Is that a telephone in your marketing program, or are you just glad to see me?

My early client Roy Chitwood of Max Sacks International told a funny story involving a rookie sales guy who loved to get busy signals on the phone because he could tally them as completed calls… “that’s one more out of the way”. But according to a recent story in the Wall Street Journal, many of today’s younger salespeople no longer know what a telephone is (let alone a busy signal).

They’ll email when a previous generation would have called, even to someone in the next cubicle. This probably explains the profusion of chatty lead generation emails I get that are written to look as if they’re from a casual acquaintance, often “confirming” something (usually a webinar) that I supposedly had expressed interest in. Easy to send, even easier to get rid of with the delete button.

Direct Marketing Partners, a California-based outfit I’ve done some business with, has a different idea. They still use the telephone the old-fashioned way for marketing, and with spectacular results. It helps that their clients are typically selling expensive, complex products or services which justify a high cost per lead.

The first thing DMP does is a canvassing operation to get the telephone contact information for people on the business lists they rent or compile, and to confirm the recipient is the right person for the pitch. If not, they’ll find out who is the true buying authority and add that name, address and phone number to the list.

Then, a direct mail pack goes out which is intentionally “high impact” with features or a theme that is easy to recall. As an example, one recent promo I worked on with DMP (and Beasley Direct Marketing, their frequent collaborator) included a poster of the Curiosity Mars landing, rolled up in a clear plastic tube.

DMP follows up a couple of weeks later with people who did not respond to the direct mail offer. They open the call by asking, “do you remember that tube you got with the poster inside?” and a high percentage of prospects do indeed remember. Then they deliver the same pitch that was in the mailer, which usually concludes with the offer of a highly attractive premium in return for setting a sales appointment.

The results of these campaigns can be spectacular—often the total number of leads generated is 3 to 5 times the initial number from the direct mailing. It helps that the DMP phone reps are intelligent and well spoken, and receive training in the product and the interests of their audience, so the call becomes a two-way conversation instead of an irritating canned pitch that might as well be recorded.

I also thinks it helps the DMP effort that so few of their competitors are using the telephone. (I’m not including robo-calls which are a worse plague than Lyme disease.) It’s become a novelty to get a call from a smart, involved person who is selling something you actually want to buy. Maybe more marketers should pick up that phone.