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An Old-Tech Answer to a Very Current Problem

How to reach more prospects, more effectively, in a tough funding environment.

I recently attended the NAELB Regional Meeting in Atlanta, GA, and, as you would expect, much of the conversation revolved around the current economic crisis and the challenges it poses for both finding customers and then for finding funding for their transactions.  In one conversation with several leasing brokers who were relatively new to the business, I suggested they should be using direct mail and you’d have thought I was suggesting using leeches in medical procedures.  Too outdated, they said; it’s too old-tech; too unpopular; it’ll never work.  They’re wrong, though, and I’ll tell you why by using a simple example.  I used this example in an article I wrote for the current edition of Monitor.  [It’s also their 35th anniversary edition, by the way.  Congratulations to them.] 

I’d gotten much the same reaction from a group of salespeople for whom I was conducting a sales coaching teleconference not long ago.  I happened to know, however, that one of those salespeople was an avid model airplane builder and flyer.  He had just complained that he’d run a postcard mailing campaign that was a complete failure.  As a result he was very down on direct mail.  Do you subscribe to any printed newsletters or magazines devoted to keeping up with your model airplane hobby, I asked that rep?  He said he does.  Do you resent or appreciate receiving special offers or information related to it?  I appreciate it, he answered.  What do you do with things you receive about which you have a high level of interest but are of a serious or complex nature and to which you want to give more and careful study?  He said he puts them in his briefcase so they’ll be accessible to him when he has time.  (That’s what I do, too, by the way.  What do you do?) 

Isn’t that exactly the ‘pile’ you want your information to be added to; the pile that goes home in the prospect’s briefcase?  So then I asked him this.  Why do you think your postcards or other mailings didn’t work?  After thinking a moment, he supposed they weren’t of sufficient interest to the recipient to make it into the briefcase.  I suppose he’s right.  Was that the mail system’s fault?