Ways to Find New Customers - A Series

So this idea of helping you find new customers has been on my mind for a while, and I have been debating how to deliver it. Should it be a conference call series? Seminar? And then it struck me - Just keep blogging, and 2 or 3 people will benefit from your experience. So this will be an ongoing series until I run out of ideas, which should take a LONG time, cause I am full of it (ideas)
The title will always be Ways to Find New Customers, and I will number them or something clever.

So here goes Number 1

YOUR OWN MAILBOX
We all get direct mail pieces just about every day in our mailbox. So I collect mine, and I go through them, and look at each one critically. Because there are three things that need to be there in order for that piece to be effective. It has to have...
1. good creative
2. good timing
3. a good offer

If anything I receive is missing any of those three elements, I come up with what I would have done differently, and then I do some research on the company. And then I very diplomatically craft an opening dialog that will address how I can help them improve their communications, increasing the value of them, lowering cost, or increasing the ROI.

Here's an example. A major furniture manufacturer sent out postcards to a seemingly random list of homeowners. It was a nicely designed piece talking about a sale. We just happened to be in the market for a new bedroom set. What was the problem, you ask? the Website on the cards was WRONG!!! What a colossal waste of time and money, and how much damage done to a brand! So if I were selling print today, I would immediately get on the horn with a C LEVEL marketing executive in that organization, and say something like this.

"My job is to help retailers increase their profits and optimize their print spend by creating targeted and cross media campaigns that garner double digit response rates, thus increasing sales." No where did I say I was a printer. And I am NOT talking to a designer, admin, or print buyer. The one who cares about the ROI is the C Level person who loses his or her job if sales don't increase. Like my old friend Bill Farquharson says, "Solve the problem, get the order." They have a problem in that no one was paying attention to details. Others have a problem because their creative stinks, they have no strategy about who they are mailing to, or there is no offer.

By the way, this rule applies to you, too. If you are going to spend the time and money to do a mailing, PLEASE make sure your creative is good, you offer SOMETHING, and that the companies you are targeting are in a position to buy from you. I can go on and on about list procurement and where to find these folks, but that will come in another post. Or you can call me and we can talk about your situation specifically.