Most people make the mistake of selling what they offer to the wrong people, because they don’t truly understand WHO their customers are and WHY they buy.

But that’s just the beginning…

Did you know that your prospect makes their decision to buy, or not to buy from you within the first few minutes (at most) of meeting you… yet they won’t necessarily know it themselves?

This all happens at the subconscious level.

Of all the articles I’ve read on the subject, I think Michael Gerber explains it the best in the ‘E-Myth Revisited’ – if you want to read the full version, then you can find it on page 218, but this is the gist of it:

Picture your customer standing before you – neither happy nor sad, not frowning or smiling – he is completely neutral.

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In case it has escaped your notice, we are in troubled times – heading for a recession at lightening speed if the Media are to be believed.

Whoever you listen to at the moment, whether they are experts on the economy, Politicians or other figures of authority, the word on everyone’s lips is…

“Recession…”

But is the economy really as bad as we are led to believe? And if it is, what can you – as the owner of your business – do to reduce the impact it will have on you?

It’s definitely the question I’m asked the most at the moment:

“What do I need to be doing in my business in order to survive?”

It’s true that consumer and some business spending is down. It was announced recently that retail spending for April in the UK was dramatically down on the figures for the same period last year. Indeed, the annual midsummer retail report states “this is the worst retail market since the early 1990s”.

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Over the last 60 years or so, billions of pieces of mail have been sent by businesses, with the sole intention of growing sales.

These mailings have included everything you could possibly think of:

Simple letters and postcards, CD’s and DVD’s, three dimensional brochures, dustbins and even boxes of cereal have all found their way into letterboxes across the Globe – including the UK!

It goes without saying that billions of pounds are dependent on the success or failure of these mailings.

But what can YOU do to make your Direct Mail Campaigns more effective?

Campaign success is measured as return-on-investment (ROI) – or how many total sales were generated compared to the cost of the marketing campaign.

It’s a proven fact you can dramatically increase the response you get with a personalised telephone call as a follow-up. This has the advantage of making it easy for customers to respond to your message and for you to be able to measure the results. The downside is that it does require extra resource (and cost if you outsource), but certainly worth considering a test on a sample of your list.

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It’s been 18 months since the first issue of my “… For Profit” newsletter was published.

From the comments I’ve received over that time (and the fact I now have 2000+ subscribers) I’m pleased you are finding the articles of benefit.

At the beginning of this year, I announced the change in focus of the way I teach the systemisation and implementation of marketing systems through 2008. This change in delivery format helps me to offer a better service to you, whether a direct client of mine or not.

It also helps answer a number of requests I’ve had to present the information in smaller – but more regular – “bite-sized-chunks” as it would help you to implement things in your business(es) more easily.

It is a little sooner than I had originally planned, but it also fits in better with the new range of learning formats which will be going live over the summer.

An added benefit of using the blog format for Marketing for Profit is the ability to link to the RSS feed, but there will be additional benefits to those of you who subscribe – once a month you receive a little “something extra” which won’t be available to non-subscribers.

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