A winning promotional strategy

Here's how to get your best prospects to call you, and the cost to you is $20. Send me the $20 and I'll tell you.

It was a joke. Come on, lighten up. You can send me the $20 later. It does cost $20 a lead, but hey, they're your best prospects -- and you're going to get to them to call you. How much is that very warm lead worth?

Gather a list of your top 100 prospects and write a nice letter about how great your service is and how great your products are. They may or may not actually read it. But up in the top right corner, type the following:

If this number: 6675657

Matches our WINNING NUMBER

~ 6675657 ~

You have won a CROSS PEN!

You're a WINNER! Please call me at (610) 642-1000 to redeem this letter for your FREE CROSS PEN. Thanks and congratulations!

No one knows all the numbers are winning numbers, and they don't have to know. They'll just see that they are a winner. Everyone likes to be a winner, and everyone likes Cross pens. You can buy them for about 20 bucks if you shop around.

If possible, print the "matching number" you showed in a different typeface or a different color so it looks like you stamped it on the page.

I did a variation of this promotion for a client at a trade show to get high-end attendees to stop at our booth. You could see their face light up at the end of our aisle when they caught their first glimpse of our booth. It was really easy to tell who these folks were -- they came bounding down the aisle, unflinching gaze locked on our booth like we would leave or it wouldn't be there if they turned away for a second. As they got closer: big smile on their face, tightly clutching our letter in their hands.

Results? Ouch -- we ran out of pens in the first hour. Then, despite buying all the Cross pens from every local office supply store in the area before lunch, we ran out again by 1:30. Finally, we had to give "Cross Pen Gift Certificates" (a rain check, actually), and our promise to send everyone a pen when we got back. It really was a great and successful promotion. If you have a booth at a trade show, this promotion rocks.

Do this right and your own prospects will all be winners. You'll be a winner by having your best prospects call you -- isn't that nice for a change?

We're not done yet. Whether you hand prospects a pen or send it in the mail, it's important to have a nice letter go with it. Even though people will be happy they've won, the value YOU receive from the promotion (as the contributor of the gift) is in the letter, and it should be a great one. The letter is your chance to change a prospect into a client, or solidify a valuable client relationship.

Engraving the recipient's name on the pen can assure it will go in his shirt pocket instead of his desk drawer. It costs a few additional bucks, but can be worth it.

*For further information or to contact this author, please use the forum below.