The Sales Skill Set

Few people consider themselves to be "a good salesman," and that can be enough to cause them to turn away from - or give up on - a great opportunity like SendOutCards.

In my book on the subject, The Greatest Job You Never Thought Of, I call Sales The World's Most Valuable Profession for a number of reasons including the fact that anyone with any education level or career history can work hard and begin earning more than Wharton MBAs or Harvard MDs.

But how do you become good at sales? What skills must you develop in order to succeed?

By clicking on this link or "The Sales Skill Set" at the top of this posting, you can download a free copy of the chapter in my book which is called The Sales Skill Set in either Adobe PDF or MP3 audio format.

In this chapter I describe 20 different skills, ranging from Listening and Honesty to Product Knowledge and Persistence, which every adult can develop to become more effective in communicating the value of their offering. I have been told by salespeople, sales managers and business owners with many years of experience that my list and the way I describe each skill is one of the best they have seen on the subject.

#1 on my list is Belief in your product. This is something working in your favor as a SendOutCards distributor. I can tell you without hesitation that this company's service represents one of the best value propositions I have ever seen in business.

The combination of the price point, the service, the quality, the selection, the ease-of-use, the number of applications, the competitive landscape and the business opportunity relative the investment required - all add up to one of the best offerings you could ever present to friends, family - or complete strangers.

Not everyone will buy - nor even see the value - but every person could benefit from SendOutCards and enjoy its features at a very low price. That's something you can feel very good about as you go out and talk to people.

I hope you enjoy and benefit from the free chapter. Please post a comment to let me know what you thought of it.

The First Time Is The Toughest

Are you having a tough time taking your first steps with SendOutCards? You're probably not alone, everyone gets nervous the first time they try anything new.

One thing you can take some support from is that from now on, things will only get easier! The first time you do anything is always the toughest. You'll only improve and succeed from here.

Whether you're stumbling through your first telephone demonstration of a guest account or feeling frustrated trying to learn the online interface, hang in there! This is a great program that deserves your diligence.

Radius Marketing for Home Improvement Companies

A friend of mine who sells remodeling projects for a number of companies in the Tidewater area of Virginia gave me a great idea after receiving my series of seven cards.

Let's say you're a home improvement company preparing to do an addition on a home in a given neighborhood. Why not send a card campaign to the 100 or 500 homes closest to your project introducing your company?

Here's how his idea would work: Send your first card a week before the project begins, introducing your company and notifying the neighbors that your trucks and workmen will be showing up soon. Apologize in advance for the noise, dust and traffic and offer your name and phone number for any complaints or concerns regarding the project.

Then, over the course of the next several weeks, drop a number of cards thanking the neighbors for their patience and informing them of the different types of projects you do. Include a coupon offer encouraging them to call for a no-obligation quote while the local project is underway. Possibly even offer a discount because it costs you less to have multiple projects going on nearby to each other.

When the project is completed, and with your customer's permission, invite everyone to stop by to see the finished product and enter to win an iPod. Your salespeople will love the highly-qualified prospects that come from the contest fishbowl: local homeowners who have been "touched" multiple times by your cards and have also seen your work in person, met you and receive the implicit endorsement of your happy current customer with the great new addition.

How can you get the addresses of the 100 closest neighbors? My favorite way is to call InfoUSA or visit them on the web at http://www.InfoUSA.com.

How's that for a great idea that can also be used by a lot of other businesses?

Direct Mail Testing

After years of experience producing millions of direct mail pieces, I believe that one of SendOutCards' greatest uses is as a test bed for large mass mailings.

At 99-cents apiece for a full-color, personalized foldover card including mailshop and first class postage costs, you just can't go wrong on a short run of 500 pieces or less. 68-cents for a personalized 7" x 5" postcard is great too. And the minimum quantity is 1! God bless digital printing technology.

Sure, you could get to much lower price points for bulk mailings but you'd have to invest in big print runs and put out hard cash for mailing house fees and postage checks, not to mention personalization costs and database massaging.

So why not test your direct mail piece, several times if you like, to a controlled list of 400-500 to determine what kind of return a larger mailing might bring before investing in it? SendOutCards is the perfect vehicle for that.

Thanks Kody!

An Idea for Realtors

Here's a great idea I heard Jordan Adler talk about on a SOC conference call recording:

You're a Realtor who has just sold a home. Take a picture of the happy buyers in front of the "SOLD" sign (that includes your name, photo and phone number) and offer to send it to all of their friends as a Change Of Address card.

I like it!

My Wife's Fine Art Business

After managing a fine art gallery for a long time, my wife Lori Felker has decided to go independent and market fine original art directly to buyers as a representative of the artists.

Her official launch date is January 1, 2006 but, needless to say, we are already hard at work creating and implementing her marketing plan.

A big part of that plan involves SendOutCards. With the artists' permission we will be creating greeting cards and postcards featuring their work and using them in a variety of campaigns. We will be sending invitations of art shows, wine tastings and meet-the-artist events. Lori will use them as Thank You cards and Nice To Meet you cards and a million other one-to-one applications.

We are also going to offer buyers of specific pieces the opportunity to have custom cards created that feature their new acquisition on the front so they can send a note to all of their friends and show-off a little bit.

How could your business implement some of these ideas?

Turn-Key Marketing Solutions

Every salesperson and small business owner can benefit from SendOutCards. But many are too busy with their current business to devote any time to figuring out how to use the system, much less consider marketing it as a new business themselves.

So why not just offer it to them turn-key? You do the card creation, the writing, the campaign development, the scheduling and even the inputting of the contact information. Charge them a premium on top of what it costs you and hit the SEND button.

I aluded to this in my Holiday Cards for Small Business posting earlier today. But even I am going to outsource the most time-consuming work (entering the contact info) to a great lady in Florida I found through Elance.

The secret is creating a campaign or single card that accomplishes some objective for them.

When I was in the printing business I came to realize that no one buys printing in and of itself, they buy printing as a means to an end. They are creating a direct mail campaign to increase sales or build the membership of a trade association. They are publishing a directory of medical providers so their network of employees can connect with the right doctors and hospitals. They are not just buying printing because it has some inherent value on its own. They buy printing with the intent that it will do something else for them.

The same is true here - essentially what we're selling is printing and mailing services - in that the value comes from an effect created by the card, not from the card itself.

So create turn-key programs that provide a benefit to your customer. They don't have to know how you did it. They just know you did a great job meeting their objective!

Including A Coupon Offering

Any greeting card or postcard you send can include a coupon for percentage discount off any purchase, buy-one-get-one-free, special pricing on a particular product - or any other special offer that you see on billions of coupons every year.

There are two ways to do this:

1) Create a coupon graphic and upload it into your card;

2) Simply type the text of the coupon offering into the body of the card - maybe with a row of asterisks at the top and bottom to make it look more like a coupon.

Be sure to say "Present this card for..." and "substitutes or photocopies not accepted." so you can see how effective the coupon - and the card - were in bring people to you.

We did this at Monarch Title in a Thank You card to real estate agents who attended the Grand Opening of our Old Town Alexandria (Virginia) office, and left their business card in a fishbowl for a prize drawing. The offer was for a FREE SETTLEMENT. "Just include this card when you drop off your next contract."

How could you use this in your business?

Holiday Cards for Small Businesses

Yesterday morning I spent about ten minutes sending out a holiday card prompt to a list of about 50 small business owners.

The front of the card has a picture of tired Santa sitting in a chair with the caption:

Tired or writing, licking, sticking mailing holiday cards?

Inside I wrote:

Have you sent your holiday cards yet FirstName?

If you're like most small business owners, you haven't. But this year I have an easy solution that you can still implement before the 25th - if you act fast.

I have found a great new online system that will let you send customized holiday cards like this one for as little as 99 cents each - including postage.

If that sounds like too much work we can handle the whole thing for you for as little as $2.50 per card - including inputting your list and sending it back to you in a spreadsheet!

Sound interesting? Give me a call at 703-401-3170 or email me at frank@TheCustomerFactory.com.

Happy Holidays! Frank Felker 703-401-3170

Like I say, it took me less than ten minutes to send this campaign to 50+ business owners. Stay tuned to find out how it worked for me!

Photographers and Graphic Artists

Photographers and Graphic Artists can create a great business for themselves by offering their clients custom greeting cards and postcards which incorporate photos, logos and graphic elements tied to the client's business.

Every company should have a custom Thank You card, We Appreciate Your Business card, Thanks For The Referral Card, Nice To Meet You Card, etc., etc. The artist or photographer can earn money on both the creative work and the production and mailing of the cards. Sweet!

Graphics folks can also create cards which incorporate their own creations for sale on the retail card site, or for their own use in marketing their businesses.

The great thing is that SOC gives these folks a reason to call their existing clients or prospects and say, "Hey I found something new that would be wonderful for your company. Can I come by and show you?"

Better yet, why not go ahead and create a card or two and send it to them unannounced? That will get there attention!

My Seven Card Campaign

Like everyone who is just starting out with SendOutCards, I am learning and growing - and experimenting!

My focus is entirely towards the business world: specifically salespeople and small business owners. Also, since I work full-time in the real estate industry, I am naturally including real estate agents and mortgage loan officers in my efforts.

Having spent much of my career in the printing industry - and in particular the digital printing world - I was immediately intrigued by the potential SOC offered as a marketing tool. Once I began to test and investigate the system, I quickly became convinced that this is something that every marketing-oriented adult needs to know about.

My first efforts are a little different from what is recommended by the company. Rather than sending a single "First Look" card to my initial group of 50+ warm prospects, I created a campagin consisting of seven cards, sent out every-other day over the course of two weeks. Each card highlights a different feature and/or application of the SOC system. The fifth card includes the DVD insert.

My plan was to send a personalized email to everyone 10 days into the campaign. But the fact that I could not (currently) export data from the SOC contact manager put a crimp in that step. I would then follow-up by telephone after everyone had received seven cards and an email from me.

I am currently making my follow-up phone calls and loving the results. In all my years of sales and marketing work, I have never gotten the response on the other end of the phone that I am getting right now. People loved the card series, have been thinking about it and me during the entire two-week period and invariably say "I've been meaning to call you. These cards are great."

I even had two people sign up straight-away just from the cards - with no email or telephone touch from me.

Rather than having "call reluctance," I'm having a lot of fun telephoning the people who have received my series of cards. And the $7 investment is paying great dividends.

In that I am always testing and trying to improve my results, I am currently refining the cards in this campaign, replacing two with postcards, and anxiously awaiting the ability to export data from my SOC contact manager so I can include an automated personal email message in the campaign.

The best part so far is that I'm having fun creating and sending the cards and the people receiving them are enjoying the process as well.

SendOutCards.com Featured in the Wall Street Journal

In another indication of the impact of the SendOutCards.com system, the company and its impact on holiday card sending was featured in the November 22nd edition of the Wall Street Journal.

The story focuses on how online services are making the annual holiday card sending ritual a litttle easier.

Read the entire article here.