Ashley called back.

“We changed our minds. Can
you do it Tuesday?”

It was Friday. I was slated
to speak at a convention half a continent away on Sunday.  I agreed to fly back on Monday and do a
motivational keynote for Ashley’s high technology telecommunications sales
force even though it was on extremely short notice.

His briefing on what he and
the general manager had planned included a copy of the mirror and certificate
that they were awarding to every member of the sales team, a group of
independent contractors.

I was reminded of an ad I’d
prepared and faxed him a copy. We agreed that the ad would serve as the basis
for my talk.

Here, less the close, is the
copy from that ad:

“One skill marks the boundary between success and
failure in the Age of Access.

One ability is the difference between start-ups that
fly and those that die.

One look in the mirror will show you who controls
your fate.

A single glimpse of your true power can make you and
your organization a greater success.

The Power of One is what it takes to build your
business, your career and a life of joy from the ground up.”

Whether you bootstrap it,
find an angel or get plugged into venture capital your success will be governed
by a single restraint.

One.

How good are you at building
business relationships? Can you convince someone to believe in your vision? Can
you persuade them to back you?

Can you win over customers…enough
of them to make a profit?

Profit is what the bottom
line is about.

The top line is about
building your business. It’s about your ability in the clinches. It’s about the
Power of One… the ability to connect with the people that will make you successful.

Businesses are built one
contact at a time. One contact plus another and yet another until you have a
crowd.

“The trick is finding the
right crowd” said Geoff, a physicist friend and founder of one of the most
highly esteemed high-tech start-ups in the Pacific
Northwest. Think about all we’ve been through since we were
working in my garage and you named the company. ”

He had a point. Here’s the
fortune cookie version of what we learned:       

“The
wise man knows his limits…
            A shrewd one his resources…
            But ultimately it’s not who you know that matters…as
much as who you trust.”

Here’s how that played out
for us:

1.      A wise man
knows his limits. You can’t do
everything well. One, yes, even two or three, but not everything. No one can.
And no one expects you to.

It
takes a multitude of talents to build and run a profitable company. Use the
Power of One to be sure that you gather to you all the talent and skills that
your company needs to survive and thrive. Build those relationships. Work at
being sure that all of them see your vision and are actively pursuing it with
you. Ask them to share that vision with the people that are their resources.
Over time you want their network to be intimately connected to yours.

2.      A shrewd
man knows his resources. To succeed,
gather a group of successful resources. Model the behavior of successful
people.

Most
importantly, especially in the early phases, make sure you judge people by what
they do rather than what they say. If you have a good idea all kinds of folks
will want a piece of it. They will tell you virtually anything you want to hear
but when you look at what they’ve accomplished the ledger is blank. Successful
people don’t operate that  way.

Professionals
get that designation by having a talent, developing it and practicing their
skills until they can deliver predictable results. That makes them successful.

Look
for successful people. They move. They act. They get things done. They make a
measurable difference.

3.      It’s not
who you know…it’s who you trust. Ultimately your success will be judged by the
bottom line you deliver to your self, your family, your investors, your
stockholders…all those people who put their faith in you.

That
day I said, “To get to that point you have to reach out; connect and commit to
relationships that can lead to success only if they are based on trust.

You
must make the vision real.
You
have to reach out and find the experts needed.
You
must connect with the backers, the builders and the bankers.
You
have to commit to those relationships.
You
and you alone must get to trust with all of them.
You
must assure that so long as you are part of the company, that trust will
endure.

      At the heart of every
successful business is a single man or woman of integrity.

      One.

      There is nothing more
powerful.”

“…So we sent out this sales letter and nothing, I mean
NOTHING happened,” Michael whined over lunch. Our e-mail experience was the same but it didn’t cost as much!”

We asked him for a copy of the letter. Bill, a direct mail
guru, read it first and handed it to Anna. Anna, our resident copywriter
scanned it and handed it to me. I glanced at it and then set it aside as Bill
began giving Michael tips.

• “You have to go with the percentages,” Bill said. “ Whether it is e-mail or a real letter the odds are
  that out of every 100 business to business sales letters you send out 50 of
  them won’t get through the gatekeeper to the boss and of those, if you don’t
  follow up via phone the day after your letter arrives the chances are that only
  one person out of the hundred may respond. Here’s what you can do to increase
  the odds with a letter:”

• Make sure
  it gets opened. Look professional. Don’t try using pre-packaged “beautiful
  border” letterhead and envelopes. Too many business people have seen it.
  

• Use an
  odd-sized envelope. We’ve found over the years that bigger is better. A 6”
  x 9” envelope gets better response than your regular number 10 envelope. A 9”x
  12” does even better.

• Make it
  look personal. Screeners judge mailings on three criteria: credibility…of
  the offer and the person/company making it, relevance to the boss and the
  company and most importantly, whether or not it’s personal.

Anna jumped in right about there saying, “Don’t forget that
what you say and how you say it is just as important. If you want to get
results you have to think like customers and write in terms that grab ‘em. Try
to:

• Start
  with a hook. Make the reader want to read on by telling them that your
  offer is going to solve a nagging problem. Try to frame your offer in terms of
  what is most important to them. Solve their problem and you’ll get their
  attention.

• Talk
  benefits, not features. Don’t tell people what’s in it. Tell ‘em what’s in
  it for them. Folks buy your product or service based on what it will do for
  them. Everything else is secondary. Word things from their viewpoint, not
  yours. Do not start your letter with “I…” or “We of the (company name)” or
  “Because of (situation)”.

• Write as
  long as is needed. Short letters are not better. I’m sure Bill can tell you
  statistically what the difference is but I’ve found that you should make the
  letter long enough to make your offer in a clear concise manner. If it takes
  multiple pages, okay. Fact is, if the interest is there, it will get read.

There are a couple of tricks that
make it easy for people to keep reading. Separate paragraphs with at least two
lines. Short sentences and paragraphs will pull people through the letter. Use
bullets to give some rhythm and set off important points. Generally small dots
are best but you can use numbers, small graphics or even a logo if you like.

“You’re up,” said Anna, with a chuckle.

“See why I don’t like being in last position with these two
around? I said to Mike. In any case, there are a couple of things that have
worked for me.”

• Have a
  customer send the letter. Don’t get me wrong, you still have to write it
  and mail it and all that but if it looks like it’s coming from an officer of
  one company to one at another it will get opened, through the gatekeeper and
  acted on. One easy way to handle this is to put your offer in the form of the
  second page of a letter and then have the customer do a simple transmittal like
  “ Thought you might be interested in this deal….take a look and call
  (salesman’s name) over at (company name) if you’d like to hear more.”

• Never,
  ever send a letter without a PS. The single most important message in a
  letter belongs there. The hook that Anna spoke of belongs there. The offer that
  gets someone to take action belongs there. The PS is so important because of
  how people read letters. The first thing they look at is the inside address.
  Next they look at the signature to see if they recognize the person or the
  title. And then they look at the PS. If they are going to read your letter they
  will go back to the salutation. But if the PS is sufficient, they will take
  action based on the PS alone.

• Make it
  easy for the reader to take action. One approach that works well with
  senior executives is to allow them to initial on the letter and fax it back to
  you for details or an appointment date.

Let me know if you like sitting in on these conversations.

Jerry Fletcher, Networking Ninja

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