The marketing process

Mike Burgelin sent me this email yesterday:

Hi, my name is Mike Burgelin owner of EmployeeLeasingQuotes.com. I would appreciate any linking opportunity from your site. We work with small business owners, primarily in the construction and trades industry. Our job is to help them find an employee leasing company that can lower their workers’ compensation costs and handle all the non-profitable tasks of dealing with payroll along with other employee related administrative headaches. I would also be open (if you are interested) to writing articles in these specific areas for your site. I currently write for maintenance magazine for my marketing business and have been designated an expert author by ezinearticles.com. Thanks for any assistance you can be. Please contact me if I can help you.

My initial reaction: Achhh, another person, seeing our high Google rankings, seeking to piggyback on this web presence for some free publicity. And indeed, I'm pretty sure this is what Mike is seeking to accomplish.

But I took some time to dig through his reference points, to this article list in Maintenance Supplies Magazine, and some of the writing is actually quite good. For example, note this quote from Cold Calling: The Wrong Approach.

As a distributor, you have salespeople cold calling on you. How do you react? How much time do you give the salesperson? Let's assume you need office supplies, ink cartridges for your copiers, etc. Will you take 30 minutes to sit with the salesperson? Do you think you will even keep their card?

An alternative

On the other hand, would you open a letter hand-addressed to you from the owner of the local office supply business? What if this person explained who they were in the community, provided a list of local customers and presented a few free tips on how you could save money along with a great business offer. Do you think you would remember their name? Would you be more open to a conversation with them?

I agree with Mike 100 per cent.

So I dug into this a little further, and discovered Mike's other site, Marketing Formulas, Inc., which has some useful articles and insights.