Closed-Loop Marketing The Secret to Eliminating Cold Calls: The SLMA

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Closed-Loop Marketing The Secret to Eliminating Cold Calls

Gilbert E. Cargill | Articles > From the section: Lead Nurturing

November, 2014 |

, Cargill Consulting Group, Inc

Without a doubt, cold calling is one of the least pleasurable activities that office technology and copier salespeople perform. It has been a long-honored tradition in most office technology sales forces to make cold calls. This article will help you pursue this activity in a different light.

Essentially, cold calling is a waste of time, because it is not selling but searching. When making cold calls, you are searching for someone who wants to buy copiers, printers, scanners, and other document management systems. Cold calling is only successful when a salesperson happens upon a customer who is interested in buying one of their technologies.

Every year, our sales teams consume huge amounts of precious and nonrenewable selling time searching for interested buyers. Building a closed-loop marketing system will minimize, if not eliminate, the need for cold calling. This concept is easy-to-implement and will help small, medium and large office technology dealerships win in today's competitive sales"wars".

Joe Girard first documented the concept of closed-loop marketing in his book, How to Sell Anything to Anybody, originally published in the mid-1960s. Joe Girard was a car salesman who stayed in touch with everybody he ever met by sending them postcards every month. Although he did not use the scientific name for it, Joe was essentially maintaining perpetual top-of-mind awareness with thousands of prospective car buyers.

He proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you could create and nurture relationships with strangers through regular monthly touches, and Joe was able to build a large number of quality relationships with prospective buyers. When these buyers needed a new car or knew of someone who needed a new car, they would contact Joe. In my opinion, Joe Girard deserves the credit for creating this very powerful sales tool.

Today, this approach goes by many names and is sometimes referred to as nurture marketing, permission marketing or relationship marketing. Basically, they are all about sending written marketing messages via postcards, email, fax, and/or telephone calls to maintain top-of-mind awareness. Unfortunately, the naturally short attention span of prospective buyers works against an office technology dealer's sales and marketing efforts. After thirty days or so, most human beings tend to forget half of what they learn.

In other words, your salesperson could make a tremendous presentation but, after thirty days, that prospect will have forgotten half of the value propositions that were presented. After another thirty days, they will again forget half of what they can still remember. This process repeats itself until, four to six months down the road, the prospect barely remembers your sales rep's presentation or demonstration at all.

When that prospect is finally ready to buy, they will not remember any of the value propositions your salesperson presented. As a result, simple human forgetfulness can negate all your efforts to obtain a relationship with that contact, and they will lose top-of-mind awareness regarding your company's products and services.

But, research proves that a prospective customer will remember you, if you make contact with them every thirty days. Back in the ‘60s, Joe Girard used handwritten postcards, but today there is technology that will do this work for you. Products, for as little as $100, can completely automate this process. These technologies are not contact managers but rather relationship nurturing software products.

A closed-loop marketing system should be set up using the steps below:

Identify Your Marketplace

All office technology dealers work within two types of databases. One is the known universe: contacts to whom you have already sold or with whom have had some previous experience. Second is the unknown universe: those organizations in your territory with which you would like to do business.

Once you have analyzed what kinds of companies typically buy from you, you should acquire a database of all suspects in your unknown universe. Most quality list brokers will offer a service (sometimes free) that will help you determine what percentage of your existing market you have currently penetrated and how many high-quality suspects exist in the unknown universe.

You can then use an automated closed-loop marketing system to start introducing your company to these prospects.

Write Your Marketing Messages

The next step to building your closed-loop marketing system is to write a series of marketing documents, which could be delivered to the prospect as faxes, letters or emails. All of these documents should stress the value a prospect would receive when they meet with your salesperson.

At all costs, try to avoid pitching a particular product. Rather, stress the results that a meeting will produce for a client. When you have enough documents to send your contact a different marketing message each month for at least a year, you will be ready to launch your closed-loop marketing system.

If your contact management system has an automated processing capability, you can install your marketing documents into your contact manager but make sure a marketing touch occurs every thirty days. If your contact management system does not have an automated processing capability, there are many simple software products available for under $300 that will handle this task for you.

Fortify Your Marketing Efforts

You can"supercharge" your closed-loop marketing system by integrating phone calls in between the written marketing touches. Combining written touches and"warm" phone calls can produce superior sales and marketing results.

Most importantly, make sure you or your sales team uses your closed-loop marketing system everyday. Over time, this approach to business development will reduce or eliminate the need for cold calling. You will be surprised how easy it is to differentiate yourself from those people who just pitch their products, if you take the time to write a series of relationship-oriented letters.

Don't spend your time searching for people to sell to. Spend your time locating people who have an interest in working with you, based on the relationship you have already created through the closed-loop marketing system.

I wish you good luck and good selling. If you have any questions about utilizing a closed-loop marketing system, feel free to call me.

About the Author:

Gil Gargill

[If you have any questions or would like to discuss ideas for possible marketing messages, feel free to contact Gil Cargill by phone at (877) 597-9267 or by email at [email protected]. He would be happy to hear from you.

GOOD LUCK & GOOD SELLING!!