Aligned Marketing Blog

Describe your business in terms of benefits and value so the person you are talking to can better understand how you can help them, regardless of what it is you do. “I‘ve been building estate homes in Chicago since 1977” is more descriptive and better than, “I’m a builder,” because it infers some of the benefits you provide and encourages a conversation.

The second version lets the other person know you have solid experience, probably know a lot about a specific geography, you build big-expensive house and, finally, it implies the homes you build are constructed well. If those inferences were not true it is unlikely you'd have been in business since "1977." If you had simply said, “I’m a builder,” you would miss all those important attributes and benefits. Successful people never make this error and almost every successful person I’ve met is a good conversationalists.

A conversation allows you and the other person to determine if your unique expertise fits their unique needs and if your personalities are compatible for a business relationship.

So, the next time you meet someone describe your business or profession in interesting terms that conveys the benefits you provide.

 

A lot has been written about making written requests, such as for a meeting. Based on my inbox, a lot of good advice is being ignored. So, here's my two-cents on the subject:

Good work often starts with research. I recommend that you save the meeting requests and general sales letters you like in a dedicated folder and, before writing your next request letter, review them for tips and inspiration. Pay particular attention to what you like about the wording, layout, flow and tone of your favorite letters.

Staying with research, investigate the companies and people your soliciting. There's an amazing amount of information available today. Google and LinkedIn are two of my primary sources of client research. In 15 minutes you can typically learn a person's professional history, job title, interests, status in their industry  and many even identify some mutual friends. This will help with the style, tone and personalization of your letter.

Create an outline for your letter as follows:

1. Grab your reader's attention. Begin with an interesting fact, important question, comment on a current event or something personal, such as congratulations for being named Person of the Year.
2. Then transition your reader into the purpose of your letter - introduce your company, request an appointment, or a free offer, for example. Be sure to connect your request with your grabber from (what will be) paragraph one. Your transition is key, it must be both smooth and brief, people are busy. See next bullet.
3. In today's hurry-up, get-to-the-point world, many people switch the first two bullets of their outline. they begin letters by coming right out and stating, "The purpose of this letter is to request a 30-minute appointment to..." and then write their grabber. I prefer a subtler approach but will use the direct approach if I know the reader well.
4. Insert numbers or testimonials that back up your claims next. A list of indented bullets works well for either. People like reading lists of tightly written facts - summaries.
5. Your fourth section/paragraph is your call-to-action. Tie your attention grabber or your reader's self-interest into the benefits of responding to your solicitation. I don't sell actual products so I often use mutual gain as my call-to-action: "I propose a 30-minute meeting to better understand your business objectives, review our capabilities and determine if we can help one another achieve our  goals..."
6. Your final outline point let's your reader know that your letter is one of a series of contacts, that there are more to come. Explain that you will be following up by voicemail, email or both. Basically, you're telling them "you're not going away, so let's have our conversation and see where it leads."

Now it's time to fill in the blanks and edit. Go back to each section of your outline and write 2-4 complete sentences. Often this is as easy as writing a topic sentence, inserting your outline copy and, then, writing a closing sentence that introduces your next point (paragraph) and compels the reader to keep reading.

With my writing completed I move onto the editing process. I complete three rounds of edits. My first edit is for grammar, my second is for flow and my third is for appeal. The final edit, for appeal, answers the question, "Would I respond to this letter?" If I would, then I'm done. If, however, there are awkward transitions, facts that don't seem to fit, or anything else that makes my letter weak, then I keep writing and editing until they are corrected.

The person receiving your letter is busy. They are looking for reasons to throw your letter away. It's your job to give them reasons to keep it and respond.

Mail your letter and begin following up within a week.

Final thought:
Some may argue that Bullet #6 above is aggressive. I'll concede that point. However, if you've done your homework and are only contacting people you honestly believe you can help, then why be shy? You're trying to earn a living and help others along the way; what's wrong with that? I'm not looking to waste my time or anyone else's on silly meetings nor am I looking to sell anyone something they don't need or want. I have pride in what I do and so should you.

In summary, this comes down to professionalism and character, use a strong doze of both in everything you do and trust that positive results will follow.

Steve

As an entrepreneur a lot of what I’m required to do can best be described as selling. If I know the needs of the prospective client and I know that I can offer great value, I actually enjoy selling. If I’m not certain about the problem or solution I keep asking questions until I do, which some people define as selling and some don’t.

The hardest part of selling, the part that is uncomfortable for me is cold calling and leaving a please-call-me-back voicemail. So, in my search to resolve this internal conflict I came across a YouTube video from Keith Rosen that we transcribed and edited. I hope Keith’s message reduces your voicemail-anxiety.

Author:
    Keith Rosen, Sales Advisor, AllBusiness.com:

Many sales people feel that leaving a voicemail is a waste of time; it’s just not generating the callbacks that they expect.  So instead of leaving a voicemail they just put the phone down and hang up, expecting to catch that prospect at a later time.  However, maybe it’s really the voicemail itself that’s not working.  For example, if I gave you a spoon and told you to go out and dig a 10 ft hole, would you learn the lesson “Well, gee, I guess I can’t dig holes very well,” or maybe the lesson is more about the tools and resources.  So here are several things that you can do right now to boost the impact of your voicemails and generate more return calls.
    
VOICEMAIL THAT WORKS:
-    DON’T EXCEED 30 TO 45 SECONDS
-    GIVE A COMPELLING REASON TO RETURN THE CALL
-    DON’T GIVE TOO MUCH INFORMATION
-    CREATE FIVE UNIQUE VOICEMAIL MESSAGES
-    PRACTICE EACH MESSAGE 25 TIMES

1. Make sure your voicemails don’t exceed 30 to 45 seconds, max.  The reasons are (1) it’s going to prevent you from rambling on and (2) it will force you to craft and deliver a truly compelling message that will generate interest and a return call from your prospect.
2. Each message you leave must give the person you’re calling a compelling reason to return your call.  After all, when you’re making a cold call and you actually get a live person on the other end it’s hard enough to get them to listen to what you have to say.  Now, you want to leave a message, have that person go to their voicemail, retrieve that voicemail, write your number down and take the time out of their busy day to return your call.  So it’s imperative that you give them a compelling reason to return your call.  What value proposition do you have that they’re interested in?
3. Don’t give away the farm.  After all, if you give them all the information that you’re going to tell them when you finally connect with them then what’s going to be their reason to return your call in the first place?
4. Create five unique voicemail messages.  Now this accomplishes a few things.  I believe in taking the shotgun approach, rather than the rifle approach, when leaving voicemails and here's why: At this point you don’t really know your prospect’s hot button.  If you keep leaving the same old voicemail messages every week, well, the fact is you could actually be reinforcing the wrong message.  So instead of doing it that (repetitive) way create five different voicemail messages.  If message one doesn’t resonate with them, maybe voicemail two or three will.
5. And finally, make sure you practice every voicemail a minimum of 25 times.  Not just reading it, but actually saying it out loud.  Hear yourself say it.  Actually practice with a friend or a coworker leaving messages and have them critique you.  This will help you naturalize your voicemail messages so they sound more personal, not canned or scripted.

Final thoughts: In my mind voicemails are like meetings, we take them for granted because we think of them as basic human interaction, as communication, something we’ve done from since childhood. That’s false thinking, these are business skills and in order to get maximum results we need to think about what we’re doing, monitor results and work to improve our performance. Challenge yourself to find a way to use voicemails and meetings to energize yourself and your team with feelings of what’s possible.

Steve

Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity states that the closer you get to a black hole the more time slows until you reach the Event Horizon, the point at which there’s no turning back. At that point time would appear to be frozen, an object as seen from Earth would never change.

Einstein coined the term black holes because the gravitational pull of these objects are so powerful not even light can escape. Hence, they are black.

I think a lot of meetings resemble black holes -- they have power, time seems to stop, and light (the bright future we all hope for) can’t escape.

The metaphor may be a little dark (haha) so we'll put it aside, but it's a complaint I often hear: "We attend meetings all day. One idea after another gets shot down and, in the end, nothing happens..."

If your meetings are not producing a list of tasks, assignments, and then the results are (1) measured and (2) produce a better company,  you might want to read Seth Godin’s March 26, blog, which I’ve cut-n-pasted below, along with a few comments. Some of his ideas may be a little “out-there” for your company’s culture but some may be worth trying. Enjoy.

Getting serious about your meeting problem, by Seth Godin

Do you have one [meeting problem]? Some folks are going to eight hours of meeting a day. At Ford, they used to have meetings to prepare for meetings, just to be sure everyone had their story straight.

If you're serious about solving your meeting problem, getting things done and saving time, try this for one week. If it doesn't work, I'll be happy to give you a full refund.

• Understand that all problems are not the same. So why are your meetings? Does every issue deserve an hour? Why is there a default length? [Change it]
• Schedule meetings in increments of five minutes. Require that the meeting organizer have a truly great reason to need more than four increments of realtime (sic) face time.
• Require preparation. Give people things to read or do before the meeting, and if they don't, kick them out. [My favorite]
• Remove all the chairs from the conference room. I'm serious.
• If someone is more than two minutes later than the last person to the meeting, they have to pay a fine of $10 to the coffee fund.
• Bring an egg timer to the meeting. When it goes off, you're done. Not your fault, it's the timer's.
• The organizer of the meeting is required to send a short email summary, with action items, to every attendee within ten minutes of the end of the meeting.
• Create a public space (either a big piece of poster board or a simple online page) that allows attendees to rate meetings and their organizers on a scale of 1 to 5 in terms of usefulness. Just a simple box where everyone can write a number. Watch what happens. [Great idea]
• If you're not adding value to a meeting, leave. You can always read the summary later. [Easier said than done, but I like it]

Steve