subject: "Not An Arm & A Leg!": Napoleon Hill Strategy to Achieve Out of the Box Thinking For Discounts [print this page] "Not An Arm & A Leg!": Napoleon Hill Strategy to Achieve Out of the Box Thinking For Discounts
In today's society, a sizeable chunk of the population under the age of 40 is tempted to buck the wisdom of earlier generations. "Business is different now." - "The internet has changed the way people communicate." "We work in a new landscape and what worked 20 years ago, does not apply today".
Well yes and no. Please note that the purpose of this writing is not to bash the internet or the new methods of advertising and social interaction that it affords - far from it. It is an essential part of my own work. What I want to tackle today is this pervasive idea that spreading the message about your own business has to be approached in the vain of I need to use the latest and greatest methods AND if I through a ton of money at it, I can't loose"! I hate to say it but that kind of thinking is absolutely everywhere.
If you are stateside when you read this, I am going to ask you to think about what makes living in America great when it comes to the concept of success (Not to worry, I am doing everything in my power to NOT sound corny). Is it that we live in the land of opportunity'? Is it access to all the goods and services we could ever want? Or is it a bit more fundamental than that? People who are thought far and wide to be successes in this country, often started with nothing or very close to it. What enabled them to grow and prosper was a combination of their will to succeed and their resourcefulness.
Anyone who reads my articles knows that I am a proponent of direct mail marketing. The first opposition I hear from a first time business marketer (invariably) is, "Direct mail is just too expensive". OK, but before I address that barrier, let me address the upside. It's ability to target a best customer'. It's testable. It's tangible. I could go on and on. Usually there is never any push back to these benefits. The hesitation is virtually always the perceived cost the operative word being perceived'.
You need to understand that no two marketing or advertising methods are created equal. Just because the dry cleaner down the street spends $3,000.00 a month on his mailing campaign, it doesn't mean he is spending it wisely, or that he even needs to spend of that to get the results he wants! When you get started with any endeavor, I want to point out to you the importance of being crafty'. Call in favors wherever and whenever possible.
I had a customer come to me about 5 years ago a doctor who had just finished his residency and was gearing up to start his own practice. He was a Polish immigrant and he knew of specific areas surrounding his office that had a large number of first generation immigrants from Warsaw, Lodz, and Krakow. He knew that this population tended to be wary of local unknown medical practitioners from different countries and that the tendency was to be fiercely loyal to people from their home nation. After I compiled a list for him, he discovered there was a HUGE number of qualified prospective patients (people of Polish decent, recent immigrants, in a specific age range). He knew the market was there but was leery of the cost to get the word out to them. However, he did not let that information get in his way. He figured out ways to trim the cost in ways that would be mutually beneficial to all of his vendors. This is important to point out that this tactic is just as much about not taking advantage of your vendors as it is about strategy. Some of the deals he made:
1) He negotiated his design cost down to 1/3 of his original cost by allowing the designer to include their signature and contact information within his ad. This allowed the designer to piggyback their advertising on the doctor's.
2) He didn't bite off more than he could chew. This original list was 22,357 names but even if he found all the money to mail those people, the response would have absolutely overloaded him and his staff. He negotiated with me to reduce his purchase down to 2,500 to start and I waived low-quantity minimum price and just charged the per one thousand name cost. I knew he was going to have to do additional mailings anyway.
3) He knew nothing about postal discounting and assumed he would be paying the full first class standard letter rate. Once I told him about presorting and standard mail rates, he realized just over $500 dollars that he did not have to spend.
Napoleon Hill said Everyone has something to share and gains by sharing it". Using this philosophy is what allowed by friend the doctor to get where he needed to go without taking advantage of the people who were helping him. This is especially true with the arrangement he made with the designer. Negotiating makes a big difference. Methods like these help you grow rich. Think about this the next time you think connecting with your vendors (and customers) might be out of reach.
