What Do You Do with a Reach?
by John Eberhard

In marketing you work and survey your public and write your materials and design your promo and send it out. All with the purpose of getting people to respond, which is the most important point of successful promotion.

So now they are calling or coming in or sending you something in the mail or showing up in the store and buying things.

So once a person reaches, what does marketing do now? Of course your salesman is going to try to sell him. But what if he doesn't close right away? Well the answer to this question depends somewhat on whether you have a service that costs $3,000 or a key chain that costs $2.50. If it is a really inexpensive item, the sales job will be accomplished mainly by your advertising, a retail display, and perhaps a retail salesperson.

But if you're dealing with a more expensive product or service, you will have to work a bit harder to sell it. Lead generation is a term you see in marketing referring to promoting for people to reach, not necessarily to buy the product right away, but giving them the option to inquire for more information, or for some free or inexpensive introductory product or service. The reason for this is simple. The more expensive an item is, the more a person has to know about it (more reality) before he buys it. He will feel compelled to do his research well before buying the item, so that he feels confident that he is spending that large amount of money wisely.

The purchase, as it becomes more expensive, becomes too important to mess up, so the buyer has to do some research on it before he buys. In big companies financial committees will require that the person submitting a request for purchase has researched the item thoroughly, and has information and prices from several competing companies. A couple years ago I bought an expensive (for me) digital tape recorder. Well before I bought I read articles about it, talked to my friends, went out to stores and asked questions and got brochures. By the time I bought it I knew it was the best thing for me to get.

So now we see that for expensive items, the buyer wants to do his research or at least feel like he has researched it. Of course a skilled salesman can get around that. But our question is, what do you do with a reach that comes in, assuming the person doesn't buy right away?

The first answer to this question is that you put the person on a mailing list. You do not, under any circumstances, pitch the name and address of that person just because he didn't buy anything right away. And do not put it back in with the raw public names that you mail to either. That person has reached and is now in a different category than those of people who have not.

The next thing is to mail to this person to get him to buy your product and service. The most effective thing to mail, for many businesses, is a newsletter. This should not just contain sales or news information about your product but also general information that would be of interest to the type of guy who would reach for your products. Newsletters are a great promotional action for many businesses. I started one at the beginning of this year and my statistics really took off shortly thereafter. I even offer a free subscription to it. It helps to have a business reply card in your newsletter.

You can send them letters, fliers, post cards, etc. A letter with a flier and reply card or envelope inside (called a "classic package" in direct mail speak) is probably the best of these options. But a newsletter mailed out regularly is even better than that.

And when the guy buys something from you, do you take him out of the database? No way! Keep him in there, but just code him as a customer now. That way, you can do mailings to just your customers, telling them to buy more or offering them a special deal for customers only. Or you can send a mailing to just the people who reached but haven't bought.

You'll be surprised at how many times you'll get a sale from some guy who has been in your database for three years. You thought he was a deadbeat! Now he's a customer.

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