What happens to those hundreds or thousands of letters you send to prospective clients every year? My guess is that 90% or more of the recipients simply crumple up those letters and toss them in the trash. But what if that letter came back? Wouldn’t that be a hoot? Wouldn’t that catch the recipient’s attention?

That is exactly what I was thinking when I came up with the idea of using a crumpled letter as one of my key marketing tools. For years I would send letters to people who were trying to sell their homes themselves-whom we in the real estate business refer to as For Sale By Owners or FSBOs-and to sellers whose listing contracts had expired. In the letter, I would explain that I knew the homeowner’s listing contract with the other agent was about to expire or that the person had been trying to sell her home for several months without success, and offering my services as a listing agent.

These letters generated some extra business, but I was not getting nearly the conversion rate that I had expected. I knew that most of the people receiving my letters were going to do the same thing as I do when I receive similar sales letters; they were going to crumple them up and throw them away.

Tired of spending time sending out letters that were just going to end up in the trash, I decided that I would take action whenever someone tossed my letter in the trash or simply ignored me. I would resurrect that letter and use it to my marketing advantage.

About four days after I sent out the original letter, if the prospect had not gotten in touch with me, I would send out a nearly identical letter, but this time, I wadded it up first, smoothed it out a bit, and wrote with a red marker at the bottom of the letter, “Please Don’t Throw Me Away Again!” I inserted the letter in a plain envelope, addressed it by hand, and mailed it to the original recipient.

When I started this new marketing program, I saw an instant boost in conversion rates. I was receiving more than double the responses to my crumpled letter than I had ever received from the originals. Some people thought that I had actually dug through their trash to find the letter and resend it! Even prospects who knew it was a marketing trick thought it was clever and were willing to hire me. It showed that I would stop at nothing to sell their homes!

What made the crumpled letter approach so successful was that it was a unique twist on an old strategy. I was still using traditional direct-mail marketing, but I had discovered a way to freshen it up and make it new. People who were so accustomed to tossing unopened letters in the trash took notice of the crumpled letter. That’s the one letter in the whole stack that they did read.

I employ a similar tactic whenever I deliver marketing materials to prospects prior to meeting with them. Instead of sticking them in a plain brown envelope or one with my company’s logo on it, I place the materials in a FedEx or DHL envelope and drop the package off at the prospect’s home, leaving it inside the screen door.

When the owners arrived home from work, they drive up, get out of their car, collect their mail and perhaps their newspaper, open the screen door, and see a package from FedEx or DHL. Now which envelope are they going to open first? I can almost guarantee that it is going to be that unlabeled FedEx or DHL envelope. The shipping companies do not mind, because you are advertising for them, and the people receiving the package are usually delighted to receive a little surprise when they get home from work.

I use a similar approach with e-mail messages, adding a catchy description to the Subject line and offering something of value in every message I send out-my signature, containing my name and contact information and a list of Web sites where the recipient can go to find out more about me and what I do. Send me an e-mail at RalphRoberts@RalphRoberts.com, and I will respond, so you can see exactly how I use my signature to draw attention and opportunities my way. I also regularly broadcast e-mail messages with valuable insights or gifts attached, such as inspirational or entertaining poems or presentations.

Remember, the ultimate goal of any correspondence you send out is to have the recipient read it. Just think of the number of messages that an average person receives every day from newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, e-mail, Web sites, postal mail, and while driving to and returning home from work. Ask yourself, “Why would anyone want to read my letter?” If you expect someone to read your letter, you had better come up with a good answer.

It is not every day that I am asked to fly to the African continent for a speaking engagement, but that is exactly what I will be doing this weekend when I head to Nairobi, Kenya, where I will join my good friend and fellow motivational speaker, Chip Cummings, at the 2007 Nairobi Wealth Expo.

As one of the Expo’s Keynote Speakers, I will be speaking to attendees (between 3,000-5,000 people) about advanced selling techniques and how to walk like a giant and sell like a madman.

I am honored to be attending this event, which affords Kenyans with an opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship, best practices in business management, Internet marketing, investing in Real Estate, and more. For additional information on the event, please visit the Nairobi Wealth Expo website.

You reach a plateau in any challenging endeavor-physical training, a weight-loss plan, marriage, career, you name it. In sales, you may find that after several months of steadily increasing volume, sales level off. No matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to break through to the next level. Something is limiting your upside.

When you begin to feel that sales have flat-lined, take the following five steps to blow the lid off of any upside limitations:

• Identify your best customer.
• Build relationships.
• Hire an assistant.
• Expand time.

Identifying your best customer

Every salesperson has a best customer-one who values your products and services, calls you first, allows you to do what you do best, and exposes you to new opportunities. To find more best customers, single out your best customer and then find out:

• Who your best customer is. Study the demographic-age, sex, race or ethnicity, household income, geographical location, and so on.
• What your best customer does. What does your customer do? How was she doing it when she met you? How did you help her do it better? This gives you a clearer idea of where to look for your next best customer and what to offer.

Identify the top seven sources for getting more customers like your best customer-referral, networking, Internet marketing, print advertising, and so on. Where would you need to look and what would you need to do to get more customers like this?

Don’t hesitate to fire your worst customers…nicely, of course. A bad customer wastes time and resources that you could better spend by serving your best customers.

Building relationships

In business, almost everything is quantifiable except the relationships that are ultimately responsible for success. You can’t really measure relationships, but they’re the collective force that generates new ideas, draws people together to execute those ideas, and functions as the infrastructure for developing, advertising, marketing, and distributing the products and services spawned from those ideas. Yet, salespeople and other business professionals often limit their opportunities by focusing too much on the bottom line and overlooking the true force behind sales and profits-relationships.

When you think relationships in terms of sales, most people naturally think of “customer.” That’s only one of the four “C” words you should consider. As a salesperson, tending to relationships in all four C categories builds the strongest foundation for success:

• Company: What’s good for your company is good for your customers, colleagues, and community, and for you, as well. Look for opportunities to improve your company’s success.
• Colleagues: Your colleagues include everyone you work for and with and anyone who works for you. Do whatever you can to surround yourself with the best people, and then make them better. Partner with colleagues to tap the power of synergistic relationships.
• Customers: Every customer who fails is a customer lost. Team up with your customers to make them as successful as they can be. This doesn’t mean simply placating them. A customer or client often needs to be challenged to make a positive change.
• Community: Dynamic, vibrant communities are places where people want to invest and spend money. By investing time and resources in building and bettering communities, you establish a dynamic, ever-growing consumer base.

Hiring an assistant

When I set a goal to sell 300 houses in a single year, I immediately realized that I couldn’t do it on my own. To achieve my stated goal, I had to outsource the most time-consuming chores and focus on what I was really good at-selling. I decided to deal with clients and hire others to answer the phones, shuffle the papers, and tie up the loose ends.

You’re not responsible for doing everything. You’re responsible for making sure everything gets done. To optimize your time, take the following steps:

• Write down a comprehensive list of everything you do at work and at home.
• Highlight any tasks someone else could do faster, better, or for less money.
• Group tasks that are related and assign each group a job title.
• Hire people to complete those tasks and treat them well.
• Remember, if you don’t have an assistant, you are one.

Expanding time

Time is relative to how much you get accomplished in that amount of time. If I can get twice as much done in half the time it takes someone else, I’ve just expanded time by a factor of four.

When I discovered that time was limiting the number of houses I could sell, I began double-booking appointments. Instead of showing homes to one set of buyers, I invited two sets of buyers to drive around and look at houses. I loaded them into my Suburban and showed them the same houses. I usually sold two houses on the same trip, and never once did two couples decide on the same house.

After this accidental success, I purchased a 16-passenger van. We started marketing this new house-hunting approach, and people loved it. I was driving three or four or five families around at a time to look at houses. During the house-hunting tour, I would call back to the office on my cell phone and have an assistant prepare the paperwork. On my best day, I actually sold 14 houses from the van. This became so successful that we eventually had entire convoys out looking at homes.

In his book Illusions, Richard Bach writes, “Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.” When you feel boxed in, think outside the box. Shake things up a bit and try something new. You’re likely to surprise yourself at just how much upside you really have.