The Tribune

By D'ARCY RAHMING

My son recently graduated from university and formed a marketing company in Chicago. So far, he has tried many different strategies to establish a constant revenue stream. These have included direct mail, social media and even some telemarketing. Results to date have been promising for the first few months.

I would estimate that he has been told a combination of ‘No’, ‘No, Thank You’, and ‘No, never contact me again’, along with a few unprintable messages, by at least 3,000 people so far. This is in comparison to ‘Yes’ from less than 20 clients. Yet he’s still in the game and still highly motivated. So, how does he take the constant ‘No’s’ without becoming discouraged? Well, I know in part how he does it. I’m bankrolling it, so the ‘No’s’ hurt him less than they are hurting me. The other part is that he is not being told these ‘No’s’ face to face.

The hardest type of selling is face to face with a stranger. And the easiest type is face to face with a trusted friend. If you can put a prospect in front of you who knows you, likes you, trusts you and is ready and willing to buy from you, you are going to do well. So that’s why we use information marketing to try and get a prospect into that condition before we meet face to face.

It all starts with a carefully crafted sales letter. The late great copywriter, Gary Halbert, used to say: “We’re all one good sales letter away from being wealthy.” Of course, he left out a ton of additional information in that statement, but nevertheless it is a fascinating way of approaching a sales problem. Because it is the beginning of a sales funnel that eliminates all of the “No’s” without them having to tell you that “No” face to face.

The sales funnel looks like this: A sales letter will be used to generate interest, establish your authority, and increase the prospect’s comfort level with you. Notice I did not say to establish a sale. With this letter you need to give some great information that the prospect would have otherwise paid for. Then you have to offer some type of free gift; again, what the prospect would have paid for. After sending him more great information that he requested, you are now ready to try to make a sale to him.

What this means is by the time you get face to face with someone, you have eliminated all of the ‘No’ people and are dealing with the ‘Maybe’ or ‘Yes’ people. Now this type of marketing takes a lot of work and a lot of patience. But it has made many people successful, because once the method is refined it can be repeated over and over again.

NB: D’Arcy Rahming holds a Masters of Management from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. A lecturer at the College of the Bahamas, Mr Rahming has clients in general insurance, retail, the health and medical fields, sports federations and financial services. To receive his marketing newsletter FREE go to http://DArcyRahming.com or contact him directly at darcyrahmingsr@gmail.com