You all know how I love my stories! Here’s a great one from sales trainer and speaker John Costigan. He follows it up with some excellent action steps that will help you to get the meeting and close the sale.

Here’s John’s Story:

I had the joy and honor of sitting down with Kevin Eastman, the Boston Celtics Assistant Coach at our office in Raleigh last week. We’ve known each other for a year now and they truly don’t make ‘em any better. After a productive and enlightening business discussion, he spent some time helping my son on the basketball court. It was a great thrill!

But here’s the story: Kevin mentioned that his own son Jake had just committed to play basketball for Bradley University under the tutelage of Head Coach Jim Les. As we spoke about the recruiting process Kevin had this comment: “One thing that really stuck out for me during this process was the personal handwritten letter they sent to me…not my son, but just to me. It was very high touch and different than any other response we had received.”

Point: If this works for recruiting a basketball player and earning a parent’s trust, why wouldn’t it work for you with your customers and prospects?

Action Steps:

Get off email. Take the extra time and send something “manually” or snail mail to your prospect or client. We get so lost in email, it’s actually embarrassing. Yes, email is an incredibly effective way of quickly communicating to confirm meetings, share information etc…. But if you find yourself typing more than…heck, more than this blog post, you’re missing the boat.

Be different than your competition! Find an edge, personalize your message. Nothing is more personal than writing, not typing, but writing a note to someone. Think about how you open your mail when you arrive home. You have gobs of junk mail, bills, etc… Then the one handwritten letter comes up and sticks out from the rest. Most of us will open that first, or last. Not in the middle. You either set down all the mail you have and go to it immediately, or throw out the junk mail then sit down and focus on the personalized note.

So next time someone wants you to send out info, OR you are proactively trying to get into an account, handwrite a note and attach it to market information, not product information and you will increase your chances of them reading it way more than an email.

John Costigan, president and founder of John Costigan Companies, conducts sales training classes around the world for a list of clients that reads like a "who's who" in the corporate world, including Hewlett Packard, SAS, Exxon-Mobile, Standard Register, Tommy Hilfiger, Concerto, and Slazenger Golf. Visit his site at www.JohnCostigan.com.

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