Direct Mail Letter Design Tips For Improved Lead Generation Response

Successful sales people dress their best when in front of prospects. And so do successful sales letters. Here are some tested sales letter design and layout tips, some of them from direct mail designer Ted Kikoler, and excerpted from The Lead Generation Handbook by Bob Bly.

FONTS

* Use a serif typeface for the body. A popular choice is to set the body in Times Roman and the headlines and subheads in Helvetica bold.
* Type the body of the letter in black. Use an accent color for subheads if you wish.
* To add emphasis to your headline, make it bold, a larger point size than the letter, and center it.
* Make sure your typeface is large enough for your readers.

MARGINS

* With a standard 8 ½'' x 11'' letter, set your margins at one inch on all sides.
* Make the right-hand margin "ragged right" (also called "left justified"; never justify it).

INDENTATIONS

* Indent all paragraphs five characters.
* For block quotes and other copy that you want to highlight, indent the entire paragraph by 10 characters on each side.

PARAGRAPHS

* Keep your first sentence and first paragraph short.
* Limit all paragraphs to seven lines.
* Single space the letter.
* Put one blank line between all paragraphs.
* Never end the last sentence on the page with a period. Always break the sentence in two so that the reader must turn the letter over and keep reading.
* Do not add "Over, please" to the bottom right. That's patronizing.

SUBHEADS

* If you want your letter to look like personal correspondence, do not use subheads.
* If using subheads, center them and make them bold.
* Do not set subheads in all caps.

EMPHASIS

* Use emphasis sparingly. If you emphasize everything you emphasize nothing.
* Underline words or phrases that should be emphasized.
* If you have facts to present, render them as a bulleted list.
* If you have a number of points to present in order, render them as a numbered list.

THE END

* Shorten the first name of the writer to sound friendlier and to close the gap between reader and writer: Bill sounds better than William, Kathy sounds better than Kathryn.
* Make the signature legible.
* If you are mailing small quantities (say, a few hundred at a time), print the letter without a signature, then sign each one individually with a blue pen. This creates a look and a feel very close to a personal letter.
* Indent the entire body copy of the P.S. by five characters so the letter's P.S. stands out.

© 2006 Sharpe Copy Inc. You may reprint this article online and in print provided the links remain live and the content remains unaltered (including the "About the Author" message).

Trade Show Displays - Being Different is a Good Thing

Be careful about choosing your next trade show display. With all the cookie cutter popup trade show displays being sold today via the web and particularly with the competitive prices, it may be tempting to save the $2000 on your next display by purchasing one of these booths online. You know the ones I'm talking about, the $995 popup display special. However, prior to looking at your initial savings with these cheap popup displays keep in mind the big picture. Your total trade show effort using this booth may be well over $100,000 throughout the next year or two considering all the costs for travel, show space, hotel, staff time, etc.

If you can create a unique appearance with a different booth by spending a couple thousand more up front, you only increase your total cost for trade show marketing by 2%. A 2% increase for being unique at the trade show where all your competitors are will pay off handsomely in exposure, leads and return on that trade show invested dollar.

Our experience has shown that the unique looks, like the Expression popup display, or the stowaway load bearing truss system, or the new Orbital truss system; while costing a little more up front return much more on the backside by separating yourself from your competition.

Bob Albright is a trade show display consultant and principle with Midland Display. He has over 20 years experience in the trade show display business, selling and designing trade show displays.

Trade Show Planning – The BDA 10 - "During the Show"

My last article on "Before the Show" planning went on like a broken record about how important it was to have all the details checked and double-checked prior to "Showtime!". Well guess what? It doesn't stop there! Sure, you had to have all of your ducks in a row to make it this far, but now comes the make-it-or-break-it phase. This is where you meet real live clients. Are you ready? Here are my top ten things to do DURING the Trade Show to help ensure your success.

During the Show

1. Set up a (fair) booth schedule for your people.

You and your people need breaks for lunch and relaxing. Everyone will be more cheerful and productive if they don't have to stay at the booth all day long.

2. Have your people record all prospect information.

Encourage your Trade Show personnel to record everything they can learn about a prospect's needs. Stress the importance of getting correct phone numbers and email addresses. Create an information form if you have to, or just make sure you get business cards from everyone. Cross reference if you must with the attendees list that most Trade Shows have.

3. Encourage your Trade Show personnel to greet people warmly and smile!

Duh … But amazingly, this is often forgotten. A warm, open attitude can give a valuable first impression. Your people should avoid having their backs to the entrance, or taking phone calls while on duty. A friendly greeting to passersby may encourage them to stop and chat, rather than walk on by. Booth Staff who are courteous and helpful, knowledgeable about all aspects of the industry, and responsive to requests will make a very good, professional, impression.

4. Take care of your body, and your body will take care of you …

Trade Shows can be tough on your body, especially if they’re longer than a couple of days. Keep yourself hydrated, avoid too much coffee and don’t overindulge in the nightly Hospitality Suites (Yah, right …). Try to eat balanced meals, and maybe even try out the Hotel’s Fitness Club. Treat Trade Shows as Marathons – the people with energy to spare on the last day of the Trade Show are still selling, and winning!

5. The name’s Bond, … James Bond.

Trade Shows can be a great place to do a little checking up on the ol’ competition. Take time to visit their displays and pick up some of their brochures. Evaluate what you think they’re doing right, and where you can learn from their mistakes.

6. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery (… and it’s cheaper, too!)

Some companies spend a great amount of time, effort, and money researching what kind of display creates the best impression. You can do the same by walking around the Trade Show and seeing what are the most eye-catching, popular booths. Be sure to take a digital camera.

7. Check out NEXT year’s location.

If you’re convinced that this Trade Show is a “must attend” for next year, decide now where next year’s booth should be located. If you registered late, you may currently be languishing in the Siberia of some back alley, so identify where all the “in crowd” hang out – and book early!

8. Don’t be afraid to “schedule” prospects.

You’ve got a hot prospect, but you know they’re going to monopolize your time while other prospects wander by. Suggest to them that you very much want to devote more of your time and energy into every aspect of their needs and pain, and book an appointment for them to come back, perhaps during the last afternoon of the Trade Show, a traditionally “slower” time. (Make sure you have their business card and local contact number, before you let them go!)

9. People (and Staff) are not created equal.

The best teams are not made up of individuals with exactly the same strengths and talents. If someone on your staff is a great “Greeter”, have them pulling people in to the booth and handing them off to your “Details” people. Don’t have your top Closer caught up in the minutia of how your 9457 AT7 widget can interconnect with the 8354 ZX9 gizmo if you add the 3291 HG1 “thingamabop”. And don’t have that brainy (but introverted) Tech Support guy try to smooze the room. If your staff are comfortable doing what they’re doing, it shows – and it pays off!

10. It’s not over ‘til the Fat Lady sings.

The booth is being ripped apart, you’re tired, and just want to go home and relax your “smile” muscles, so of course you can relax, right? Wrong! Besides the oh-so-important details like having your display materials actually make it back to the office, instead of spending a week in Hoboken, you’re still in a prime location for making (albeit, brief) contacts. Keep the energy up; trade business cards in the elevator or while waiting for the shuttle, because you just know that 95% of your competition have already stopped selling.

Jim Hawkins works at Windward Software, developers of Point of Sale software, and, among other things, is responsible for organizing Trade Show attendance. While he doesn’t actually attend many, he does love to tell people what to do.

How to Retain Top Sales Talent

Of constant concern in senior management ranks is the turnover rate of their sales members. If your goal is to stabilize the sales team, improve their performance and retain your top performers, then you will want to read on.

Understanding why sales people leave is critical. It is not money! In fact studies validate that money is way down the list of why sales people leave. Sales people leave when a whole set of other factors come into play and make the job of achieving their goals difficult to reach. Therefore to retain the staff of sales performers that make the difference, management must institute fundamentally sound sales management practice, as we will see.

The Starting Point

To begin with, sales managers must develop realistic goals and objectives with their team members. These should be mutually discussed and agreed upon collaboratively. Why? Necessity dictates both have bought in to what needs to be done, when it needs to be done and what resources will be required to deliver the results. After that, monitoring progress attainment can be accomplished using a management by exception system.

When sales management takes a hands off attitude toward developing common goals and objectives with sales reps you can bet it will not be long before performance issues arise. Furthermore, with a plan, sales management is proactive rather than reactive, or worst of all, inactive. Setting goals and objectives, observing their completion and monitoring success are functions of sound sales management. Winging it, if you will, leaves far too much to chance and luck.

At the end of the day, “What can be measured gets accomplished”.

Sales People are the Manager’s Customers

The best performers as a general rule know that to use the resources of the entire organization helps them present a more professional image and increases the probability of a sale. Sales managers who spend time with their representatives in the field always have better performing teams. Joint calls permit the sales manager to coach and do on the job training with the sales people. The manager is able to observe skill set improvement, determine loss in skill capability and test the current sales person attitude. Sales managers who spend time with their people have a customer care attitude. In this case, they are taking care of their customers- the sales force.

Look at Sales Rep Aggravations

1.Sales managers who take over

Skilled sales managers are involved listeners in the sales calls. They do not take them over. When the manager takes over the calls, the customer unfortunately may see him/her now in a sales role, and not as a manager. How can the sales manager and the sales rep know what they did or did not do well in the call? Solid sales people enjoy the opportunity to demonstrate their ability especially in front of the boss. Use this as a perfect opportunity to compliment them for work well done, or assist them in improving their sales skills. Wait until the call is over and do the “post Mortem” afterwards in the car, or over lunch in a constructive and non-threatening manner.

2.Sales managers who don’t listen or want info

Sales managers who pay attention and listen to what their representatives are saying to them without fear of retribution establish and maintain solid trust. If management acts in an arrogant fashion and ignores the issues that sales identifies, it will not be long before defections occur. There is no better way to gain the respect of a sales team than by sincerely listening to their sales related issues. Pay attention to what they are saying, then do your part to make the adjustments and improvements as necessary.

3.Managers who lose their cool

Consistency is the hallmark of emotionally mature and self-confident sales managers. For example, does the sales manager maintain composure in times of stress, or does the sales force receive temper tantrums and unprofessional behavior when sales miscues occur.

4.Managers who play favorites

Is there evenness in supervising the sales staff, or are there glaring examples of out and out favoritism. Talk about discouragement! Try and imagine the mentality of an over achiever who observes blatant examples of someone else being played favorite. Sales people have pretty developed radar and antennas when it comes to such management behavior. Aspire towards fairness and evenhandedness. Make sure you let your sales representatives know they are being measured for sales results, and leave politics to government! You will be amazed at how well the sales team responds and how the general morale of the group improves.

How’s your Sales Culture?

In far too many companies the conventional wisdom is if we build it or have it, they will buy it. If that were the case, you would not need sales people!

The very finest companies tend to attract, engage and retain the best and the brightest. Recent studies confirm the best product; service or system will be marginally successful unless it is properly presented into the marketplace. This takes sales people. Look at the consequences of having an ineffective sales culture and determine those elements needed to build a positive one.

Tend to Your Knitting

Why is it that the companies that have the most efficient internal operations expect and get more sales results from the external operations, namely the sales department?

Inspect your policies, internal processes, procedures and practices and programs. Do these actually impede the sales force or get in the way of sales person effectiveness? Do they actually encourage sales people to take a sales orientation? Does the sales compensation plan reward the type of behavior and sales achievements you desire? When a company’s internal systems are efficient and effective, you will see a greater amount of sales time being spent selling, rather than saving prior orders and customers. What you desire is the sales team selling, rather than telling.

It may not be that the sales team needs to be motivated as much as the company needs to understand why they are being demotivated.

Sales people will get re-energized when they see barriers and limitations to their effectiveness being addressed and eventually lifted. If the entire company is working towards the same objectives, sales people feel they have some control over their personal destiny. Eliminate the factors causing loss of sales force confidence in the company.

In conclusion, expect results and performance and expect your sales team to respond. Take a proactive position with sales management. Ensure you and they have the same goals in mind for the sales organization. Insist they supervise the activities of the sales staff toward attainment of previously determined objectives. Completion of successful objectives leads to goal attainment, for both the sales team and the sales management. Amazing results transpire. Top performers will know that they are valued members of your company and their contributions are vital to the organization. Then, sales representatives will stay in place when they see their personal and professional goals have a way to be accomplished within your organization.

Don McNamara is a Certified Management Consultant (CMC) and is President of Heritage Associates, Inc. http://www.heritage-associates.net

Heritage Associates is a full service sales management consulting, training and coaching company. Don also speaks and writes on the art and science of superior sales management and top sales performance.

With over 30 years sales experience from the field level to executive sales management, in his career he has been an individual contributor, corporate sales training manager, regional manager, national sales manager and vice president of sales. Don is a member of the Institute of Management Consultants, where he serves as Professional Development Chair and the National Speakers Association.

For a free e-newsletter contact Don McNamara at djmcn@heritage-associates.net or by phone (949) 230-4363.

The Knowledge Broker & How to Speed up ERP Selections

Think about the following project to initiate. A company is to select a new software system; for example an Enterprise Resource Planning, or ERP system.

Finding ERP suppliers is not that hard. Internet is a willing environment to organize this preliminary step in the selection process. Then (or before) you need some requirements and selection criteria. In the next step you should filter the initial group to a shortlist of high potentials.

Both in the initial long-list phase as in the next sequence with the short-list, you need to match your demand characteristics with those of the suppliers. The challenge pops up in asking the (right) questions – this is usually done in a Request for Information (RFI) or in a later stage the Request For Proposal (RFP). This is the challenge to set the questions up in a form that all participants understand the same format.

This is a knowledge management problem. You request information, but behind this information is a huge amount of knowledge hidden. Even if you ask the suppliers to draw some pictures you are not able to compare these. All picture, models and schemes are most of the time proprietary.

The solution…

The solution is to direct to an independent third party. This could be an independent advisor, not offering (software) solutions.

The external advisor is to prepare a format in which not only the most essential information is gathered (from the suppliers), but also the essential (explicit) knowledge behind it. The demanding company could still setup its own requirements. The management advisor -- in the role of knowledge broker -- is to translate these requirements to a universal (not proprietary) form and have the suppliers respond to it.

The Benefits…

• objective and independent advice
• scalable: the advice could be up to any level of detail
• It takes care that all participants (including the initiating company) provide accurate information.
• reducing time and (other) resources

© 2006 Hans Bool

Hans Bool is the founder of Astor White a traditional management consulting company that offers online management advice. Astor Online solves issues in hours what normally would take days. You can apply for a free demo account

Marketing Made Easy!

Does your business need more customers?

I think I already know your answer... Of course!

Do you realise that is the biggest problem virtually all business owners face, yet they do nothing about month after month and even year after year?

Why?

I don't know. The solution is SIMPLE! Go and get more customers.

How you ask? Good question! Now you're about to learn something fantastic...

To get more customers than are you getting now, first of all it’s a good idea to know how many you are getting now! Does that make sense? If you know where your customers are coming from now, you're part way there to solving the problem of knowing where to get more.

95% of all business owners I meet don't know how many customers they are getting now... in this last week.

Do you know how many paying customers you had buy from you last week? No? Then I suggest you go find out.

Then you're ready for step 2. Don't read on until you have started on step 1 and gone and worked out how many sales you had last week, okay?

Did you go and do it? Well.... This article isn't going anywhere, so off you go. Go measure and come back.

Okay. Can I assume you went and did it? No? Well how come? I'm trying to help you here. :-)

Step 2. Now that you have measured (!) what did you find?

Over the next week I want you to start asking people how they found out about you. It’s simple. That's all you have to do.

People don't mind you doing it either. Do it with every sale, preferably with every phone call too.

Over the week collate how many calls and customers come from different ads etc. Tally up each form of paid promotion and see where the customers are coming from. You'll be amazed at the result, I guarantee it.

So just do this step and you're ready for step 3. If you haven't done step 2, or even step 1, because you are too busy... remember it’s not a busy-ness that gives you more money, it’s a business.

Step 3. Now that you know where you customers come from, how many come from each paid promotion and how many find you through referrals or other means, it’s time to simply improve on those strategies and even create some new ones.

Lets break that into two areas...

Step 4. This is where I will touch on how to improve what form of promotion you are using now.

Improving is easy! Yet so few people do anything about this. All you have to do is read one book and you will start to know how to make an improvement.

Have you read the book on advertising, "Scientific Advertising" by Claude Hopkins? If not why not? It’s free from many websites, including my own you can see at the bottom of this article.

Again, being busy makes no difference to growing your business or getting more customers. Isn't that what you need? You'll always have a need to get new customers while you're in business, so learning how TODAY is the beginning of solving the problem forever!

Read Scientific Advertising. If you have already read it, well done! Now I suggest you read it again as reading it once won't get it all to sink in.

Just changing the top 20% of the ad to remove your business name or logo then putting a headline of some sort across the top of your ad beginning with "How to…" and finishing it with a benefit relative for your industry will probably triple your responses. People don't care what your business name is before they have ever bought from you. Do they?

Step 5. This is where we need to look at how to get more customers. I could (and have) written a book on this. This is such a huge subject I won't go into it too deeply.

But let me suggest that nearly ALL businesses can benefit from simply running an ad in their local newspaper.

Yes you heard right. The newspaper is a super profitable means of getting new customers, mainly because tens of thousands of people read the newspaper every single week and you can tell them about your business just by spending some money on an ad.

If you've "tried" newspaper advertising and it didn't work for you I suggest you open your mind to the idea again. Here's why...

Reason 1. Every business owner I have ever met, before I worked with them, has tried newspaper ads and has failed to get enough sales to pay for it from the profit of sales. That's because they or the newspaper designed it themselves and neither of them has read a book from any of the top advertising legends in the world... ever!

Reason 2. By reading 1 or more books you can make a poor ad that gets no calls into a super profitable ad, in one week!

Reason 3. You only have to run an ad once to see if it works. No $5,000 commitments like radio, or TV.

Reason 4. If you take the time to study success principles of advertising you can get a fantastic number of customers, in fact more than you can handle! When that happens you just run the ad anytime you'd like more customers. How does that sound?

Reason 5. You can test a new ad design for just $200 or less, so there's low risk.

With newspaper ads you need to run them on page 3, 5, 7 or 9. No later!

If you don’t then you won't get the best value for money. More people read these pages than any other, that's why the newspaper charges you extra for it. But wouldn’t you like to get 5 - 10 times better response by paying 30% more?

I know I would!

Getting an education about effective advertising and marketing is the best education you will ever get. Yet virtually no one in business bothers doing it.

You will always need to get new customers.

Now here is the most powerful thing I can teach you about marketing.

"The aim of marketing is to generate more customers than you can handle!"

When you have more customers than you can handle, it becomes a supply and demand situation. If there is a scarcity of supply, due to demand, it means you can put your prices up.

And when you put your prices up you make more net profit margin. That means more take home pay for YOU without more hours of work, or extra employees, or stress.

Has that motivated you to want to do more marketing and become a student of it?