Hi All

I have been considering taking a new approach to Direct Marketing my business and i was hopeing to get some people's ideas and opinions on some parts of it.

Firstly the Form letter i plan to send out is offering each business a free needs anlyasis. I have attached a copy as that you can see what it about and such. So to answer you will probably need to read it first.

What i am wondering though is if as a Small Business Owner you received this letter what sort of information would you be expecting to see in a report based on the findings.

Some things i have though of would include
1 - Computer Upgrades or changes,
2 - Network upgrades
3 - equipment replacement or changes suggested.

Really what would be your reason for accpeting a free Analysis like this. Maybe you want to know "Why is my computer slow and doesnt always connect to the internet?" Or somthing, I look forward to your replys.

Attached Files

Sales Letter 1.doc (25.5 KB, 59 views)

__________________
Joel Brown - Orion Networks
Techie-Central - Forums | SEOPTIMISA
Books | PHP

I take it your looking at a local or regional mailing? I would see security as the biggest risk. Also although I shouldn't be throwing out ideas to everyone , I think IT disaster planning for small to medium sized companies is what is going to really take off. If you want to discuss it drop me a pm.

__________________
http://mba-forums.com

Actually Disaster Planning is to some part somthing i have considered different really to complete plans but through some strange thing i was thinking. I mean i come up with different areas i could offer things to business but i just dont know how to approach them, or how to write the offer into a letter. will PM a little later tonight.

__________________
Joel Brown - Orion Networks
Techie-Central - Forums | SEOPTIMISA
Books | PHP

It would entirly depend on how old the computers are in the particular company. Say 2 companies receive that letter, Company one purchased there computers 2 years ago, and Company two purchased there computer 4 years ago. I would not expect to Company one would respond but company two probably might.

To change it though to suit a situation like you suggest Matt only takes minimal effort. Because really the word upgrade is only used once in the first sentence. Bewlow i have reworded the first sentance to give the letter a meaning like you suggest.
In reality no letter is going to catch everyone's attention but you just have to find a letter that will catch a certain group of businesses, and continue this repeating pattern, every 90days to make sure people dont forget your company.

I am still really looking for suggestions on what people would expect to see or like to see in a report after having such a service completed at their business.

__________________
Joel Brown - Orion Networks
Techie-Central - Forums | SEOPTIMISA
Books | PHP

Most small businesses want to know if you can make it run faster without adding hardware. If you know how to tweak windows to make it run faster then you can simplify your offering. Say soemthing like "Give us 30 minutes and will increase the speed of your computer by 10%".

I say this because free needs analysis suggests something is wrong with the computers they have which isn't necessarily true. The other connotation is that your going to leave them with a list of things to buy.

What do you think about spinning it the "faster" way?

Well one of the main problems with that is that it is not giving them somthing to consider. Yes it will definately get a bigger responce i beleive but only because it is free service which may benfit.

The other thing that it cause is that you cannot gaurentee a speed increase and even if you can the increase is not somthing that is easily measured. Especially with Windows 95 and 98 and ME it is very difficult to optimise them and in some cases you carnt. So where as i could go in do a needs anaylasis and give them a meaning ful report. If i was to go in and say i will optimise your computer and then even with all efforts put in no better perfoamance may come.

It really i think leads to giving clients an illusion of what may happen, Eg i can look at a computer for 5 minutes gauge the performance then optimise and see a slight difference but every single user is going to be expecting more then a slight difference and in some cases it may even run slower in there normal work environment.

__________________
Joel Brown - Orion Networks
Techie-Central - Forums | SEOPTIMISA
Books | PHP

The needs analysis is free as well. The difference is the benefit of using your product/service. If the letter's focus is a measurable benefit it will have a far greater ROI then just telling potentials the product/service.

I am not suggesting any "illusion" because no business should be based on a lie, but a measurable benefit, any benefit that is a direct result of using the product/service. Performance tuning is a very measurable benefit based off of time. It's what I have done for the past 7 years on AIX/UNIX servers. Regardless of what you choose if you can't measure the benefit of using it to your customers aside from "it's better" then it won't achieve the success it could.

The psychology of buying is that an emotion is what motivates someone to purchase and then they justify the purchase logically so start with the benefit of a product/service as a result of using it.

The main part of the focus of a needs anaylisis is to give management of a company the full picture of what there network, computers, servers, printers, need done. So when i would be doing this analysis i will go through and ask staff members what problems they have and such.

Things like this computer is 4 years old and crashes 5 times a day is somthing that can be meausred by putting in a new computer, a computer that old when it crahses will probably take 5-10minutes to come back up and starting using plus whatever time is needed to redo what ever work was being done. So the mesaure of benifit there can be huge it could save the person dogin the work over 4 hours a week, giving them time to get other work done.

Then there might be a printer that is a couple of years old and takes a minute to warm up and prints at 10 pages a minute and gets a paper jam every hour or so. Replacing that that could save up to an hour of time waiting for printouts, give better quality printouts, and more so print up to 2 or 3 times faster.

Everything that is done in a needs analysis can have a very measurable effect on performance, if implemented. The report is completed as a independent assement of what they have, what problems are occuring, and what could be changed to improve individual pc performance, and overall network and systems performance, plus what processes they are currently working with which could be improved by creating a process for them on the computer.

The whole part of giving prices for each item is included, but as it says in the letter they are under no obligation to purchase all or any part of it, the pricing is there as a guide and if they want to go ahead they can.

To many extents i beleive what can be done with taking part os a needs analysis and implementing them will have a lot bigger impression then what you could get from optimising. You could speed 30 minutes optimising the heck out of a computer and have no performance gain because it still only has 64mb of ram or a PII 200 processor. Where as you could spend $600 and have a new computer on the desk which will look better, and perform upto 2 or 3 times better.

__________________
Joel Brown - Orion Networks
Techie-Central - Forums | SEOPTIMISA
Books | PHP

Then your letter should sell the benefit not the product. This seems like it is going to go around in circles your best bet would be to get a book about writing sales letters.

You don't sell cereal, you sell "lowering cholestorol" (cheerios)
You don't sell a candy bar, you sell "satisfaction" (snickers)
You don't sell shipping you sell "convenience" (UPS)


BTW, optimizing does not change a machine that is already bound by a resource which is what your last statement is talking about. Those are two different things, apples and oranges.