As
you well know, we never have enough leads to satisfy the desires
of our hungry sales force. In marketing we are continuing
to perform new and clever campaigns to solve this problem,
but as you well know, these programs cost up front money.
Also, despite our best efforts, we cannot always guarantee
short term returns on these investments. So we continue to
rely a lot on partners, referrals and extensive brain-numbing
cold-calling.
How
about a different approach for a change? We have a lot of
partners and contacts in our corporate database. What if we
sent key members of this group a set of our literature, and
asked them if they wanted to receive some nice finder's fees
- payable directly to them and not their companies? We'll
only be out a few dollars for some more brochures, until we
have real signed-up new customers - at which time we will
need to promptly pay the finder's fee to our "bird dogs".
But this is payment for guaranteed business, and we will have
saved the cost of all the cold calls.
This
is a very similar idea to the one you have in place for hiring
new employees. Any employee is paid a referral bonus for recommending
a candidate if that person joins us. And we end up saving
a fortune in recruiter's fees!
