After a board meeting in Frankfurt, Lord knows how many years ago, David Ogilvy told me over dinner that “Rosser Reeves and I were talking one day, and we agreed that everything we knew we had learned from John Caples.”
Rosser Reeves, who was Ogilvy’s brother-in-law, coined the initials USP that everyone now uses with such gay, and often inaccurate abandon.
John Caples, besides being a very good copywriter – They laughed when I sat down at the piano is one of the most copied lines ever – popularised systematic testing, though not enough to penetrate the thick skulls of most corporate drones.
When a Wall Street Journal interviewer asked Caples if the principles he had discovered still applied, he replied: “Times change. People don’t.”
In the early 1900s, A. Joseph Newman, General Sales Manager, Bayuk Cigars, Inc., Philadelphia, had an original method of helping his company’s distributors.
Under a pen name, Frank Trufax (true facts) he wrote a series of letters to imaginary salesmen in which he discussed very real problems. Here’s one example
To My Salesmen:
I was looking over the orders the other day and I saw one from a dealer whom we had not been selling for at least a year.
I was tickled pink to see him back on our books once again.
Our little selling-fool, Billy Keepatem, put it over—yes, he did. Hats off to Keepatem, boys!
“Well, Bill, how did you do it?” said I to Bill at first opportunity.
“Nothing wonderful about it, Mr. Trufax,” replied Bill. “That dealer sells a lot of stuff and I thought if he was worth going after, he was worth keeping after. I’ve been calling on him regularly once a week for nine months and – well, I landed him. That’s all there is to it.”
Did you get that one pithy phrase Bill pulled: “If he was worth going after, he was worth keeping after?”
24.4% made 2 calls and quit
14.7% made 3 calls and quit
12.7% made 4 or more calls
Go over those figures once again, boys, they’re intensely interesting.
Then clear your mind to get full shock of this body-blow of an answer to the second question:
Sixty per cent of the sales made were on or after the fifth call!
This investigation, of course, proves very little conclusively but it does emphasize this one thing:
Eighty-eight per cent of the salesmen automatically eliminated themselves from consideration of sixty per cent of the business because they quit before the dealer had been brought up to the buying point.
Boys, I don’t want you to waste time watering dead plants but I do want you to keep digging around the live ones.
You can never tell when the “No, not today” will change into “Yes, send ‘em along.”
It may be on the fifth call; it may be on the fiftieth call; but as Billy Keepatem says:
“If a dealer is worth going after, he’s worth keeping after.”
Yours, tilhesezyes,
Frank Trufax.
Hello Drayton
I totally accept your point about the importance of following up and that just doing that will put you ahead of the rest.
Do you think that it is important to try hard to change your approach each time you follow up? … or better to just be relatively consistent with your message?
Do you know if your 14 call client changed their tactics in any particular way during the 14 call journey?
Regards
Warren
I suspect the answer to this (as to most things) is two fold: “it depends” and “use your imagination.”
In the case of that client he sends a series of emails. Each starts by looking at one aspect of the benefits he offers, but all mention the whole range.
I guess if you have one overwhelming benefit that beats all others hollow you would always talk about that.
I think the chief trick is to find new ways to start each message, and never stop until your prosect either says “yes” or “leave me alone”.
Thanks Drayton