Re: Radio promotion (or Poppa' Joe and his Magic Bag of Brushes)

From: Michael Hiles <mhiles_at_mailhat.reachusa.com>
Date: Wed 20 Dec 2000 14:58:40 -0500

BRAD JENSEN <brad_at_elstore.com> WROTE:
> Gee, why don't you try finding some opt-in email lists
> that go to your target audience, then write a clever ad
> disguised as a request for assistance?
>
> The "specific, focused and extremely affordable
> campaign" was a little over the top, but the rest of it
> was very well done.
>
> ROFLMAO

-----------------------------------
Poppa' Joe and his
Magic Bag of Brushes (a true story)
-----------------------------------

In 1911, my great-grandfather Joseppi Gallichio came to
the United States from Bisaccia, Italy. He was very
poor and spoke little English, but he had a passion for
sales and was a showman at heart. It wasn't long until
he became one of the most successful Fuller Brush
salesman in the history of the company. I was very
young, but I can remember him telling us the story
about how he used to go into a neighborhood and look
for any houses with signs on the doors that said "NO
SOLICITORS", or, in his words, "A No'ana Sales a'
Manah". He would always knock on those first.

Why?

BECAUSE IT USUALLY MEANT THAT THE HOUSEWIFE WHO LIVED
THERE COULDN'T SAY NO TO ANY SALESMAN AND HER HUSBAND
HAD TO PUT UP A SIGN BEFORE THEY WENT BROKE!

Would he have made a sale if he knocked?

Maybe. Maybe he would get chased down the street by a
pit bull!

Would he have made a sale if he didn't knock?

Ummm... that is a rhetorical question.

The point is... why did we allow this politically
Internet correct sales crap get to the point of making
it such a bad thing to try to directly sell to
strangers who actually might benefit from your product
or service? Is it that they are afraid to buy? Or, is
it that we are afraid to sell?

When did it become such an awful thing to be
self-actualized about sales intentions... so much so
that Bryce would even have to consider "pretending" not
to be selling when he really is?? Or that Brad would
even interpret his intentions to be the case?

Well, why do people bring such cynicism, bias, and
elitist attitude to the table that might contribute to
Bryce even feeling it necessary to do so? This seems to
be the status quo of doing business on the Internet.

We are all here in this group because we sell, either
directly or on behalf of a client. So until Donna
forces us to talk about more academic, esoteric things
like... "the evocation of emotional response via color
palette selection of ad creative" ... get over it.

I applaud Bryce. At least he is making the effort. In
my opinion, if Bryce's post was indeed a masked sales
attempt, the intention is still no different than
putting all of your website links and contact info in
your email signature with a snazzy tag line and
participating in "opt-in email lists that go to your
target audience". Almost 100% of the participants in
this group do this in some fashion.

In case you haven't noticed, the Emperor really doesn't
wear any clothes. There is a growing pile of
"legetimate" B2B & B2C dot-com sales strategies rotting
away, waiting to be incinerated in the furnaces of a
Federal bankruptcy court room. All that T.V. network ad
money and they still couldn't make it, because after
all the hype - they still couldn't sell. A dose of good
ol' fashioned justice, as poetic as it comes.

The Internet is a passive sales tool. It's always
there, waiting for you to log in and look around. It's
the ultimate in window shopping. But it can't grab you.
It can't CLOSE A SALE. Even with aggressive brand
marketing, it still can't look you in the eye and ask
you for the business. This still takes an unabashed
sales person...a HUMAN BEING.

A frictionless, passive sales approach is a techie's
marketing dream come true, but it has never worked. In
the 20+ years I have spent in the software industry as
a developer, entrepreneur, investor, and marketer, one
maxim remains constant: While technical people continue
to espouse their dogmatic aversion to aggressive,
direct marketing and sales, they have also consistently
demonstrated their overall lack of ability to
successfully commercialize a product or service and
create a sustainable demand. This was the case in 1979
with companies like Cincom Systems (read your history
books kids, it's worth the effort). It is the case
today with even a 9 digit sales effort like eToys
scrambling for safe harbor in the wake of mounting
losses.

Taking all of this into consideration, I wonder how
much cash the people behind the .kr & .ru spam
addresses are actually banking with their "Find info on
anyone" software hustles. Isn't is supposed to be all
about the numbers game...squeaky wheel gets the
grease?? While I am not necessarily advocating the
wholesale adoption of a pure spam campaign, if Poppa'
Joe were still alive, I'd "a'bet you ana fin" ($5) that
he'd be out there with the Korean list-servs blazing
away with harvested addresses... laughing all the way
to the bank. I can only hope to give my own children
the estate tax problem that my grandparents had when he
died.

So, instead of dancing around the sales issue because
we might "offend" someone, maybe we ALL should start
knocking on ALL of the doors again like sales
professionals and actually ASKING for the business like
our paychecks were dependent upon it. We just might be
surprised at the result. Oh yes... almost forgot...
keeping with the tradition of Poppa' Joe and his Magic
Bag of Brushes....

Hey online ad people... Ever consider Val-Pak? We are
the undisputed leaders of direct mail marketing!!! Let
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Interested?? Check us out at http://about.reachusa.com
or email me at mhiles_at_reachusa.com .

How was that Brad??
Was that enough to the point for you?? ;-)

Happy Holidays everyone!

Michael Hiles, EVP
ReachUSA.com
mhiles_at_reachusa.com

ReachUSA.com - "Direct Marketing Solutions for E-Business"





Received on Wed Dec 20 2000 - 13:58:40 CST