If you found this page on marketing letters before reading this article on cold calling, it may be a good idea to start there first…
One of THE most effective methods for getting prospects interested in your products and services via direct mail marketing letters is to offer a FREE Marketing Audit (or something similar) in the area of your expertise.
The marketing letters and lead generation systems that I am going to show you are loosely based upon this concept.
What is an Audit?
That’s really up to you, but ultimately it’s a method by which you gather information from your prospects so that you can match the right product or service for their needs and wants.
I am sure every time you meet with a customer and analyze their needs to give them a quote you ask them questions to qualify them, right? Write all these questions down, and create a simple survey (you may already have one that you or your company has for your appointments). And now you have your audit.
But don’t call use your marketing letters for a FREE Quote or anything related. Because you are asking for trouble. Two things happen in your prospects mind when they want a free quote:
- They are instantly price conscious. This can be a difficult frame of mind to work with. You don’t want a bunch of price conscious customers asking you for quotes because they’ll go to — or switch to, the next lowest price they find. You want customers that understand and want value and want to pay for it.
- They switch to their logical frame of mind. When your prospect enters a logical frame of mind they become more analytical. And when they are analytical they are not going to buy unless you can show them a good price.
This is an unemotional frame of mind which is a hard frame of mind to break, especially after they become a customer (because once a customer buys your product based upon their analytical mind, they are trained to buy your products and services in this way, and it makes your job of selling higher priced products and services to them very difficult).
If you stick with the traditional ways of marketing letters and prospecting for new business, you will continue to get price sensitive customers, and you’ll grow your business slower. Maybe eventually go out of business.
Don’t get me wrong. I can find you plenty of companies that are making a lot of money basing their businesses upon price. But these same companies who live by price are slowly dieing by price. Their margins are shrinking. As soon as a competitor comes along and undercuts them their customers jump off the band wagon and their profits shrink or even disappear.
You want to ad value to your customers experience and show them how to solve their problems. You want them to make buying decisions based upon what your products and services will do for them, and not because you are offering a discounted price (there are times when this is ok, but only after you get them as a customer, and you have to do it right…more on this in future newsletters or products…)
What I am talking about is using marketing letters to help get them into an emotional state of mind, so that they buy based upon emotion, not price. For example, successful life insurance agents get their customers thinking about their families and the love they have for their families when they are considering the purchase of life insurance.
But the unsuccessful agent gets their prospects thinking about a 10 year term insurance policy that only cost $15 per month (I remember a friend of mine was shocked when a prospect didn’t sign up for his policy because they found the same policy for 57 cents per month less than he was quoting!!! That’s how bad it can get.)
Let’s take a look at marketing letters that offer a FREE Audit in specific niches…
If you are a carpet cleaner, instead of offering a 20% discount on carpet cleaning (where you sound like every other carpet cleaner) offer a “FREE Carpet Audit”. This creates curiosity and it helps create a higher perceived value of your services. Once you complete your audit it helps establish you as an expert in the area, you’ve educated your customer, and at this time you are in a better position to offer higher prices for your higher end services (this applies to almost any business).
Another example of using a marketing letters free Audit…
If you are a mechanic, you can offer a FREE Porsche (or name of car) Drive Train Audit. Or, if you are a Real Estate Agent, you can offer a FREE Home Buying (Selling) Audit, or a FREE Home Listing Audit. If you sell legal expense plans you can offer a FREE Legal Expense Plan Audit.
Insurance Agents and Financial Planners: WARNING.
At least once per month I get an email or a phone call from an insurance agent, financial planner, or a sales person that goes something like this: “I am looking for a letter that sells insurance (or annuities, or some product that nobody wants)”. What do you have that can do that?” In other words they want the magic pill that is going to land eager hungry buyers of the products that they so eagerly want to sell them. People don’t want to buy products. They want to buy solutions to their problems. But if you mail a letter to a prospect that is not thinking about insurance or annuities, they are going to throw it in the trash. So what’s the secret? Find out what they want, and give it to them. The money will follow.
What do people want? Ask them. Here’s a few ideas that you should consider…
What are people most likely to be interested in:
Saving 20-30% on life insurance, or how to protect their assets from being taken by the IRS? Or, Buying Long Term Care Insurance or discovering how to avoid ending up in a nursing home or avoiding it and living at home?
Or:
Investing in your mutual fund, or how to defer taxes indefinitely and retire at will?
Let’s say you are a CPA. Instead of offering a discount, or a price for your tax services, offer a FREE Tax Audit…just kidding. You definitely don’t want to offer a tax audit, because that’s exactly what people hire you to avoid. Anyway, you can rename it. Call it a FREE Tax Reduction Analysis, or a FREE 10 Minute Tax Analysis.
Other marketing letters free audit ideas:
• Free 10 Minute Cash Flow Analysis
• Free Mortgage Reduction Report
• Free Wealth Building Analysis
• Free Mainframe Systems Audit
• Free Employee Productivity Audit
As you can see, you can even rename your audit. For example and as you will see in a few moments and in detail, if you are an insurance agent and want to sell group insurance, instead of offering a FREE Employee Benefits Audit (still a pretty good idea), you can offer a FREE 20 Minute Benefits Analysis.
The ideas you can come with are endless.
Side Bar: Peter Sun does a phenomenal job of using the FREE Audit in his business. His manual “Marketing Audits: How To Make $2,000 an Hour As A Marketing Consultant!” describes in detail how he uses audits in his marketing business to make a fortune. You can take his secrets and adapt them into your business…secrets that can at least double and triple your profits without a bunch of price haggling with customers! I highly recommend this product even though it is 10 years old.
As you will see in the first couple of examples, I use two “introductory” letters before I really hit the prospect hard with a killer letter.
The proven concept here is called “sequencing”, which I learned from Dan Kennedy over 12 years ago, and he got the idea from debt collectors. Debt collectors send relentless letters that have 2nd Notice, and Final Notice stamped on them, and they work like gangbusters.
The idea behind sequencing for marketing your products and services is to get your prospect “warmed up” prior to hitting them hard with a powerful letter. This way your response will increase versus sending out the killer letter as a one time shot.
There are professionals using the one shot approach and having success. But I promise you, you’ll get even better results if you sequence your letters.
Best results are to send a total of three or four letters 7-10 days apart, and then follow up with a phone call to set appointments and/or close sales. Each letter should get progressively more aggressive (examples in a moment), and the final letter is the big closer (the killer letter).
Please Note:
Many of the marketing letters you are going to see on this prospecting letters and sales letters website are for setting appointments with prospects. However, you can model and adapt these letters for lead generation and mail order. I’ll show you a couple of examples at the end. So read every letter a couple of times…read this entire manual several times. I guarantee you’ll get new ideas that will help you make a lot more money faster and easier.
Also, even though the letters at the beginning are geared toward the financial services arena, you can easily model and adapt them in your business. Near the end I’ll give you more examples of various professions so you can get a good idea of how to adapt them into your business.
Lastly, these letters use my Million Dollar Bills as “Grabbers” to grab the attention of your prospects in the last letter in the sequence (more on sequencing in a moment). You don’t have to use them. You can substitute almost any other kind of grabber: one or two dollar bills, coins, Band-Aids, bubble gum etc., etc., and tie them into your sales message. My clients have also used with great success a gold coin, nickels, pennies, and even more extravagant packaging.
To make your marketing letters and your personality stand out, you have to do things differently. Sending out plain old letters with your company name plastered all over them is going to get thrown in the trash.
You’ll see how I do it using Million Dollar Bills. If you have a question about a particular grabber you would like to try, run it by me: brian@leadstampede.com or fax my office. Let’s get to it.
Follow These Steps For Maximum Results With Your Sales Letters and Free Audit Marketing:
The following steps should be followed to the “T”. Don’t change anything or make assumptions you are not sure about. If you have questions, feel free to fax or email
them or take advantage of one of your critique certificates.
Here’s what to do…
Here’s How To Get New Leads, Appointments, or Sales In 12 Simple Steps:
- As we discussed above, the marketing letters in this site are mostly using the “audit” model as a marketing technique to ad life and perceive value to your services. In the following example we are calling our “audit” a Benefits analysis. Most insurance agents who sell group benefits to employers (health, life, 401K etc.) have what’s called a “fact finder” (just like many service businesses and professionals); it’s a list of questions that help the agent find the right product and qualify their prospects. It’s whatever you do to collect information to make suggestions to your clients. The best example I can think of is your doctor. What does your doctor do when you have a visit? He or she sits down with you’re your file and asks you questions and writes down answers like crazy until he or she has a basic understanding of what your problem is (maybe it takes two or three visits and tests). That’s their “audit” of your physical and mental condition. You need to create your own “marketing audit” or analysis that helps you find your prospects problems so you can come up with solutions. Like I said, call it what you want. But the idea here is to create perceived value. Everyone has and does fact finding, but nobody does a 20 Minute Benefits Analysis! Get it?
- We have used the Million Dollar Bill as a grabber for the third marketing letter as an example, but you are not required to use it. You can use anything you like…dollar bill, $2 bill, Lottery ticket, magnifying glass, Band-Aid, Alka Seltzer, Jewelers Loupe, etc., etc. The idea here is a to use a unique grabber that will grab their attention, but you have to tie it in to what you are selling. This will make your follow up call a lot more receptive and positive.
- Use a high grade of paper (watermark is great).
- Use a regular white envelope.
- Don’t put your business name or logo on the return address, use your name and address, or just your address.
- Don’t use address labels. Hand address your envelopes or use laser printed addresses.
- Use a first class postage stamp.
- Mail First Letter On A Monday.
- Mail Second Letter 7-10 days later.
- Mail Third letter 7 days after the second letter.
- Follow up with a phone call 1-2 days after the letter is received.
- Follow up with a call and reference the Million Dollar Bill first (or unique grabber). Reference your service (Audit or equivalent), and then set tons of appointments or make gobs of sales!