From the category archives:

Business Development

Why It’s Okay to Be Disliked (or Why Vanilla Marketing Doesn’t Work)

by Mistina Picciano April 4, 2012 Business Development

Remember the famous quote about not being able to please all of the people all of the time? It’s true. You can’t do it, so why do so many people try? You see these sad attempts to please “everyone” on many company websites. Pick a sector, any sector. Accountants. Law firms. Real estate brokers. IT [...]

Tagged as: Marketing, vanilla marketing

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9 Tips for a Successful Bait Piece

by Deidre Rienzo August 30, 2011 Business Development

Want to show prospects you’re the real deal? Use a bait piece. A bait piece is a giveaway that entices prospects to share their information with you because, in turn, they receive something of value. A bait piece can help you make an excellent first impression—but only if you do it right.

Tagged as: bait pieces, lead bait

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Are You Marketing in a Vacuum?

by Mistina Picciano April 1, 2011 Business Development

Yesterday, driving to a client meeting, I saw a car in one of those promotional wrappers. This one caught my eye not only because of the bright red color, but also because it was advertising a home goods store where I used to shop. The store in my hometown had closed, and I feared they [...]

Tagged as: Marketing, marketing campaigns, promotional wrappers

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How to Circumvent Resistance and Stay Out of the Trash Bin

by Travis Heermann July 29, 2010 Business Development

In an age super-saturated with marketing messages, your prospects have developed such an aversion to being sold anything that you have to overcome resistance at every step. They pick up your direct mail package, see what it is… and toss it in the garbage. So you add some intriguing copy or graphics to the envelope, [...]

Tagged as: marketing resistance, overcoming objections, sales resistance

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Testimonials Trump Sex: Are You Getting Any?

by Travis Heermann July 23, 2010 Business Development

As any marketer or sales pro know, good selling is all about the rationalization. We build up prospects’ emotions, touch them, lead them, and then we help them rationalize whipping out the credit card. The good news is that we, as human beings, rationalize often. To borrow from the film The Big Chill: Michael: I [...]

Tagged as: Marketing, testimonials, word of mouth

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What Motivates Your Prospect?

by Travis Heermann July 14, 2010 Audience

The Myers-Briggs Temperament Test is an increasingly popular way to identify what makes a person tick. The Myers-Briggs Test, originally developed in the 1950s, is now used worldwide to identify patterns of behavior and attitude. The expansion of the test’s popularity has been spurred in large part by Dr. David Keirsey, who refined and expanded [...]

Tagged as: audience, messaging

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Does Your Message Make an ‘Ass’ of ‘U’ and ‘Me’?

by Travis Heermann June 29, 2010 Business Development

Any good copywriter knows how to capture and lead the audience’s wants and capitalize on its needs, and he knows how to help the audience justify assenting to the call to action. All persuasive writing, including marketing messages, asks the audience to agree and to act based on an endless variety of specific reasons. For [...]

Tagged as: assumptions, marketing messages, value judgments

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3 Important Reasons to Use Lift Notes in Sales Letters

by Travis Heermann June 15, 2010 Business Development

Lift notes, also known as lift letters, are so-called because studies have shown that they can increase the response rate of a sales letter by as much as 50%. But what is a lift note exactly? A lift note is a short letter or note from someone other than the writer of the main sales [...]

Tagged as: lift letters, lift notes, sales letters

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