Direct Mail Marketing for Sales Executives

I was discussing different types of field marketing with a colleague earlier today, and it occurred to me that there is an important pre-requisite activity that must be highlighted by all sales teams before embarking on any program.  It is important to identify what type of software industry you are targeting.  I have sold exclusively to large, strategic accounts for over ten years, but I now sell to SMB and Fortune 1000 companies.  As a result, the strategies that were effective with target accounts where defined value propositions are known for every prospect are different than marketing to a larger group of prospects with varying degrees of interest, budget, and knowledge.  For large enterprise sales in target accounts, I am a huge advocate of the Anthony Parinello approach outlined in his book Selling to VITO.  I think that just about everything in his book is correct, except I do find his benefit statements to be a very outdated approach.  In fact, I was at a recent CIO roundtable in Atlanta where five Fortune 500 CIO's specifically called out reps who contacted them with crazy statements about increasing shareholder value based on their solution....they stated "...we're not even sure that we add any points to shareholder value, so don't write or call me with some benefit statement suggesting that you'll add x points to shareholder value."  I think we can all agree that a more subtle approach can sometimes be more effective.  For example, you can state that your software helped "y" company increase their revenue by "z"%.  However, you know that they'll question whether it was your software or just their business (i.e. Google, eBay, Yahoo....would have grown without your email engine...trust me, they would have used something else or written their own, your software didn't create those companies, so don't suggest that it did...).  On the other hand, there are some very real hard dollar benefits such as reduced annual maintenance costs by more than $2M for x, y, z companies.  At SugarCRM, we cost about 1/3 as much as our competitors, so it is easy to create such statements that are factual and typically, the benefits and savings are even larger if you were to call our clients.   So, avoid the Parinello benefits that are headlines focused, and please use something that an executive will find believable.  Another area where I disagree with Parinello is the use of the cover letter as the exclusive VITO vehicle.  Seriously, please update the book with a new version that incorporates some new strategies.  The cover letter by itself will not impress anyone today.  However, the cover letter containing the benefit statement outlined above accompanied by a brief case study or hard copy presentation (5 slides) is something that is short enough to be reviewed and understood quickly.  As I stated at the beginning of the post, the key is to understand where you play.  If you are going after a target list of 20 accounts, take the time to use Parinello's / Gearhart's hybrid strategy to gain entry into each and every account.  If you are like me and manage all verticals across the Southeastern US and Latin America, then you might go with something that allows you to touch more targets and results in something far less personalized that the VITO approach.  Either way, I would suggest experimenting.  My experience suggests that you are better off picking five targets and using a VITO strategy than mass mailing 100 or even 1,000 generic pieces....but I am not taking my advice right now.  I'll let you know how the mass approach is working in my region in the coming weeks.  For the rest of you with target accounts, read Parinello and make the changes I suggested above.  I promise you a 30% response rate if you follow his book to the letter and incorporate subtle changes.