Okay, so as I told fellow AR bloggers Ted Baker, Cheryl Gilliam and Angelia Garcia last night that I dropped out of the blogging world for a month as I sort of got myself into the weeds and turned a par four with a dog leg into a double bogey.  Golfers will understand exactly what I mean by that statement.

Golf is a great game, but golf as a stress reducer? I am not too sure about that.  I know far too many people who have wrapped their clubs around a tree, thrown a perfectly good wood into the water hazard, and literally kicked the stitching out of their golf bags.  I have even had the unfortunate experience to be the second person on a golf cart driven by an errant golfer who was trying to run over another member of our foursome.

I really don't like playing with people that are wrapped as tight as that, but invariably it is bound to happen that you get paired up with someone that is just a tad too competitive.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm as competitive as the next over-achiever and like to win just as much as the next guy or gal, I just don't want to have a heart attack doing it. I had someone not speak to me for a couple of weeks because I won a really awesome prize for the longest drive during a tournament.  Seriously. (Hey, it was a lucky shot on the right hole at the right time.  Go figure.)

Instead of golf, I have turned to blogging as a stress releaser.  I am a creative type, and I can do it from the comfort of my home or office regardless of whether it is 101' outside or a balmy 72'.  Now with a mobile card I can even blog from I-95.  Rain, snow, sleet or hail will not deter me from my goal to read blogs, comment and dash off a thought or two of my own. 

Yeah, yeah, I know that there is no exercise or physical fitness involved with blogging, but how much physical fitness is there in throwing back a couple of cold ones and riding around on a golf cart with a mad man for three hours followed by more adult beverages and a "heart stopper" meal of cholesterol and saturated fats at the 19th hole?  On the whole, golfers are clearly not the thinnest athletes, you know. 

Course, I don't know what the heck I was thinking when I took up blogging as a hobby.  Blogging may be just slightly more dangerous than standing behind a Tiger Woods wannabe in the tee box who has double-bogeyed the last nine holes. 

Last month, for the fun of it, I blogged about Oprah and NOW being a big disappointment to women.  Thank heavens I didn't mention those knuckleheads on The View.  If you don't know who I am talking about, consider yourself lucky. Let me just say this: the View is a panel of women on morning tv who are so out of touch with reality and so far to the left that God bless 'em they couldn't think their way out of parking lot.  Yeah, yeah, I know, Barbara Wah-Wah is on the panel, but she is another big disappointment. Just read her book.  Thank heavens I have a day job and am only subjected to their inane and insipid drivel only on the rarest of occasions. 

So why did I blog about Okra and Sarah Palin?  Well, I love politics, I love analyzing people and things, and I really love a good debate.  And I wanted to point out that two female icons that women look to have screwed up.

What was I thinking? Good Lord, I nearly started a firestorm and at first thought I was going to have to hire a few of our country's finest to guard me.  (Luckily enough I am following Hilary Clinton on Twitter and I was able to secure her overflow of Secret Service for the duration.)

Fortunately the negative comments I received drew equally as fevered positive ones and although some women are clearly not going to vote for Palin they understood what I was trying to say. 

The comments were coming in so fast and furious and I was spending all of my time trying to answer each and every one.  I was literally getting just a couple of hours of sleep the first few days as I tried to answer everyone's comments in a timely fashion. 

Where I got sucked in was debating comments from people who, in my opinion and clearly in the opinion of a few others, did not understand the point that I was making.  I will fall short of saying that they were clearly in the wrong and leaning to the left a tad too far although others may do so.  A few of the comments I received led me to debate their comments point by point.  I could have blogged another five or six complete posts from my lengthy responses.  At one point, I even had a couple of people (thank you Simon Conway, Chris Brown and Mike Saunders!) jumping in to help draw the fire while I ducked for cover and a few winks.

I am not certain how much stress was relieved by the whole debate, but I think that all of us really had a great time debating the point from both sides of the issue. Clearly there were more than few of us who had a surge in blood pressure, and I for one enjoyed using my brain and, in the words of Hercule Poirot, I enjoyed giving the little grey cells a work out.

Still, blogging as a stress reducer?  I guess if you stick to safe topics you are okay, but where's the fun in that?  Life is not a spectator sport.  You have to participate. Blogging and commenting on AR is a great way to participate both professionally and recreationally. 

Did I ever tell you about the time I did a par four in two? The ball looked like it was going into the water but hit a turtle's back, took an awesome bounce and hopped up onto the green.  Seriously. 

In my previous marketing-related post, Focus On The Steak and Not the Sizzle, I discussed the importance of focusing more on the steak and less on the sizzle.

To focus on the steak and capitalize on your brand, forget about working on your logo and tagline for a moment.  Instead, gather your team together and define your values.  Does everyone in the company, at ALL levels know what the corporate values are?  Do they share those values?

Here's the tough part: be honest with yourself and ask your employees and customers if you and your company are living up to those ideals.  Remember: don't kill the message bearer. 

Expect negativity.  Sometimes even the best employees turn negative out of frustration.  Help them to move beyond the negative by giving them something positive to grab onto: the commitment that everyone will be held accountable to live the values, regardless of title or position.

Negative customers can be won back.  It won't be easy.  It will take time, money and highly visible actions.  Start by making things right.  Most people will forgive you if you demonstrate an honest effort to improve, but it starts with a big apology and tangible evidence that you have resolved the company's shortcomings.

Are your employees enabled to accomplish your corporate values? Do they have the necessary authority and tools? If not, stop and focus on enabling your team to make those values tangible and applicable to your products and service.  Put a system of checks and balances in place so that everyone is accountable. 

In a highly competitive market with multiple media channels, today's consumers are bombarded with messages from competing companies to purchase their products or services.  Consumers are no longer fooled by half-hearted attempts and hand puppets who babble the "corporate speak" learned by rote from the management training manual.  Every single day someone is going out of business because someone else is doing it better.

To wit, the Americans may have invented the process of mass-producing the automobile, but the Japanese have certainly improved the systems and the quality of the product, and as such, consumers have beaten a path to Toyota, Honda and ilk while Detroit lies virtually in ruins.  How hard is it to deliver an American car that will outlast the last payment? How hard is it to deliver an American car that is error free when it rolls off the showroom floor?

I remember working for a National builder with a remarkable mission statement and commitment to their customers.  The day we started closing homes without driveways poured was the day I knew that our division had lost sight of the corporate goals.  The day I was asked to lie on a proforma was the day that I knew I had to leave.  I loved that company. It broke my heart because I believed them, I trusted them, and I totally bought into their commitment to the customer.

The moral: Don't lie to the employees.  The good ones will leave, and you will be left with a group of less than scrupulous people that, in reality, even you can't trust. 

As a professional marketer, I have always been taught to sell the sizzle, not the steak. The problem with selling the sizzle is that often companies begin to rely strictly on the sizzle and forget that what the customer really wanted in the first place was a good steak. 

For many companies, branding has become the sizzle.  Someone in the executive chair is telling marketing to craft messages that are often at odds with the quality of the products and services that marketing is attempting to sell, and gobs of money is being spent to get those carefully scripted message in front of consumers.

When the message fails, the sales and marketing managers eat antacids by the bottle, and in a struggle to meet projections and get back on track a new message is rolled out to the consumers.  Perhaps the new message takes the form of a new logo, a new tagline, or even a new color scheme, but the ads look and sound different as marketing tries to reach and reconnect with consumers through a new message.

And the cycle starts anew. Reinvent the message. Market. Market. Market.  Brand. And back to square one, reinventing the message when consumers opt for the competition.

I am not against branding.  Fact is, I’m crazy about it.  Branding serve the purpose of helping consumers to recognize differences between competing products and services, but constant rebranding erodes corporate and product credibility, and it is fiscally draining to a company’s ROI as well as to the marketing department.  (No one like chasing their tail, especially us creative types.)

Before you brand yourself as being a quality widget maker, you had better make quality widgets. If you say that you are a quality widget maker with exceptional customer service, now you have two things you had better do right and do well. 

Sometimes companies do such a great job of selling the sizzle that the real marketing dilemma occurs when the customer is asked whether or not the product or service has met their expectations. You think you’ve done a great job and are expecting a pat on the back and perhaps a referral or two.  All sizzle and no steak and you might not get the answer from the consumer that you expect. You’re expecting rave reviews and instead you get a ho-hum.

For example, you choose to attend a certain comedy film based on a hysterical movie trailer you saw, but during the movie, even though it is funny, you realize that all of the best laugh lines were in the trailer.  If someone asks you if the movie was funny, it’s likely that you would say no since you were expecting more steak than the sizzle you were teased with in the trailer.

Marketers need to be cognizant that when consumers evaluate a company’s products or services, should the product or service not live up to the message, consumers are more apt to tell family and friends why the product doesn’t measure up more than they are likely to tell why it does.  You can exist on sizzle only so long.  Sooner or later you had better serve the steak.

Consumer disillusionment with your products and services are bound to increase when branding represents messages that are less than accurate in the mind of the consumer.  It takes a lot of time, a lot of lost profits, and a great expense to overcome lost consumer confidence. Can anyone say Microsoft Vista? 

If you are an astute marketer, by now you have noticed the current Microsoft ads aimed at telling consumers that Microsoft Vista is not as bad as they think.  The ads are entitled “The Mojave Experiment” and show consumers viewing a demonstration of Windows Mojave, which they are told is an even newer version of Windows Vista.  The campaign even goes as far as to point out some of the negative things these consumers may have heard about Windows Vista.  Clearly the idea is to show consumers that there is no substance to the negative comments that they may have heard about Vista. 

While this is not an article about Windows Vista, the Mojave Experiment clearly illustrates the problem with campaigns for a product that are all sizzle and no steak, in this case, Windows Vista.

So, examine your current branding message, and remember, when crafting your message, sell the sizzle, but remember to back it up by serving a really good steak.

Born on the tail end of the 50's, I grew up in the 60s and 70s watching women burning their bras, fighting for equal rights, demanding to be heard, and rallying women to the cause of sisterhood.  We were 80s Ladies and singer K.T. Oslin did a great job of crafting words and music that basically reflected our lives.  I hope you'll take a moment to listen to one of my very favorite song writers/singers and the song that so aptly describes what has happened to most women since the 50s.   It's not a protest song . . .  it's a great song that tells the story of our lives and one that will have you humming along for the rest of the day.

I have been sort of silent on the whole Sarah Palin broohaha not because of lack of interest but because of lack of time.  I am finding time this morning before going into the office because I am just can't stand by listening to the tripe any longer. (Tripe is a great English word . . . it is the equivalent of the American word cr*p.)

Yesterday I heard that the National Organization for Women, NOW, has stated that Sarah Palin is a man.  Seriously.  If you are stunned, so am I.  While I am not a card carrying member of the organization, I can say that over the years, during the 70s for certain, I went along with what they were trying to do: remove any ceilings for women and bring about the equality of the sexes.  Now I hear a stupid, and I am sorry but it is stupid, remark like this from a group that has been telling us for years that as women we can balance family with work, that it is okay to be a strong, empowered female. 

I guess that the one thing that they failed to tell me was that I had to be a democrat, not a republican or independent, in order to be a strong empowered female since they are clearly not behind Sarah Palin.  They are behind Michelle Obama and Hilary Clinton, and they were behind Geraldine Ferraro in the 80s.  But they are not behind Sarah Palin.  Do any of you know why?

Isn't Sarah Palin everything that NOW said we could be?  Isn't Sarah Palin juggling family and career as well as any other corporate or working mom? Isn't she bright, a catalyst for change, a maverick, and someone that can take on the status quo and give them a swift kick in the butt as needed?

I don't get it.  Here is a VP candidate that we, as women, can really get behind.  She has taken on the Alaskan political machine, kicked out the bums, sold the governors jet (on ebay), and made sweeping reforms.  Sarah Palin isn't talking about change, she is creating change, and she has an 80% approval rating in her home state for the job she is doing as governor.  Is there any other governor from the forty-nine other states that can say the same?

If I were a card carrying member of NOW, I would burn my card in the same way that we burned our bras in the 70s.   This organization is so out of touch with the American woman that they are not worthy of our attention.  What a shame.  They did some great things back in the day. 

Tonight, on FOXNews at 8 PM there is a special on about the real Sarah Palin.  I hope you watch it and judge her merits for yourself.  I, for one, am sick of the media telling how to think.  Regardless of your political affiliation, forget party lines and take a look for yourself.  Is this the woman that can be the first female president in four years? (McCain says he is only going to do a four-year term.) 

In your mind, what are the biggest challenges faced by Americans today?

Ridiculous health care costs? 

Outrageous prescription prices for the very same drugs that are made available for far less to other nations, including Canada?

Cost of fuel?

Cost of groceries?

Quality of education in the public schools? 

Violence and crime?

Fair taxes?

The fact that everything we buy is made in China?

Judging by the amount of time and media play they are getting, Congress seems to think it is the carbon footprint we are leaving.  Do the folks in Washington not understand that there are things further up the list that they need to be worrying about and acting on? Families are trying to figure out how to pay their medical bills, feed their kids, and still have money left over for rent, fuel, and all the other things that eat up a weekly pay check. Is anything of real value currently getting done up in congress?  I seriously think that our elected officials, all of them, are seriously out of touch with the American people.  

Here is a fascinating monologue from CNN's Glenn Beck. It's hard to believe that the far-left news organization CNN actually ran this piece.  For those of you in the "right", this is worth watching.  The piece is nearly ten minutes long, but the treat is at the end as GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin speaks out on why she is suing the federal government.  Seriously. 

This is just my humble opinion, but Congress needs to point the fire hose at the blazes that are burning the highest and brightest first, get those issues under control, and then work to become more proactive and less reactive.

We need less lawyers and more business people in congress. Business people are used to effectively juggling multiple tasks and projects concurrently. Effective business people learn to be proactive and less reactive. They are also used to being held accountable to produce results or else, something of which seems to not be required of Congress.

 Why is that?

The other day I happened to answer a "sales" call at our office.  The prospect called in and he was doing such a good job of asking the textbook "buyer" interest questions that I thought he might be a shopper* from one of our builder competitors. 

Not that I am jaded and think that all "buyers" are shoppers, but sometimes the "buyers" are just to organized with their questions and ask them in a manner that smacks of "professional shopper."

As Mr. "Buyer" asked his questions, he knew enough from our marketing efforts for the builder's homes and communities that yes was the answer to each of his questions.  (He was confirming that what he had been reading and hearing was accurate.)

As I chatted with him, answering his questions, I recognized the age old trap that rookies (and desperate agents) fall into: trying to say "YES" to every question the buyer asks.  There is no faster way to getting the prospect to say thank you and hang up the phone than by answering yes to the prospect's questions.

Yes, you read that right.  It is a mistake to automatically answer yes.

Here's a few scenarios for you to role play.  Lovely Homes Realty has a three bedroom bungalow on the market in one of the best areas of town.  Built in the 1940s, the home has been totally updated and the 1/2 acre lot is oversized for the area.  An ad in the paper actually works and you are getting floor calls from the ad.  The broker has cut the advertising budget for print media down to the bare bone, so the ad has minimal information.  New Listing! $249,990. Historic location close to schools, library, commuter routes. Lovely Home Realty. Your mission is to get the buyer on the phone to come to your office.

See if you can come up with a BETTER response to each question the prospect asks:

1> Prospect 1: Is that a three bedroom home?

     Friendly Realtor: Oh, yes, three lovely bedrooms.

     Prospect: Okay, thanks. (Click)

2> Prospect 2: I'm calling on the ad, "Historic Location".  Is that a three bedroom home?

    Friendly Realtor:  Yes, it is. Three charming bedrooms plus two full baths that have been totally updated.

   Prospect 2: Oh, really?  Does that home have both a formal living room and a family room?

   FR: Yes, it does! Your family will certainly have the space it needs.

   Prospect 2:  By any chance, does it have a large yard?

   FR: It's 1/2 Acre. The owner is a master gardener and the head of the neighborhood garden club. he has one of the prettiest yards in the area. Would you like to see this home?

   Prospect: No thanks. (Click)

I think that perhaps you can see the pattern that is developing.  The agent is rushing to answer yes.  A common new agent mistake, and actually I have overheard agents that have been in the business a long time doing the same thing, so don't feel badly if you have been rushing to answer yes thinking that this will get you the appointment and sale.  Hopefully we can coach you through to make you aware of what you are doing and help you to improve your selling situation skills.

The problem with the scenarios above is that the agent is so busy giving out information that they are failing to ask for information.  Learn quickly that information should be give and take: you give some, you ask for and take some, give some, ask for and take some.

If you study the buying habits of people, you'll find that they try to eliminate possibilities and options to narrow down their shopping list as quickly as possible.  That's what's happening in these phone calls.  The prospects were trying to find out whether or not this is a home that should go on their must see list.

In the questions above, while the buyers may have asked if the home was a three bedroom, they may not have been looking for a three bedroom, and on the second call, the prospect asked if the property had a big yard, but hung up when they heard it was a 1/2 acre lot because what they wanted was a postage stamp-sized lot.

Agent Friendly would likely have done better had he/she said something like this instead to answer:

"That particular home is a three bedroom, but there are several other homes on the market in the immediate area with both fewer and more than three bedrooms. How many bedrooms would best suit your family's needs?"

Try not ask yes or no questions.  Phrase your questions to be open ended so you can discover more about what the prospect wants and needs.  In a perfect world prospective home buyers wouldn't make us guess what they are looking for and we would save them a great deal of time, and probably money too, but they don't always.  This is why some of the greatest detectives in the world are also some of the very best real estate agents.

On the second call, Agent Friendly blew it by talking about the large lot.  It also didn't help that Agent Friendly pointed out that the current owner is a master gardener and a member of the garden club, all of which translates to the prospect as a yard designed to require a major commitment to upkeep and maintain.

It might have been better had Agent Friendly said, "This home is on one of the larger parcels for the area.  Are you interested in a home on a larger lot, or do you prefer one that is smaller?"

Here's another tip. Everything is relative.  I live on a very large home site for my area. It's huge, but someone coming from another side of town would think that it is small.  So, to follow the line of discovery about the lot above, if the buyer says they want a large (or small) lot, I would come back with something like:

"This home has a lovely 1/2 acre home site with it.  Is that large (small) enough for you, or would you prefer something larger (smaller). 

During the second call, Agent Friendly also rambled on that the home had both a family room and a living room.  What of the caller only wanted one room, a great room? 

What I am trying to do when taking a call from a prospect I have never met is avoid yes or no answers. Yes or no does not tell me what I need to know in order to help the prospect find the best home at the best price in the shortest amount of time for their benefit and convenience.  We need to narrow our search down so that we don't waste time or have them lose interest in working with us.

How many times has a prospect said, "I'm looking for a four bedroom home," when what they really wanted was three bedrooms and an office? How many missed showing opportunities are the result of us rushing to yes instead of trying to probe and uncover the buyer's real motivation and needs?

By the way, I guess I did my job on the phone the other day, which is to get the prospect to come out to see our homes.  He and his wife visited us today and they worked with one of our associates. Now that was phone call that was very productive.  Had I rushed to yes, I probably would have lost him and we would have missed the opportunity to show our homes today.  

Take time to draft some of the common questions you get when you are on floor, and script some open ended questions to toss back to the caller.  You'll be amazed at many more showings you'll get if you don't rush to yes, and learn to give information and ask for some in return.

Happy Selling!

*Background for Realtors: In homebuilding we send out "shoppers" to find out what our competitors are doing.  We all do it.  What we are trying to uncover is what promotions they are offering, their pricing, if they have any "pocket" incentives to close the sale, features, floor plans etc.  Typically, if the builder will identify themselves and ask me, I am happy to provide them with floor plans, features and pricing plus I will tell them whatever our advertised promotion is so that I don't waste their tiime and they don't waste mine.  Call it professional courtesy.

How do you recruit new agents to your firm?  We really need to ramp up our general real estate activities and create an additional revenue stream for our company, plus we are sitting on site for clients and need to have a general real estate agent available to work those buyers who are outside of the price range of the community in which we are selling. 

For years I have worked in the home building industry and I have been more focused on recruiting site agents, so putting together a general real estate team is something new to me. I don't think that people that we would be most interested in having join us will be looking in the classifieds for their next great place to work.  I have mentioned the opportunity to a few Realtor acquaintances, and I was able to successfully hire a new site agent through word of mouth, but I have yet to find a general real estate agent. 

So, fellow brokers (and agents), any ideas would really help.  We are a small company with a limited budget for recruiting, but have a great work environment and can offer tremendous support to the right person.  We have a terrific business plan that the bank just loves, we just need to get the people in place to make it happen.

Hope that you can help us,

Happy Selling!

Here’s a quick tip to figure out what the general public really thinks about your homes, communities, amenities and site agents. 

(Note to Realtors: You can use this at Open Houses to collect valuable buyer perceptions about your listings.)

Have someone greet and interview your model visitors as they depart your model.  A bright, colorful clipboard that is highly visible will improve your response.  Keep your survey short and ask questions to determine the buyer’s perception of the positives and negatives of your homes and community.  Ask buyers to rate the overall size, features, value, style of homes, amenities, etcetera.

Final question could ask them to rate how well the site agent explained and demonstrated the homes and communities to them.   If you ask this question, for an objective opinion, please use an outside source to conduct the interview.  This also prevents office gossip about the performance of your site agents.

Remember to keep your grading system simple and craft your questions so that the rating system is the same throughout.  Make use of a large, colorful laminated card with the response choices clearly printed on it, handing the prospect the card at the start of the interview so they may refer to it and properly decide the appropriate choice.  

I once did this when we had a model home that was not selling. The exit survey highlighted that buyers were looking for a four bedroom home but were perceiving the model home to be a three bedroom because the site agent was using the fourth bedroom as an office. The price list and the salesperson clearly indicated to the public that the home was a four bedroom, they just didn't see it.  I immediately converted the garage to a sales office, merchandised the bedroom as a bedroom, and we saw an immediate jump in sales.

For more information on exit surveys, crafting questions, and making sense of the data, you may contact us directly.  

We have thousands of sheets of our high-quality company letterhead and beautiful matching envelopes stored in our supply closet.  Designed in-house, our stationary is full color, embossed, and printed on expensive paper that reflects the essence of who and what we feel we are to our clients. Unfortunately, many of our clients rarely see it as we use email as our chief means of written communication.

It takes us less time to send an email than a letter.  We can copy multiple people who need to share in and be aware of the information or content we are sending, it is virtually immediate, reduces our cost of communicating, can move things forward quickly, clarifies and confirms phone communications faster than traditional correspondence, can provide potential customers the information they need to make a buying decision and thus move the critical path of selling along at a faster rate, and email generally increases our efficiency and improves the management of our time for the benefit of our clients. 

While email clearly has numerous benefits, there are some considerations that you should take under advisement as you craft and send out emails to clients, colleagues, friends, and others to avoid embarrassment, potential lawsuits, or mis-communication:

1.  Emails are NEVER private.  EVER.  If you send something out, it can, and often will be, shared with someone else, possibly multiple people, in a very short period of time.  Never, ever, put anything in an email that you would not want to see plastered on the front page of the local newspaper.

2.  Stay away from any comments or observations that can open you up to a law suit. See rule number 1 above.

3.  Remember that once you hit the send button, your email can't be retrieved.  Someone will get it, share it, and it will exist in the virtual world forever.  Don't let your words come back to haunt you.

4. Sometimes things are best said face-to-face.  Don't hide behind and email or allow an email to take the place of a personal encounter.  Never deliver bad news via email. 

5.  Guard your written tone.  Since your reader may take your email literally, sarcasm and humor in the written word are often best left to professional writers. Keep your tone clear, and if in doubt, have someone else read a printed copy (Rule 3) prior to hitting the send button.  I like to save critical communications as drafts and come back later to relook at the content and get a fresh perspective.

6. With the spam filters and glitches that occur daily in our virtual world, important communications should also be delivered via an alternate means of communication, either by phone or traditional mail to ensure delivery.  Additionally, remember that many people do not check their email daily, so be aware of this if your email contains time-sensitive deadlines, dates of appointments or scheduled meetings.

7. Always use spell checker. and remember that spell checker can only do so much. Words like write and right, their and there, weather and whether, among many others, are overlooked by spell checker.  You MUST proof your work prior to hitting send.

8. If you struggle with grammar, craft your e-message in a Word document first, run a grammar check, then copy and paste.  Use traditional sentence structures, avoid all caps, smiley faces, font colors other than blue or black, hard to read fonts, etcetera in your business communications.

9. Keep your tone professional and business-like when communicating with clients or potential clients.  Save the jokes and casual tone for family and friends.

10. Do not provide any information in an email that is subject to change without providing a clear disclaimer that the offer or content may change without notice.  Examples of this would be pricing, availability, terms, etcetera.

We hope these tips will help you to refine and polish your communication skills in the virtual world.

Happy Marketing!

Do you use postcards, letters, newsletters and other direct mail pieces as a part of your promotional strategy?

Recently, someone sent me a direct mail piece that I still can't figure out.  The offer was for a land / vacation home package at a price that caught my attention.  A price that would definitely be of interest to me and one which I am well-qualified to buy. The problem is that I have absolutely no idea where the land / vacation package home is located.

I examined the direct mail piece looking for a map, driving directions to the property, or an address to the sales center that would help me to discover whether or not this vacation home was situated in an area that would appeal to me.  To obtain more information, I hunted for a web address, but one wasn't provided.  There were other flaws with the piece but the chief flaw was that the only way I could obtain more information about the land and homes was to call the phone number provided. 

Even though I am at heart a salesperson and love to buy, I am the typical consumer.  I prefer to have a little more information prior to making contact with a salesperson. 

So here's the tip of the day for making consumer response easier on your direct mail pieces: part of the success of every direct mail campaign is to make it easy for consumers to respond to your message.

Tell them how to contact you or get more information in multiple ways. Think beyond a phone number to web addresses, driving directions, locator maps, hours of operation, property address, your office address and more.

Is that rocket science?  No, but for some reason so many people make it difficult for the customer to contact them.

Someone spent a great deal of money getting this vacation home offer printed and distributed to what I would imagine was a very large database. 

I find it very hard to believe that the piece was professionally designed, and I am thinking that they could really use our help.  You're getting this advice for free. They are going to pay for it.  I hope you will take this under consideration the next time you invest in a direct mail piece so that you aren't wasting your money.

By the way, I collect direct mail pieces, ones that are done well, and ones that are done poorly.  If you recieve a direct mail piece that you think I might be interested in adding to our collection, please forward it on to me at:

Fisher & Company, P.O. Box 550711, Jacksonville, Florida, 32255.

Happy Marketing!