4) Always repeat your offer. In a mailpack you’ve got the outer, the letter and the brochure and you may also have a reply envelope. These are all opportunities to reinforce the message that they could get FREE STUFF for replying. But couch the offer in varying language so you don’t simply repeat yourself.

5) Consider putting your offer in your main headline. Lots of very successful subscription promotions lead on the offer, for example, a headline might say “Get $100 of copywriting vouchers when you subscribe to Sunfish Monthly”.

6) Test your offers. Do people respond better to the offer of free stuff when they order at full price, or do they like the idea of a discount?

Whatever you decide to do, just bear in mind that businesspeople are just the same as consumers (which is what they are half the time, after all). Everyone likes getting a good deal and everyone wants something for nothing.

And they really work!

One of the best offers I ever ran was a pocket calculator that we bought in for $3.00 as an incentive on a $550 reference book. We had librarians falling over themselves to place their orders and saw a big uplift in response. For a calculator! These people must have owned at least two calculators each already. But it was free. (And let’s remember that ‘free’ is one of the best words any copywriter has at his or her fingertips.)

(reproduced with permission of author Andy Maslen)

To summarize the four tips we discussed over the last two weeks, listed below are the primary steps that salespeople must implement to avoid a “No Decision” outcome:

• Gain credibility with prospects so that they share specific goals that can be addressed by your product and/or service.
• Diagnose the prospect’s specific goals with a bias toward your product and/or service.
• Help prospects “see themselves” achieving their goals by using your products, thereby increasing the prospect’s urgency to take action.
• Identify and gain access to the decision maker(s) early in the buy cycle.
• Place an actual dollar value on each of the ways your product or service will help them achieve their goals.

(Reproduced with permission of author Jim Lewis)

As efforts to recruit and retain a diverse workforce increase, many companies are diversifying their benefits and work arrangements, according to Canadian HR Reporter. Diversity of age, culture and lifestyle in a workforce requires a flexible rewards package to recruit and retain talent, especially with skilled and experienced workers. Flexible work arrangements and phased retirement programs are increasing in prevalence, as well as other benefits geared to accommodating life outside of work. These programs include healthy work arrangements, assistance with non-work tasks, opportunities for self-development and community-oriented work arraignments. Of 232 Canadian organizations polled by HR consultancy Hewitt for its Attracting and Retaining the New Workforce 2006 survey, 38% currently offer flexible benefits and 64% expect to do so by 2009. Experts stress the need to communicate the value of the total rewards package to retain employees. (Canadian HR Reporter [Campione and Williams], October 23, 2006, p. 14) (as reported by i4cp)

Almost two-thirds of workers aged 18-26 would prefer to work for a company that provides volunteer opportunities with nonprofit groups, according to the 2007 Volunteer IMPACT Survey, by Deloitte & Touche USA LLP. The online survey of 1,000 U.S. members of Gen Y was performed by the Opinion Research Corporation for Deloitte & Touche. Nearly all those surveyed – 97% – said they believed companies should “offer opportunities for its employees to contribute their work-related skills or talents to a nonprofit organization,” and 62% agreed that they would “prefer to work for a company that provides opportunities for me to apply my skills to benefit nonprofit organizations.” Almost three-quarters, or 70%, agreed with the statement “companies should use volunteering as a professional development tool,” and 50% agreed that “an employee’s involvement in the community should be considered as part of his or her performance review.” (Compilation: “Companies That Help” [Deloitte & Touche USA LLP], press release, April 16, 2007; “Highlights of 2007″ [Deloitte & Touche USA LLP], 2007) (as reported by i4cp)

Future leaders will likely be “more cosmopolitan,” exhibiting diversity in culture, gender, values and geographic origins, according to Rosabeth Moss Kanter, author and Harvard Business School professor. Kanter discusses how such leaders can inspire confidence in The Leader of the Future 2, a compilation of writings from leadership experts, edited by Frances Hesselbein and Marshall Goldsmith. Such cosmopolitan leaders may emanate from Brazil, China, India, Russia or other countries where leaders face troublesome social and environmental issues as well as organizational ones. These leaders will inspire employee and public confidence through valuing “accountability, collaboration and initiative.” Kanter says this confidence will be a product of the “messages leaders espouse,” the “models leaders exemplify” and the “mechanisms leaders establish.” (”How Cosmopolitan Leaders Inspire Confidence” [Kanter], 2006, pp. 61-62, 65-68) (as reported by i4cp)

3. No Power
How many times have you or your salespeople spent months selling to someone who told you early in the sales cycle that the decision to buy your product was their decision, only to find out that in reality, he isn’t authorized to purchase a package of pencils without someone else’s approval? While end-users and recommenders are fun to sell to, their needs and requirements may be all together different than those of the ultimate decision maker–the person with the authority to buy. If someone doesn’t have the authority to purchase your products or services, you’re not selling; you’re simply providing this person with a free education. Senior executives are charged with identifying and solving problems. Gaining access to the decision maker(s) early in the sales cycle can help eliminate the risk of “No Decision,” protect your expensive corporate resources and dramatically shorten the sales cycle.

4. No Value
We’ve already established that for a company to change how they are currently doing business there has to be a “goal.” That goal must be related back to dollars–reduced cost, avoided cost, increased revenue, etc. If you are asking a company to pay $100K for your product, the value of the achieving the goal(s) had better be at least $200K. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Would you spend $100K to solve a $50K problem?

I’m amazed at the number of sales people who don’t understand the value of their products and services to their prospects and, more importantly, don’t actively participate in helping their prospect “cost justify” their purchase. Just think of the tactical advantage a seller has going into negotiations when he knows exactly how much his prospect will save and when they will achieve a return on their investment!

(Reproduced with permission of author Jim Lewis)

The personal connections and social networks among employees are significant factors in the success of an organization’s knowledge management and the spread of information through informal learning. Deloitte Research’s report It’s 2008: Do You Know Where Your Talent Is? Connecting People to What Matters points out that “it’s through relationships that people learn how to perform complicated tasks, manage difficult colleagues, or navigate corporate politics” and that such tacit knowledge is generally dispensed person-to-person and is not captured by formal knowledge management processes or held in data repositories. In such cases, getting the right information to the employee means connecting the employee to the right person. (It’s 2008 [Deloitte Research], 2007, p. 3) (as reported by i4cp)

The quality of workplace relationships can significantly affect employees’ productivity, according to a 2006 survey conducted by SelectMinds, a firm involved in developing corporate social networking. The poll of 1,919 professional employees found 87% of respondents acknowledging that their productivity was highest when they were among co-workers with whom they had good relationships. Such associations in the workplace further enhanced job satisfaction, said 70% of employees. Eighty-three percent of respondents credited good working relationships with influencing their attraction to an employer, while 16% said they’d left past jobs that didn’t afford them rewarding associations. Said SelectMinds CEO Anne Berkowitch, “As businesses begin to exhaust gains from processes and information technology, their next big productivity frontier is people and the complex networks of information and relationships at their disposal.” (Best Practices in HR, January 20, 2007, p. 6) (As reported by i4cp)

If you’re not already using offers to lift response on your mailings, now would be an excellent time to start testing. Here are a few things to remember about using offers:

1) Always limit your offer. Either by time, which is probably the most common way, or by quantity. You could say, “Reply by 31st October 2007 and you’ll save 10%.” Or “Remember, you must reply by 31st October 2007 to claim your free pen.” For quantity closes, you could try “The first 100 people to reply will each get a free clock.” Or “Reply today: if you’re one of the lucky 50, you’ll be spending a day driving a Formula 1 racing car.”

2) Make the offer fit the action required. Offering a gift worth $100 for a buying decision valued at $50 looks odd. Your respondent is likely to think “What’s the catch?”

3) If you’re offering a saving on the full price, try and express it as both a percentage saving and a cash amount: different things appeal to different people.

Research shows that between 60% and 80% of all losses are due to “No Decision.” That’s more losses to “No Decision” than to any single competitor, making “No Decision, Inc.” your #1 competitor!

Why do your prospects elect to do nothing, despite the best efforts of yourself and your sales representatives? There are four major reasons:

1. No Goal
Despite what some salespeople may think, executives don’t authorize the spending of large sums of money just to be the proud owners of your stuff. We use the term pain to describe the critical business or personal issue that has prompted the buyer to search for a solution and initiate the buy cycle. They have a goal; they want to fix the problem. We have a saying, “No goal, no prospect.” At the very minimum, a prospect must be unhappy with some aspect of their business and want to fix it, before they will initiate a buy cycle with a salesperson. Salespeople who fail to take the time to diagnose and understand their buyer’s goal and the critical issues that are preventing them from achieving that goal, either lose the sale to “No Decision” or to the sales representative who does.

2. No Solution
Despite the best efforts of your salespeople, the technical staff and yourself (the four-legged sales calls, the “must have, or we won’t buy” reports, corporate visit, etc.) the buyer still does not have a clear understanding of how he will achieve his goal(s) by purchasing your product or service. Again, this is probably due to the salesperson’s leading with product feature and function before first taking the time to diagnose and understand the prospect’s pain, the goal that he wants to attain and then relating how the capabilities of your product or service could be used to eliminate that pain.

(Reproduced with permission of author Jim Lewis)