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Saturday, October 31, 2009

The endorsement letter


Endorsements work. This images is from a screen shot of a Webinar with Mike Jeffries posted on Michael Stone's website.

Yesterday, I listened to a webinar hosted by Michael and Devon Stone of Mike Jeffries of closingsuccesssystem.com. Jeffries offers a free eight week course: "8 Weeks of Low Cost or No Cost Lead Generation Strategies and Tactics" and his first suggestion is elegantly simple and effective: Arrange with your best and most influential clients to send out endorsement letters on your behalf.
Endorsement Letters

Find a customer who is very happy with your services.
Let them know that the best work you get is from referral.
Ask if they would be willing to send a letter to people that they know well - explaining why they were so happy with your services.
Write the letter - offer to address and mail it for them AND cover the cost.
Expect a 10 to 15% response rate.
Imagine what that would do for your profits.
Jeffries describes this process as "putting referrals on steroids". He suggests you can help out with the letter-generation process by preparing the letters and even sending them out for your great clients.

We use a variation of that idea as a cornerstone of our own selling process in the business-to-business space, but add another twist: Our endorsement letters go to the suppliers of the people referring the business.

The principal is simple: If you receive significant amounts of money from an organization or business which you genuinely respect, and that business asks for a small favor or request of you which could help your own business, as well, it is hard to say "no".

Jeffries and Stone, of course, are using other marketing techniques in this webinar and eight week course, and they are selling services which are not free. But you don't have to buy their stuff: They are delivering value with insights, observations, and useful resources, and so deserve some recognition here.

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