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Measure what matters: Establishing cause & effect relationship between Return & Effort/Investment

This is an actual conversation between me and a dentist who is considering hiring me. I am recommending a non-trivial investment in Hubspot for a dentist with multiple locations and about $2.5M in revenue. The doctor has been looking at me for the last several years, has bought and read my books, read at least a dozen blog articles and over 20 recent page views before booking an appointment. After a good initial interview he invites me to come in for a video conference with his leadership team. He requested and now has a copy of my fee estimate and engagement letter. Before signing, he asked me this question:

eLaunchers.com becomes a PLATINUM Hubspot Solutions Partner in May 2020.

Something interesting happened after the start of the COVID crisis. We sold more Hubspot in 30 days after COVID lockdown than we had sold in the last 24 months.

Why did the market embrace Hubspot? Why Now? What is it about Hubspot and COVID? What is the correlation? When everyone is in distress and panic, when everyone is in 'shutdown' mode and mindset, why is my marketplace (which is made up of dentists, physicians, attorneys, financial advisors and information marketers with 1 to 4 million dollars in revenues) making a non-trivial capital investment in a technology infrastructure?

So this just happened.  A private client sent me a distress email over the weekend. Without going in gory details, here is what it was all about: "Parthiv, I was doing some calculations and I am not happy. I have zero confidence in our government's ability or intent to send me ANY money. Clock is ticking, new bills are showing up every week. Income producing activities are not happening and this emergency situation is dragging out beyond my tolerance. I need to MAKE some money NOW. DO SOMETHING. Make it rain and snap to it. I am tired, hungry, cranky and feel like I am broke". 

It's the morning of Sunday March 15th, 2020. It has not been a good week. We mourn the loss of thousands of lives lost worldwide to the new enemy of humanity: the Corona virus we all now know and hate. The stock market saw significant disruption and turbulence this week. Travel plans are being altered. Events are being cancelled, postponed or modified. Life as we know for the next 12 days, 12 weeks and 12 months will be different. The pandemic is changing how we work. Some of the changes are going to stick with us for a while, may be for life.

Call it whatever you want; 3D Mail, Direct Mail, Stand-Out Mail, tactile mail, whatever.  Mail that stands out in the mailbox and triggers an immediate response to pay attention to it is still king of delivery in my mind.

What does every marketing guru, maven, expert, or wannabe expert always say? The money's in the list. That is true, but with some caveats.  The strength of your email list is determined by several factors, including its cleanliness.

What Makes Authority Marketing Work

Part II

The other day I laid out some answers to What Makes Authority Marketing Work and we discussed the viewpoints of three people that have written books on Selling to the Affluent, and that of Authority.  I chose them because of the titles of their books, and the fact that both Kennedy, Witty and Shelton are figures often in the limelight of our world.

I suppose to enlighten the newbies and skeptics in the readership I should begin with a definition of direct response.  After all, it’s what we love to do, what we advocate, and what we insist upon from our clients.

Direct response is the second of two distinct means of strategy as it refers to marketing.  The first one is Branding – or mass marketing.  Direct is the one that makes the register ring, the number at the bottom of the P & L black and not red.

Who Says Direct Mail is Dead

That’s an easy one.  Those who say direct mail is dead is anyone that has never used it. Or, only used it once and failed.  Or, those who are under 35 years old would be my guess.

Well, direct mail is at a place in time where it is the ONLY way to make sure your message gets to the intended target.  With a 95% plus open rate, direct mail is a solid winner for getting your message to your audience.

Special Update: April 5, 2020

Dear Friends,

March 2020 was like no other March we have ever seen.  The beginning of March was awesome. Everything was on the up.  The stock market was up, revenue was up, profit was up, business was growing & there was prosperity everywhere!  March 2020 took all of that away from us & forcefully dropped us in survival mode.  We had to develop a plan to survive, recover and thrive.

Thankfully, we have a game plan.  In a collection of videos at www.elaunchers.com/sales you will be able to look, study & learn the system that I have been implementing since 1989.  My technology stack of choice has changed over the years but the process and the core philosophy of the system has never changed.

We want to let you know that we are here to help.  If you have already watched the videos on www.elaunchers.com/sales, let us schedule a call to review your prospecting & sales process and how you can systematize it.  (Some of the videos are published on this page too, for your convenience).

Sadly, COVID-19 has turned every business into a telephone-marketing & telephone-sales organization.  Let us share with you what has previously worked for us so you too can survive, recover and thrive into the remainder of the year to come.

Implementing CRM solutions has come a long way since when Personal Computers and MACs first hit the market.  In fact, I'd like to tell you the story about how I learned to love Customer Relationship Management.

Shortly after arriving in America, I went about trying to find a job, earn some money so I could feed myself and my wife.  Needless to say, we came to this great country with nothing in our pockets (well, maybe enough for bus fare).  I tried and tried, and one day, my world changed for the better. At the time, I didn't know by how much.