Developing a Recruiting Program for New Sales Blood That Delivers Prime Candidates.

Developing a Recruiting Program for New Sales Blood That Delivers Prime Candidates.
By
Marty Gross

• · Reduce the Expense of Shotgun Advertising
  · Tap New Audiences to Expand Potential Recruiting
  · Take Advantage of a Multi-Media Marketing Plan to Reach all Potential Candidates
  · ...With a Well-Planned and Tailored Direct Marketing Campaign that Can Improve Recruiting Many Times.
  

To better accomplish your sales recruitment goals, consider direct marketing as a cost-effective method that can help you successfully find the candidates you’re after efficiently and effectively.

With a well-planned direct marketing recruiting campaign, you can control how many potential candidates you will hear from, when you will hear from them, and how qualified they are. Through direct marketing you can also survey the field to identify changing perceptions about selling, your firm, and salary requirement. In addition you will reduce the uncertainty associated with building a sales force because you’ll generate a controlled flow of qualified leads, reducing the need for and expense of wasteful “shotgun” advertising.

To increase the effectiveness of your direct marketing recruitment campaign you’ll need to develop a direct marketing package that complements your firm’s overall marketing strategies. You’ll also need to compile a mailing list that targets an audience with the ability, experience and desire to respond to your direct marketing campaign.

What Should Your Direct Marketing Campaign Include?
To be successful, a direct marketing package must evoke response. To do this, the package needs a strong offer. This is the promise of the transaction.
There are a number of elements to the offer which must be carefully balanced. These include:

1. Salary/Compensation. This should be the central focus of your direct marketing proposition. If you undersell this benefit, you may severely lower your response potential. If you purposely oversell the salary/compensation offer, you can expect a great number of underqualified responses.

2. Growth and Advancement Potential. This includes not only what you believe the potential should be, but what the prospective new salesman perceives its value to be. By copy-testing different objectives and goals you may learn that the new salesman will pay more attention to a minor objective you hadn’t really considered important, or that the increase in response to a career objective substantially offsets a lower compensation package.

3. Terms of Compensation. To increase the effectiveness of your direct marketing campaign, you’ll need to determine the methods of compensation your company is best structured to offer. Should it be straight salary? Or a draw against commissions? Or deferred commissions?

4. Incentives and Bonuses. These can be useful in evoking response to your offer. They can be in the form of cash premiums paid instantly upon hiring, third party gifts for recommendations, or other inducements to apply. But premiums must be used carefully. The more you give away, the better response you can expect. This can come at the expense of sales force quality.

5. Guarantee. When applying for a job through a blind box number, for instance, a salesperson doesn’t know to whom he or she is speaking. Confidentiality should be guaranteed. One way to reduce this uneasiness is with a strong guarantee.

The individual elements of the direct marketing package should be consistent with your overall recruiting objectives. If you want the maximum number of responses, use a blatantly big salary offer plus an incentive. If you want the best career-minded candidates, then use goal/objectives. If all you want are exploratory candidates, then a brief trial or free-lance offer is best. But you must always be conscious of the effect that changing elements of the offer can have on results. And you must test wherever possible.

Testing your direct marketing can help determine the potential response to your campaign. This testing can also help you identify problems with your message and adapt your program to meet your recruiting needs.

Different variables should be tested one at a time to help establish or fine-tune a program. For instance, if you choose to test mailing lists, then your design, offer, etc. must remain the same. Likewise, when testing the creative aspects of your program, your mailing lists must remain the same. If not, your results will not be useful. Also when testing, you must use statistically reliable sample sizes. Most direct marketers use probability tables to establish appropriate sample sizes. These tables can be found in many books on direct marketing.

Planning Your Program
As with other promotional media, the key to success with direct marketing is planning. To make sure your campaign achieves your recruiting strategies, you need to develop and adhere to a working plan that meets these objectives.

The Situational Analysis
The first step in planning your program is to review the company’s current situation. This should include both internal and external factors affecting the company, and the program that is planned. For instance, you may want to use direct mail to open up a new area not currently served by your sales force.

Identifying The Target Market
You will need to profile your target candidates. This is especially important for direct marketing because one of its strengths is that it can reach market segments. By properly identifying your best sales force prospects, you can make the job of proper list selection easier, and greatly increase your changes of success.

Analyzing The Job
Your next step is to look closely at your job offer—not just at the features of the job, but also the main benefits for a new salesperson. This is important in terms of copy. Most new salespersons have very little interest in every detail of a job. For a message to compel them to action (in this instance, to apply for the job), you have to tell them how the job will benefit them.

However, direct mail that simply lists a multiplicity of features misses the point. Ultimately, benefits, not features, cause someone to purchase, inquire or otherwise respond. By highlighting the benefits in your organization, you’ll be better able to translate them into major selling points within your copy.

Establishing An Objective
For most direct marketing sales force recruitment programs, the objective will be a version of one of two broad categories: The acquisition of new sales force/prospects at the lowest possible cost or acquiring a sales force through the hiring away from other firms, training new salespeople, or keeping present people happy.

It is important that you choose your objective very carefully. Every other element of your marketing plan must be linked to it. If you’ve chosen an objective which requires a large number of responses, it can affect your offer, the number of pieces you’ll have to mail or the number of ads you will have to place, and, of course, your budget. To make sure your objective is reasonable, it should be quantified in terms of numbers and time frame. For a direct mail program, this should be tied back into the response rate or number of responses during the period of a specific recruitment offer.

Determining A Strategy
Once you have chosen your objective, you will need to choose a strategy for implementing a direct marketing recruiting program that will achieve that objective. This includes both marketing and creative strategies. Generally, you will find that listing several strategic alternatives and the rationale for each will help you reach your goal. Carefully analyze the advantages and disadvantages of each when making your final decision.

You’ll also want to be sure that your strategy is consistent with the image you wish to maintain in the marketplace and that it complies with all corporate policy and legal considerations. For instance, if the objective of your direct mail program is a large number of applications, your strategy may be to mail heavily, test marginal mailing lists, structure a generous offer (e.g., car, generous benefits, high commission, rapid advancement, prime territory, etc.). If your objective is to achieve the highest qualified applicants, your strategy might include reducing your promotional cost, mailing only to experienced salesmen, or best performing lists, and pushing only one benefit.

Establishing A Budget
The last main planning element of a direct marketing campaign is establishing a working budget. You will need to estimate all of your costs and compare them with your expected return. Too many direct marketing programs fail before they even start because this step is ignored.
Since direct marketing is accountable, you might want to do a Profit and Loss Statement before you go any further, to make sure your objective is achievable. This should include—by medium—estimated production, creative, media, fulfillment, (for direct mail: list and mailing costs), and any follow-up costs (callbacks, special interviews, telemarketing support, etc.). It is helpful to look at the impact of the various cost elements on each response. You can do a Unit Profit and Loss Statement, plugging in the applicable cost items, and quickly estimating your expected return. A spreadsheet software program such as Excel can greatly simplify this task.

Having completed the initial planning stages you can now begin work on the creative aspects of the project. Whether you create it yourself, or hire experienced direct marketing professionals to do it for you, it is important to be familiar with all of the elements of a direct marketing program.

©Copyright Martin Gross 2009

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Giving Something Away Carefully

Giving Something Away Carefully
by
Marty Gross

When the sales manager complains that his sales force can't handle the number of leads generated through your promotion, or when you're in of running out of booklets, just how do you cut back on inquiries? Unfortunately, the copywriter who is trained to sell heavily sometimes doesn't how to pull back and make the mixture leaner rather than richer. Over the years, however, copywriters have “perfected” 10 techniques.

1. Instead of giving your free booklet an interesting title, just call it “Free Booklet.” This is a guaranteed way to remain small ~and exciting. Years ago, if Merrill Lynch had decided to call its phenomenally successful booklet “Stocks and Bonds, a Guide” instead of “What You Should Know About This Stocks & Bonds Business,” the firm probably would have remained a small regional broker. So if you don't want to add personnel to handle the overflow of leads, or if you're aiming at a very selective audience, be sure to take the sell out of the title.

2. Make sure your description of the free booklet's contents is dry and rather cryptic. Look over standard college-course descriptions to get an idea of the style you should use to discourage idle curiosity seekers from sending for your free booklet. Perhaps just shortening the description or eliminating it entirely will do the trick.

3. Imply that sending for the booklet may be harmful to the would-be sender's health. Play down any advantages or benefits the product or services may have. Exaggerate the time or expertise needed to install it (this is especially effective in computer software advertising). You'll find that dilettantes will stay away in droves.

4. Hide it. If you mention the booklet without showing a picture of it, this can effectively play down any value it may have. If you must show the booklet, be sure not to caption the illustration. You'll be able to devote the space thus saved to selling the product, instead of promoting a giveaway. Triflers will be discouraged.

5. Set up a number of rules that must be followed before you'll give away your booklet. These demanding qualifications will go far in separating the sheep from the goats. For instance, be sure to state an age or income qualification by inserting a box to be checked in a coupon. Each obstacle you put in the way of a prospect will further winnow out sales-literature collectors.

6. Consider a couponless ad. In making your prospect show stronger interest by requiring more effort on his part, you filter out all those coupon-clippers who just want to receive mail.

7. Be more stringent about giving away your booklet. Erect more hurdles in the coupon. Make the inquirer sign the coupon. Ask him to carefully print the size or model number he's interested in. In a business-to-business coupon, no matter how limited the space, ask for a title, and insist that the inquirer give you his phone number and his fax number as well as his e-mail address.

8. Devote less copy to your free offer. Don't put it in a headline. Bury the offer in the body of the text. This is a device often used by auto manufacturers who have a detailed and interesting brochure to give away but who naturally are more concerned in coining phrases like “First in Its Class” or “A Luxury Automobile for the Way You Live Today.”

9. If you find that you're still getting a lot of inquiries, you might consider charging for the booklet. This will help lessen the number of people with their hands out for something free; the fewer prospects who do come in will have really shown their sincerity and should be easier to sell. Be careful, however. Many years ago, a carefully informative and factual advertisement for Rolls-Royce was written so cleverly and clearly that its quietly diffident offer of a $10.00 descriptive brochure was taken up by thousands of charmed readers. Despite the classy attempt to discourage hoi polloi, the Rolls-Royce showrooms were swamped with responses from people who had never even been in a Roller, let alone owned one.

10. Don’t allow the quality of your product or your sales prose to encourage unworthy and undesired inquiries. Frequently, the enthusiasm or supercharged energy of an ad or commercial will carry all before it, and inquiries for free information will get out of hand. Tone down your headline and tune out obvious customers an prospects by using bland, confusing language that will make it difficult for your audience to know whether you’re selling credit cards or underwear. Rule: unselective copy will result in highly selective inquiries.

©Copyright Martin Gross 2009

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Open Systems Open New Idea Doors

Open Systems Open New Idea Doors
by
Marty Gross

Systems theory allows the observer to see relationships that otherwise might not be noticeable. Basically, in this discipline, a system is a perceived configuration—an entity or unit. While in business and management it is usually used to analyze organizations, systems theory may have a special application to direct marketing.

Looking at direct marketing from this standpoint might open up new areas of investigation. For instance, you might see if there are forces and processes of interaction shaping direct marketing that might be harnessed to aid decision-making and action.

Systems theorists differentiate between closed and open systems. Basically, a closed system can be something like a cloistered religious community, complete unto itself and not requiring any contact with the outside world. Obviously, direct marketing would not long survive this sort of isolation. It's an open system, like the cell, the car and family. To do its job properly, it uses energy from the environment, transforms it and then returns the energy back to the environment in a different form.

As an open system, direct marketing exhibits the following characteristics (drawn from D. Katz and R. I. Kahn, The Social Psychology of Organizations):

Input. This is the importing of energy from the external environment. In the same way cars import gas and cells import blood and oxygen, direct marketing imports information and manpower. An efficient open system will make more use of the energy it imports than a “gas burner.” The efficient direct marketing program will not be top-heavy with managerial types and won't flood its system with too much distracting information or, worse, unprocessed data. (There is a good case, however, for importing a little more energy than you need. See “negative entropy” below.)

Throughput. A trophy worthy of the Jargon Hall of Fame, but systems analysts have latched upon it to describe the process open systems use to make use of available energy. In the same way that the body might convert starch and sugar into heat, direct marketing chews up (a) market and product data to create a service or product and (b) inspiration, insight and talent to create persuasive promotions.

Output. An unhappy part of the analogy! The car exports exhaust fumes, the body gets rid of waste materials ... and what does direct marketing do? It sends out promotions and products.

Cycles of events. A metaphysical or dialectical stage. In this example of recycling, sending out an output makes input or importing possible, which leads to processing and further output, and so on. In direct marketing, this would be the recycling of occurrences or events: Production and promotion lead to responses, inquiries and sales, which lead to more products and promotions. So rather than think of a promotion as an isolated event, consider it a link in a chain or an act in a play.

Negative entropy. Alas, all things must come to an end. The natural process of entropy inexorably moves from decay to dust. Direct marketing, using negative entropy, attempts to defeat this by importing more energy than is sent out. This can produce flab (heavy inventory). It can also produce fuel for a long hard winter (extra cash, and “impractical” research and development that eventually pays off).

Information input, negative feedback and the coding process. For any direct marketing operation, negative feedback can be very positive—it's the information received that tells you, for instance, which list has been naughty and which has been nice. The coding process is another jargon term that simply means the sorting of useful and useless information, such as over elaborate tests that experiment with the color of postage stamps or the use of serif vs. sans-serif typefaces on lift letters.

The steady state and dynamic homeostasis. Any open system surviving by importing energy to offset entropy is said to be in a steady state. However, because environments change, systems must change as well to counterbalance any disruptive force. A catalog company may shift, for example, from selling to rural customers to marketing to city dwellers. Adjusting this way by preserving its character as a catalog company but changing its market to peddle the same old merchandise to a marketplace that doesn't want it, with the result that entropy builds up and with it the end of the business.

Differentiation. The catalog company that once tried to be a department store in print, catering to a far-flung customer base, now carefully segments its marketing with specialized catalogs to targeted groups. This form of specialization is true of all open systems, which move from a state of overbusyness to specialized and standardized operating systems, in a bid to achieve greater efficiency.

Equifinality. Reaching the same goal through different means. One magazine publisher might achieve its profits through reducing the number of magazines issued and concentrating on seminars and video cassettes; another might diversify into newsletters; a third might go into broad casting. In direct marketing, one mail order book publisher might build a system of book clubs; another might concentrate on one subject; and a third might go for coffee-table books. •

©Copyright Martin Gross 2009

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The Profitable Secrets of Pricing Just Right

The Profitable Secrets of Pricing Just Right
by
Marty Gross

In the tight little universe of a direct mail marketplace, very frequently there exists an opportunity to create your own pricing structure that bears only the most tenuous relation to the real world. This can occur when you're selling a unique item. It can be a newsletter for a specialized audience, a service that no body else is offering or some product that by virtue of its qualities can't be compared with anything else around. Very often the magic of the copywriter er has created a selling impression that can't be assailed by price comparisons, budgetary constraints or the sheer lack of cash.

To take advantage of this special and exclusive moment, the wise direct marketer will have employed a “psychological pricing technique.” This approach to pricing goes beyond cost-based or demand-based techniques, which, though often quite elegant, may fail to address the perceived value of an item-a perception that good direct mail copy will not only create, but also enhance.

The focus of this strategy is a belief that many consumers have: that price is an indication of quality--that the higher priced item “has to be” better-and the consumer can enhance his or her self image by purchasing these “quality” items, such as designer clothes and luxurious automobiles.

Copy, graphics and production can satisfy the customer's psychological needs and create the proper environment for a purchase decision, but price must also support the image. A very elegant package selling a relatively inexpensive item can result in a response rate that may be surprisingly low. By being priced below expectation, the product has lost its prestigious image, thus decreasing the level of demand.

Another aspect of psychological pricing comes into play here: the art of "reducing a price. “Price lining” or “odd/even pricing” is a powerful technique that can often increase demand by apparently reducing price. A $26.99 item seems to be far cheaper than a $27 item. And a $98 item appears to be far less expensive than a $100 item.

Idea: when employing prestige-value pricing, it might be well to try reverse price lining, and bring the price up a dollar or so. Thus the $500-a-year newsletter might have a better cachet than one selling for only $477 a year.


Another way to use pricing in direct marketing is to take advantage of the discrete, identifiable and separable nature of direct mail, and package the identical product or service for different audiences with different prices. While usually employed in testing matrices, it can also be used in “discriminatory pricing.” This has nothing to do with prejudice or bias, but refers to the realization that different markets have different demands and can support different pricing. Thus, the same service that is offered to the public at large can be offered at a discount to certain groups. Whatever the criterion used to qualify these groups -- students, senior citizens, small businesses, government workers, frequent or volume users, off season travelers or charter subscribers -- the offer needs to be worded in such a way so as not to offend customers excluded from the discount structure, and has to conform to Federal regulations governing price discrimination, such as the Robinson-Patman, Sherman, and Clayton Acts. Take heart: a talented copywriter can use this required copy to actually strengthen the offer, by emphasizing the conditions of exclusivity.

For more on pricing, see Nagle, Thomas T. and Holden, Reed K, The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995.

©Copyright Martin Gross 2009

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How to Use Your Direct Marketing Connections

How to Use Your Direct Marketing Connections
By
Marty Gross

There’s no reason to treat contacts with prospects as “cold calls” when you can take advantage of any connections, relationships, linkages or networks that may be in place. Though you may lack personal or business acquaintance with people you may be advertising to, very often there are still referral systems, however tenuous, that you can cite.

A. Member Get a Member—Book clubs. use this device to obtain entry into a prospect's mailbox. It's also used by catalog mailers (“Customer Get a Customer”) and fundraisers (“Donor Get a Donor”). It allows the direct marketer to mention a friend's name and so gain a certain credibility and endorsement that otherwise would be lacking. Simply ask your present customer list to supply names of people they feel might be interested in what you're marketing. This can be done with a little note in a regular mailing, a house ad in a club bulletin or even a printed item on the back of your monthly statement. Offer a gift, premium, discount or just your thanks!

B. “ I Know Something About You."—A classic letter by the great direct mail copywriter Ed McLean starts off this way: “If the list upon which I have found your name ...” It overcomes the suspicion that a recipient might feel when he or she gets mail from a stranger; there's something in common between the sender and the reader that allows you to state your business in terms of mutual interest and profit without the usual courtship rituals that are often needed in direct marketing.

C. “It's a Small World."— Here a mailer actually tells the recipient the name of the list on which his/her name was found. “As a reader of Ptarmigan and Partridge Journal, you ought to know about Quail and Grouse Report's special subscription offer."
It’s a way of cutting through possible rejection or indifference to create a productive selling environment.

D. Affinity Groups--Used successfully in credit-card solicitations, the affinity group concept goes beyond reaching out to members of formal organizations. Imaginative marketers have built groups of small businessmen, contributors to certain charities or groups of charities and even fellow travelers and frequent fliers. People with nothing in common but the same last name can be organized into family associations that are basically heraldry or genealogy book operations. And mail order insurance companies can herd prospects with a common birth year into special policy groups (“If: you're over 55, you're entitled to a better deal on auto insurance”).

While a mailing or ad might be the first encounter, its effect need not be casual or one-time. Through careful preparation, meticulous investigation and some imagination, the skilled direct marketer can find links with which to establish a long- time relationship.

©Copyright Martin Gross 2009

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Psychiana -- A Mail Order Religion

Psychiana-- A Mail Order Religion

By

Marty Gross

When Psychiana, the mail order religion of the Great Depression and World War II, was at its height, nearly 200 workers were needed to handle the inquiries, fulfillment and correspondence engendered by the remarkable 1200-word advertisements which appeared everywhere.

These ads, which disclosed that Dr. Frank B. Robinson, the founder, prophet and pope of Psychiana, had “talked with God,” offered expectancy and hope at a time when those commodities seemed to have vanished from the American scene. In Moscow, Idaho, though, things were bustling. Psychiana had become the biggest employer in the college town.

From being a drugstore clerk, Frank B. Robinson had become a very big man, indeed. He had contributed Robinson Park to the town. He sat on the board of a local newspaper. He gave baskets of food to local people in need.

There was also a lot of work to be done. There were letters to be answered (for a while Dr. Robinson actually was the sale correspondent; later on, he gave that job over to others), conversion series to be mailed, home study lessons to be sent out (at first, 24 for $26.00), and records to be kept.

Fortunately for posterity, journalists were freely admitted to Psychiana headquarters and they wrote down just how this strange cult or sect adroitly used the mathematics of direct marketing.

{Useful summaries of Psychiana's direct marketing efforts and achievements can be found in Charles Braden's These Also Believe: A study of modern American cults and minority religious movements (NY: Macmillan, 1949) and Marcus Bach's They Have Found a Faith (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1946.)}

Psychiana ran ads in fifteen hundred newspapers and 250 magazines, and kept careful records of the inquiries and the percentages of conversion, realizing the importance of transforming an inquirer into a purchaser. The highest percentage of conversions—21%—was from readers of a magazine about the future. Two astrology magazines yielded 18% and 14%. Three pulp detective magazines (this was the era of private eye fiction) returned 16%,15%, and 11%. One entertainment magazine featuring news about movies and radio stars gave a return of 14%, while another, more specialized movie magazine returned an 8% figure. A magazine of the Police Gazette variety, popular reading matter during the Depression, showed a 14% return. And a Sunday supplement resulted in a 13% return. A small town national weekly newspaper yielded a poor 3% conversion. However, a Midwest farm paper resulted in a 9% return. And a national veterans' magazine returned a 5% figure.

Dr. Robinson kept careful tabs on these figures, and when a publication showed that its responses weren't of sufficiently high quality, he would pull the ad. He also watched conversion results of inquiries from 80 radio stations, mostly on the west coast. Psychiana also used direct mail, usually a lead-generating circular with the same message: “I Talked with God. So Can You --It's Easy.” The circular promised that, “You may learn to use this fathomless pulsing, throbbing ocean of spiritual power just as you learn to use chemistry, physics or mathematics. Moreover you need make no outward show of religion.”

Many mailing lists were prospected, with the highest conversion rates—20%—coming from a lonely hearts list and a list of inquirers interested in “the power of thought.” The next list generated a return of 16%. These were mail order buyers of fish. (Always experimenting, Dr. Robinson had bought a very large list of these seafood lovers. He tested only 2,000—and of those who responded, 16% bought the lessons. He expanded the test and the return was much like the first. ) Other results included a Yoga list (14%). two astrological lists (12% and 11%). a Charles Atlas-like list (6%) and a parent's organization (6%). No conversions at all were received from inquiries from a high-fashion list.

Psychiana drew its membership mostly from Americans in the $3,000.00 a year income range—at that time a white collar salary. They came from all parts of the country and all religious denominations (to the fury of pastors who imagined their congregations dwindling). The follow-up series was extensive, regular and unremitting. A series of letters was mailed to an inquirer every week for at least two months. If there was no response, the name was rested for several months, when another series picked up the effort. In its heyday, Psychiana mailed out more than 500,000 letters a month. While the first set of lessons came in a series of 24, various other lengths were experimented with. There was a series of 12, 20, and even 75 --with a new set mailed every two weeks, so that contact was maintained with the student over a long period of time.

Lessons were written simply and warmly. One began:

“My dear Fellow Student.

You and I are about to begin a wonderful
journey together. We shall travel the most beautiful path you have ever known.
Little did you suspect that such a journey as this could be possible on this earth... “


From a theological viewpoint, Psychiana was an outgrowth of the New Thought movement, which preaches the power of positive thinking, without being a part of any formal religious tradition. The ideas of New Thought can still be found today in inspirational and motivational literature ranging from the works of Dr. Robert Schuller to the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale.

The cost of the lessons varied, and could be paid for in one lump sum, with a generous discount, or by installments over the period of the correspondence course. At one time, an honor system was tried, with the subscriber contributing whatever he thought the lessons were worth. Psychiana lost money that year and the experiment was dropped. However, those subscribers who couldn't afford to pay were sent the lessons without cost. And those serving prison sentences were also given the lessons free of charge.

Psychiana's experience with subscribers who didn't finish the course (and who didn't finish paying for it) was interesting. Nearly 75% of all subscribers stuck it out to the end, with less than one-quarter dropping it. There was a standing offer of a refund in full, but compared with the number of people who completed their payments, only a very small proportion ever asked for their money back. It was estimated that 75% of all students went on to “graduate work”, buying successive sets of lessons and the vast number of books that poured out of Moscow, Idaho.

Psychiana was both loved and loathed. It aroused a great deal of controversy, particularly among organized churches. Every student automatically became an associate member of the Psychiana religion, and ministers feared that they would lose parishioners to the mail order cult. It was investigated by Hearst newspaper columnist Westbrook Pegler, the postal authorities and the Better Business Bureau and given a clean bill of health.

With the exception of a brief attempt in 1938 to form two local groups, and two conventions held in Portland and Los Angeles, Psychiana was never made into a formal ecclesiastical organization, although it had been incorporated as a religious corporation in the state of Idaho, and Robinson had posed in church vestments for a photograph that adorned a wall in his office. Members were never put in touch with each other. And there were no ministers or missionaries, churches or chapels. Frank Robinson relied solely on advertising and direct mail to propagate his messa ge and convert the world.

On October 18, 1948, Dr. Frank B. Robinson died. Soon after, the ads disappeared from the magazines. The letters stopped. By 1950, the last students had completed their courses and were told that no more would be forthcoming. And Psychiana dwindled away. But even today, inquiries still arrive every now and then at the Moscow, Idaho, post office, from people who've seen that, promise of “I talked with God—and so can you!” in tattered old magazines. It really was a powerful ad.

©Copyright Martin Gross 2009

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How to Motivate Responses

How to Motivate Responses
By
Marty Gross


David C. McClelland of Harvard University identified in The Achievement Motive three types of motivating needs, which he classified as the need for power, the need for affiliation and the need for achievement.

Researchers have been probing motivation, motivators and satisfaction for many years, but the results of their studies have been applied mostly to management and general marketing problems, with direct marketing on the outside looking in, perhaps because of our field's essentially empirical and pragmatic nature. We depend on offers and benefits to lead people to do things, very often relying on those offers and benefits that have worked well for others or for earlier promotions. But in an increasingly expensive and competitive environment, this uninspired reliance on old standbys can yield disappointing results, especially when prospects are being bombarded with similar offers via every medium.


What's a direct marketer to do? Well, by acknowledging that the preponderance of persons who are being solicited are at best neutral about your product or service, and at worst, in tensely opposed to it, you'll realize how vital it is to select as precisely as possible those things-motivators-that will cause your targeted prospects to act as you want them to.


While there is a large body of motivation research, with such important psychologists and sociologists as Abraham Maslow, E. E. Lawler, J. L. Suttle, D. T. Hall and L. H. Porter identifying various psychological needs and the means of satisfying them, David Mc Clelland's research is especially useful for direct marketers because of its specificity. Once you have identified a target group, you can apply the specific basic motivating need that works best.


For instance, you can use McClelland's three categories of motivating drives--power, affiliation and achievement--in strategy to influence the behavior of individuals who best fit the following descriptions. (It should be remembered that the three needs discussed are to be found in all individuals in varying degree. We are talking about people who rate highest in specific categories.)


People who need power: According to McClelland's theory, people in this category are often teachers, public speakers, candidates for office, and the like. Very often they will occupy the second rung--as vice presidents, or assistant professors--but are looking for positions of leadership. If you’re interested in persuading them, you need to make an offer that can help them achieve their greatest ambition--to exercise influence and control.

The copy point that would appeal most to this group of outspoken and demanding people would have to be generously larded with facts they in turn can use to persuade others. For an offer to be successful, it would have to take into consideration their competitiveness and ambition. Examples and testimonials are devices that work well here.

In business-to-business promotions, do not overlook this group even if they are not direct purchasers. Their interest and even endorsement can be used to sway others, but their influence is not to be bought cheaply--so your proposition must be one they will see as helping them climb another rung of the ladder. A good market for self-help courses, seminars and self-improvement books.

People who need affiliation: These people are primarily concerned with avoiding rejection. They want to be members of a group and enjoy pleasant social relationships. You'll find them joining book clubs, church groups and fraternal orders. These gregarious people are prime candidates for credit card affinity group promotions, but the benefits should emphasize membership over convenience or service.

Because of their readiness to help people in trouble, they are excellent prospects for fundraising appeals. Again, the emphasis should be one on belonging, perhaps with an offer of associate membership (this works well with magazine subscriptions to this group as well).

People who need achievement: These people set challenging goals for themselves and enjoy developing new talents and skills. While somewhat restless, they will finish a task once they start it. They are analytical and responsible people who appreciate criticism. You'll find small-business owners and professionals in this group.

Any copy strategy has to take into account their sense of independence. Interestingly enough, McClelland discovered that the achievement drive can be taught through training programs emphasizing prestige and giving emotional support to class members.

Matching motivation with marketing objective has to take into account the complexity of individuals, and shouldn't be considered a panacea. However, this approach may well foster solutions to direct marketing problems that may have seemed insoluble up to now.

©Copyright Martin Gross 2009

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