This post is for all of you out there who are into direct sales of some sort. Recently, the Carteret County Chamber of Commerce in Morehead City, NC began their first official "Ideal Network Club." This is the unique networking club that I introduce in my book (Who's Hiding in Your Address Book). The Club is based on workshops designed as action-oriented and results-producing sessions. Content is provided by me and correlates to content from the book.
Perfect for independent and small business types, the Club is also intended as an income producer exclusively for Chambers of Commerce. Okay - the hype aside (well almost) - this first club is going fabulous - packed house - Chamber has already clearned about $1500 and stands to double or even triple that if they decide to do another this year. Members are being "blown out of their boxes" and some were seeing bennies from the get-go. Okay - now the hype is over.
What I wanted to get to is the meat of the first session that this Club dealt with - called "The Ideal E-mail Campaign." Basically, this is what I refer to as a mini e-mail campaign in the book and designed to help a person get quick and targeted results with anything they need help on. Most sales types are in need of customers/clients these days - so that was the goal for most of these members. Because I was on the original mailing list from the Chamber to keep me informed about the Club's happenings, I got copied on several e-mails that went flying about when the members started putting into practice what they learned about doing their own "Ideal E-mail Campaign."
First of all - wow! Loved seeing the effort. Some of what I didn't love: they had a difficult time getting past the traditional marketing mindset. They blanket e-mailed members of the Club or of their network. Some of them didn't get the basic point of writing a perfect e-mail, which has to do with getting really clear about what/who you want before you ask - and that's not as easy as you'd think. When you sell homes, you may be thinking "I want referrals to people who want to buy or sell a home." How simple is that - right? Wrong. I may not know of someone who is thinking about buying or selling a home? But, if you tell me you want to meet couples from the Raleigh, NC area who vacation in our area every year and are coming up on retirement, I might be able to come up with a name or two - or at least direct you to someone else who might know.
But, I have to say, these members, no matter how confusing their beginning with their "Ideal E-mail Campaign," they were getting results - and some pretty amazing ones at that. With some adjustments to the programming content, the next Club will be getting even better results.
If you'd like to get some free pointers on how do your own ideal e-mail campaign, visit my Squidoo Lens with the same title as this blog. Here's the link: http://www.squidoo.com/howtoaskforhelp
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