Finding Prospects – Mailing, Emailing or Calling – Which Works BEST?

There are many theories about what is the best way to find prospects. Certainly large advertising campaigns and trade shows take up a lot of the marketing budget. But when you need to reach specifically-targeted individuals on a large-scale basis, it really boils down to three options: Mailing them, emailing them, or calling them directly.

The context of our discussion will be from the frame of reference of a company that targets the corporate training or talent management decision maker. Mentor Tech Group (MTG) works exclusively with clients that market to the corporate training & human resources world—so we have gained an appreciation for the struggle that Sales & Marketing go through in trying to reach this audience.

We understand the challenges you face.

Mailing:

The most prevalent method of proactively getting prospects is direct mail: Sending hardcopy material to those that best fit the description of the decision maker in their respective business.

This is also the path of least resistance—and the one most likely to be chosen by corporate marketing departments. Here's why:

• It's easy to do (but not necessarily cheap!)
• It does not involve REJECTION
• "This is the way it has always been done"

These are not necessarily the right reasons to do it. Consider the following:

• Since everyone is doing this, there is tremendous "clutter" in our inbox at work (and home!). Because of this clutter, your creative marketing piece is competing with many other marketing pieces, so they are less likely to pay attention to yours—more so than ever before!
• The lists used to reach corporate training or talent management decision makers are of questionable quality. We estimate that up to 50% (sometimes more!) of your direct mail pieces never reach their intended recipients.
• At $2 per piece plus mailing plus list rental, this is not really an inexpensive proposition. And considering that, in many cases, less than half of the contacts actually receive your mail—this is throwing money away.

Conclusion
Direct mail is the least effective—but most commonly used—way to proactively find prospects.

Emailing:

More and more companies are beginning to use HTML emailers because many find it delivers an improved response rate over direct mail. Why? Two reasons:

• Less effort is required to respond to an email versus direct mail
• The prospect can more easily link to your web site to evaluate your value proposition and how it may benefit them

Beyond the cost of creating the HTML marketing piece, the cost to send it is minimal. This can be done in-house—or by an outside company that can deliver value-added email blasting (like MTG! More info). Regardless of how it's done, to get the best results, you should:

• Capture the email address, phone number, title, and company information of those who respond (link to your web site) to your email.
• Use that lead information as a follow up tool—now your sales team can follow up with those that not only requested more information, but also with those that merely linked to your site!

That leaves the cost of securing WHOM to email. As mentioned in the previous section, securing good lists has been a challenge in the market you target. Responding to this challenge, MTG has created a precisely targeted list for companies marketing to corporate training and talent management/HR executives—one by one—by conducting telephone interviews. We now have the email addresses for over 20,000 executives - focused on training, talent management or human resources. More Info

Lastly, emailing is also in-trend: It can enable you to create a "Permission Marketing" program, as opposed to using "Interruption Marketing"—like hardcopy mailers. We will explore this in more detail in a future newsletter. In the meantime, we highly recommend reading: "Permission Marketing" written by Seth Godin, former Vice-President of Direct Marketing for Yahoo!

Conclusion
Emailing using a properly conceived permission marketing program will enable your team to reap ever-increasing response rates from your marketing efforts.

Calling:

This is the most proactive method of discovering WHO your prospects are: Call them and ask them! It also has the following paradoxical challenges:

• Those most well equipped to perform cold calling are usually least likely to have time to do it or even want to do it—so it is either not done at all—or done intermittently (thus, poorly)
• Those most likely to be chartered to do cold calling are usually second tier callers—and are usually not as good at it

Plus, doing this involves REJECTION—and it is human nature to avoid rejection.

But, since the payoff is high, one would think that a higher priority would be placed on cold calling. Being so potentially effective, why is cold calling usually the last method of proactive prospecting performed?

The reason is that cold calling is the path of most resistance—because it has the most challenges. But it also has the potential to deliver an excellent return on investment (ROI). Most companies considering it are perpetually in one stage or another of trying to figure out how to do it right—doing it in-house or outsourcing it.

Both methods have challenges:

Doing it in-house.

• Lack of focus—inside sales/telemarketers end up getting "pulled" into doing other, unrelated tasks, making them far less productive
• Turnover problems—it's a hard job
• Competency problems—it's not easy to find someone good at doing it that wants to do it!
• Headcount—do you have the "bodies" to do it?
• Your team works with a poor list! (Get a precisely targeted list!)

Outsourcing it.

• Does the company have a thorough knowledge of your industry?
• Do they "speak the language" of corporate training/HR decision makers?
• Do they have an understanding of "solution sales?"
• Do they understand the level of detail to obtain about prospects?

Regardless of how it's done, the ROI achieved is directly correlated with the abilities of those making the calls. To achieve excellent results in your company, it should be required that cold callers:

• Be experienced in your industry enough to engage a C-level executive about the benefits of your solution or service
• Be 100% focused on making calls and finding prospects—otherwise performance will suffer
• Have the ability to "schmooze" with people—a lively and friendly personality that can think quickly on their feet
• Be able to handle the rejection and the mundane nature of the job

Conclusion
Cold calling can be a very effective way to get prospects - but you HAVE to have the right people doing it! Many companies are wasting their money because the wrong people are making the calls. If you're going to do it, you have to do it right.

PS

Mentor Tech Group maintains a fully drilled-down, built-from-scratch list of corporate training and e-learning decision makers (plus talent management & human resources) that can supercharge your mailing, emailing and cold calling efforts! This market intelligence is precisely targeted and highly accurate because every piece of information on our database got there as a result of a personal conversation with one of our Prospect Development Specialists!

Mentor Tech Group, Inc.
www.mentortechgroup.com
Telephone (651) 457-8600
"Empowering Enterprises Today - To Build the Sales Pipelines of Tomorrow"