their customers an advantage in doing business with them as opposed to their larger competitors: make yourself available and respond faster.

Many businesses place roadblocks and barriers to customer interaction – voice mail, call screening, auto attendants, unnamed email boxes, etc.  These are barriers that limit the timeliness of customer interaction and hinder quick response to customer questions and issues.

Sure, a level of technology between a customer and your business is an advantage – call routing, 24/7 access to leave messages, etc.  But many companies use technology to essentially hide from customers and slow response to improve profitabilty.  Some even feign being busy to create artificial appearances of high demand. Crazy!

Small businesses can use their availability as a huge advantage in winning and keeping customers.  Accept calls, promptly return messages, implement on-line live-chat and instant messaging, and establish clear internal policy on escalations to quickly resolve customer issues.  

Customers want personal attention.  And the simplest way to deliver it is to be available and quicken your interaction and attention to customer needs.  

Use your size to your advantage -- make decisions faster, respond quicker, and be fleixble in how you deal with issues and concerns.  Your larger competitors have difficulty doing each -- when possible, use their size against them.

Do you agree with me that small businesses can leverage their size to attract and retain customers?

--or--

Do big competitors always have the advantage?  

Why?

I've worked with a company, product or service that wasn't the best.  Maybe you have too.

You know the scenario – we weren't the least expensive, the most feature rich, the most flexible.

We were a good company with a good offer, but we didn't really offer anything special. 

Or did we?

I believe we offered something far superior to our competition -- ourselves.  We offered outstanding sales, service, and account management.  I always believed my team and I were the superior part of the deal.

We are the unfair advantage.  And so are you.

In any deal, you are the most important part of the offer.  You are the one thing that can't be bought from the competition.  

As long as your offer meets the basic features and functionality required in your market, you are the difference that matters most.  And that's the best news you can have in sales.  That means the deal is yours to lose.  

Can your completion deliver better follow-through, representation, and creativity?  Can you be beat in delivering superior service?  Can someone care for your prospect more than you?  

If so, you're screwed.  If not, you can't lose.

Do you have a big idea - a thought or perspective of your business or market that simplifies complex concepts or causes a paradigm shift in how others view their world?  If not, you should pursue one.

A big idea guides you, leads your approach to solving problems, and is your fall-back when things get tough in your business or market.

Big ideas are worth paying for.  Big ideas are what prospective customers notice.  Big ideas are the creative engine of your business and person.

Big ideas can be borrowed, built upon, and perfected.  Find a big idea and make it bigger.  Take a good idea and make it great!

Finding a big idea can be difficult.  But knowing where to look is easy -- just look at your customers, their market, and their opportunities.  Look for the missing piece in what they're trying to accomplish.  Seek the answer to the question they've been asking.  Find a better or clearer way.  Solve problems and open opportunities.  Innovate.  That's how you go about finding your big idea.

Big ideas can be presented as perspective, process, insider knowledge, and expertise.  You can market your big idea and make it the cause of everything you do.

The main thing to understand is big ideas create opportunity for your business. And your customers will notice.  And your competitors will be shaken  And your perspective on what you do will never be the same.

What's your big idea?

You need a plan.  I’m not talking about a business plan, although you probably need one of those too.  I’m talking about a personal plan.

We all need a little focus, direction, and map to guide our activities.  Not something to tell us what to do today, that would be a calendar or organizer.  No, that’s not what I mean.  I mean we need some focused thought and a few notes on what we want to accomplish.

A few well thought activities, coupled with an outline of key points, objectives, and goals, overlaid with a hierarchy of priority – that’s what I mean.  This gives us focus, something to measure success, and a little bit of comfort knowing we’re not flailing around day-to-day.

Nothing fancy.  Just a simple plan of where we’re going. 

Go get one.

Need a simple way to reduce the pressure to discount your offing:  consistently exceed your customer's expectations.

Simple.  

But not always easy.

Give more than expected – deliver faster, add bonuses, giveaway extras, respond faster, increase your quality, and outperform your competition in all areas of customer service and support.

Give far more than expected and you will reduce your need to discount. Your price is justified by your actions.  Your customer will realize the benefit and value of doing business with your company.  

Win-win.

Do you know of a better or more cost effective way to reduce the pressure to discount? 

Grab your copy of the report at the bottom of this post -- no registration required.

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Several years ago I wrote a letter on behalf of a client 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. The same techniques used in this letter were used to gain access to senior executives in F1000 offices across the country - same product, same approach, and same incredible result.

Before mailing the letter on behalf of my client, I showed it to a couple professional copywriters.  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.  The letter resulted in 75% of the addressees taking action to agree to a sales meeting.

As you’ll soon discover, this letter’s performance is no surprise.

This letter is proof of how effective direct mail can be in a complex sales lead generation and sales campaign.  I'll show you exactly how it was done successfully with a single page letter and a first class stamp.

The letter I'll show you 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 non-elected officials in county government).

In a 57-page report, I'll share with you the letter's success.  Better, I 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 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 delivery 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

Seven 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.  And the letter didn’t have any bold, highlighted, sub-titled, or bulleted text to boost its read ratio.

We printed the letters and envelopes in our office.  This kept costs low and allowed us to manage the flow of letters being mailed.

And yes, we closed new and repeat business with this campaign.  The ROI was incredible!

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 hundreds of F1000 companies, with comparable results.

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 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 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.

Why this is important to you

The letter I'll show you is important to you because it's proof direct mail is an effective tool to introduce your company to new prospective customers.  You don't have to be well known or have an unlimited marketing and sales budget to reach decision makers.

You can reach more prospective customers, create more sales-ready leads, and open more qualified sales opportunities using direct mail as a tactic to introduce your company to a target audience.

Also, this is important to you because the principles I used the letter above as principles you can learn and use in your own business.

Here's what I've done

I took every single though put into that one page letter and captured it in a 57 page report teaching you exactly what I did to make that letter so successful.  In this report, I not only tell you what I did, but more importantly, I tell you why.

• Introduction  -- page 3
• What's Wrong With This Letter? -- page5
• The Answer to What's Wrong With the Letter -- page8
• Homework, Before the First Word Was Written -- page 11
• The Workhorse of the Letter, the Opening Paragraph -- page 15
• More Pressure and Positioning, the Last Paragraph -- page 18
• The Letter on Benefits, Difference and Reason to Believe -- page 20
• The Letter and Gatekeepers -- page 24
• Sales Letters Sent to the Small Business CEO -- page 25
• Closing Thoughts on the Letter -- page 30
• New Questions and Answers for the 2nd Edition -- page 33
• Why use direct mail? What about other lead generation tactics and activities? -- page 33
• Why did you only ask for a 30 minute meeting? -- page 40
• What can you do to increase open and read rates? -- page 41
• What about dimensional mail? Does it work? What are the risks? -- page 45
• Should you call the addressee before or after the direct mail piece is read? Why? -- page 47
• What is the best length of a lead generation and sales letter? -- page 48
• Can direct mail be combined with other lead generation tactics? -- page 50
• Should you test direct mail campaigns? -- page 50
• How large should mailings be? -- page 53
• Closing Thoughts on Direct Mail -- page 55
• What You Should Do Next -- page 56
• About B2B Rainmaker -- page 57

Here's the best part

I used to sell this report for $19.  Today, I've decided to give it away.

Here's the link to download your copy -- no registration is necessary.