4. Be An Insider

You need to be active within your industry. Stay in touch with current trends, follow activities of your competitors, and talk with like-minded people. Be on cutting edge by constantly expanding your network of contacts. You'll discover you can then tap into your market more easily and target your promotional efforts with greater success.

5. Know Your Customers

Understand who your customers are, where they congregate, what they need, why they need it... in short, get inside their skin. When you know your customers you can hit their "what's in it for me?" buttons. Offer them more than they need - both before and after sale - and your efforts will pay off.

6. Give People Benefits

Realize that when people become interested in something they have a voracious appetite for information. If they've made an impulse decision to buy, they want information to justify that decision. If they haven't decided to buy, they need information before pulling out their credit card. Either way, you must come through to secure sale.

Seek to inform people rather than sell to them. Inform them in ways that show what they will gain. Give them enough to feel empowered as an informed buyer.

7. Use Power of Words

Words are magic when their power is understood. In hands of a skilled marketer words are crafted to create a sense of need and urgency in people.

Words arouse emotions. Used right they can conjure up vivid and seductive mental imagery. Words can inspire trust of a spy or satisfy logic of a mathematician. Words can motivate people to act on unfulfilled needs and desires. Use words to induce emotional responses in people and you will achieve your marketing objectives.

Rudyard Kipling called words a powerful drug. Use language to your advantage and seize power of this drug.

These seven strategies are very powerful for dynamic marketer. Set your sights on a desired outcome, throw in a little enthusiasm, and you've got a formula that's nothing less than magic.

-There are 2 easy ways to fill in missing information on your customers once you've downloaded their names and addresses. First, you can send to a list broker who will match names against their existing databases for a nominal fee. They'll send you a file back which includes SIC (standard industry classification) code, company size, and other fields you might request. You can find a list broker via internet or in your local yellow pages, if you don't already work with one. The second is to use a matching program, such as D&B Market Place. You can load your information into this program, and it will match them - again for a nominal fee. In this case you will also have to purchase software for anywhere from $850 - $2,100, depending on specific package, but you will have ability to both profile and buy new lists at your location.

-Whichever method you use, there are likely to be names which aren't matched. In these cases you'll need to manually obtain information - either by knowing that client, or by contacting them and asking.

-Once you've completed your matching process, you can load information into Excel and analyze it, to see what percentage of your customers are in a particular industry, geographic area or company size. You can then tailor your information and marketing programs to reach more companies like those you are already successful with.

Happy selling!

(c) 2002 Carol Woods