David Dutton, a subscriber of mine from Nashville, Tennessee, wrote in and asked me to "touch on prospecting with direct mail" As you probably know, I love direct mail for loads of reasons, but mostly I love it because you can use it to say anything you want or tell any kind of story you want. There's no limit to the number of pages or words you have to use, and frankly, it's also a very intimate form of communicating with your prospects and clients. After all, when your prospect is reading your message, it's just you and them, one-on-one. How efficient! Anyway, here's a little story about my younger son Casey. Pay close attention to it, and see if you can guess the "moral" of the story here. When Casey was younger, I always used to say, he'd be "the perfect salesman". Whenever he asked for something, if the answer was "No", he'd ask you the exact same question in a different way. He'd figure out some way to come at you from behind... or around the sides... or down from up above. To put this in "selling" perspective, when Casey asked for the order, in his mind, "No" didn't mean he couldn't get it, it just meant he had to ask for it again... a little differently. And see, one of the most critical mistakes people make is that they don't do second and third (or more) mailings. You should keep mailing offers, until your mailings aren't profitable. For the most part, from a numbers standpoint, you should get whatever response you got on your first mailing, on your second and third mailings combined. So if you're selling a high-ticket item, or if the lifetime value of your client is high, you can see how, in some cases, you can certainly afford to do a dozen or more mailings, right? Thanks for your question David. Oh, by-the-way -- now 13, Casey STILL doesn't understand what "No" means. Now go sell something, Craig Garber
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