Five years after joining, I sold Mr. Mailer, Inc., by that time, a flourishing direct mail processing and mailing list brokerage and I became a for-profit professional speaker which I practiced for another 17 years. I still pinch myself when I recall how many people actually paid me (and, still do) for opening my mouth.  

Toastmasters can take most of the credit for giving me the confidence I needed to stand and deliver over 1,917 paid speaking engagements during my professional speaking career. I tested much of the material for those speeches at my weekly Toastmasters meeting. If those I knew responded well to my message, I figured it was good enough to try out with paid audiences and most of the time, this was a correct assumption!  My weekly Winter Park Toastmasters meeting became my ‘learning laboratory’ and it still is after 32 years.  

It was there that I made lifetime friendships with some outstanding people from all walks of life. Preachers, poets, professors, lawyers, business professionals; actually all very positive, professionals who joined to become “Masters of the Spoken Word”, the slogan of our chapter which was founded that 1963 day JFK was assassinated.

This group made me truly appreciate the sacrifices of the generation, which came before me. Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation had many alumni in our chapter. One in particular, was my mentor. First, he repeatedly harassed me to come to my first Winter Park Toastmasters meeting in February 1978.

Like many over-worked new business owners, I was too: busy, overworked and tired. The meeting was too:  far, early and frequent. Actually, I was too chicken for fear I would have to stand and speak in front of strangers and probably embarrass myself.  My mentor, a successful insurance professional, Harold Lanigan, would not take no for an answer. True to his nature, he just kept on closing. Finally, I relented and attended, and that singular experience forever changed my life.

Harold’s signature WW2 stories galvanized our attention with his narratives of a 22-year-old pilot of a B-17 over the war-torn skies of Occupied France. In one losing encounter with an enemy plane, he and his crew parachuted out of their broken War bird at 11,000 feet. In a second two years later, piloting another plane, he was shot down and spent the rest of WW2 in a Nazi POW Camp.

Harold is gone but his stories, his character and his influence on me live on as my legacy. I am still a Winter Park Toastmaster. I still enjoy speaking and improving with each speech. Even more, I enjoy sharing my knowledge with our newer members, so they too can carry on the tradition of our great Toastmasters chapter.

This is one anniversary I have truly enjoyed celebrating. To learn more about Toastmasters International, go to www.toastmasters.org and maybe, someday you will thank me. FYI, if you visit the website soon, CLICK on “A Funny Thing Happened”…..and read my Talk about starting over! story.

So, what does this have to do with C-Suite Prospecting, the theme of this blog, for the coming months.  It takes courage and tenacity to step outside one’s comfort zone into the challenging arena of boardroom decision-makers especially if you have made a living calling on mid-level managers.  In this tight economy decisions formerly made by mid-level managers have been kicked upstairs to the COO and CFO’s desk.

I adopted this inspiring motto as my motivator to have the courage to take action when my entrepreneurial instincts whispered to me to test a new concept or analytic technique, rather than doing nothing and remaining inside my comfort zone.  

Megatrends, a 1982 best-seller, featured 10 trends most likely to change our lives. One research technique used to substantiate the author’s claims inspired me to apply it to my (then) new sales discipline of C-Suite prospecting. 

Content analysis was first used by military intelligence to collect and analyze public attitudes from printed newspapers. During WW2, military intelligence readers, conversant in Japanese, Italian and German studied newspaper editorials from combatant cities to interpret the psychological impact of bombing raids on civilian populations. The resulting increase in bombing raids was credited with shortening the length of the war and saving millions of Allied lives.

In 1983, I applied this technique to corporate annual reports to drum up business for my infant marketing consulting practice. A stockbroker provided current annual reports from multiple CEOs in the computers, communications and chemicals industries.

In one annual report, that of a Midwestern computer reseller, the CEO’s message to stockholders cited the ‘spoked-wheel concept’ repeatedly as his breakthrough initiative for his forthcoming nationwide expansion. There was absolutely no doubt who took credit for this concept!

When I solicited his business, I praised his brilliant ‘spoked-wheel concept’ in my letter and again, in my timely follow up phone call. His ego got the best of him, as he flew to Orlando a few days later, to meet with me to explore our potential to become one of his regional distribution points.

Since then content analysis techniques have enabled me to mine gems from corporate annual reports which have served me well to ethically access C-Suite deciders.  Is this a brazen misuse of content analysis?  Well, I prefer to credit intelligent risk-taking as inspired by the proud SAS motto: Who Dares…………………………Wins!

Those who occupy the C-suite have too little time and too many strategic decisions. The patience-threshold of those at the top of the corporate pyramid is very narrow. The successful ones depend on staff and trusted advisors to lighten their decision-making burdens so they can focus on what really matters most to fulfill their CEO, COO, CFO, CIO, CMO or other Chief duties and expectations.  

The conjunctive noun: value-adder carries obligations. The higher one climbs up the corporate ladder the greater the expectation of shared value. Deliver high value often and others will seek you.

Value, at this stage, is relevant, accurate, insight that enables Chiefs to consistently make informed, correct decisions. Time and outcomes reveal whether a decision is correct or incorrect.

Notice I said: insight, NOT information. This distinction is important. Information is a free, readily accessible commodity that may be true or false. Staff credentials carry the expectation of skilled Information-gleaning skills when accessing the World Wide Web and its seemingly infinite resources.

Insight is information with a dose of expertise from first-hand experience or substantiated secondary sources. Insight is the platinum standard in the corporate or C-Suite information game.

The expertise of the insight provider must be established as a credible, trustworthy source; otherwise, the shared insight of the bearer is of marginal value.  The very first challenge of a value-adder is to establish trust-worthiness as a reliable, consistently accurate insight-provider.

This process begins outside the domain of C-Suite occupants. Often, it begins with a subordinate. Sometimes it arrives on the wings of a peer.  Even someone in another company or institution who the C-Suite occupant knows and respects can be the bearer of relevant insight.

Becoming a value-adder of insightful information is a disciplined process one must acquire and repeatedly exercise to master. Recently, I overheard a truism of our instant gratification society:

“In a society where average is the standard few people are willing to sweat to achieve excellence.”

Becoming an excellent value-adder of insightful information sought after by C-Suite occupants requires sweat equity plus the application of disciplined rules. These I will share in my next blog posting.

A recently completed 2009 Boardroom survey confirmed an interesting trend. Decisions, formerly delegated to mid-level operations managers are now being made at the top or executive level. 

In this period of tight money, boardroom executives are frequently making decisions about interim financing.  With easy money sources drying up in our uncertain economy dominated by government bailouts and bank failures, senior executives across all sectors are handling finance-related activities.  At least, until some degree of consumer confidence is restored and demonstrated with more robust retail sales, which are unlikely to happen until 2011.

So, how do you begin this process?  Why not add this activity to your 2010 Business Resolutions? Make it a priority!  Add this 2010 Resolution: I will identify and call on executive level decision-makers who will be most affected by the use of my services and products.

Much of what you already know about successfully dealing with entry level and mid-level managers still applies. However, because the stakes are higher as you ascend the corporate ladder, you need to learn some new rules of engagement plus new realities.

While What is In It For Me (WIIFM) still rings true, there is a new caveat.  It is essential to identify who at the executive level will be most affected by choosing your products and services over your competitors’ or even deciding to budget money for your purchasing category, at all.

This person’s buy-in or sponsorship has several ramifications. If the company has never made this type of purchase, then finances set aside for other capitol equipment purchases may be reduced or denied entirely, if your category is determined to be more strategically important to achieve long-range goals.

Even the lingo or language of those who occupy the boardrooms is different. Strategic implications and concepts, which affect long-range goals and objectives, are the words of the day. People at this level are concerned with multi million dollar decisions which will affect their entire organization and how they will be scrutinized by corporate stockholders and their Boards of Directors.

In my next posting, I will share the details of how my understanding of one CEO’s concept landed me a training client worth several hundred thousand dollars and a referral for a training contract with an Industry Leader.

Mount Olympus in Greek Mythology  was the mystical domain of the Gods who ruled Ancient Greece.  It is a near perfect analogy  to the Corporate Suite (C-Suite)  domain. The world of CEO, COO, CFO, CIO, CMO (Chiefs) because it is these few senior decision-makers whom we business-to-business (b2b) sales professionals must gain repeated, ethical access to if we are to control our sales destinies inside corporations.

Repeated, ethical access requires learning a specific skill set to be invited back into their domains because we have something of value to add or a significant, unique contribution to make.  Once we earn their trust  (and, earn it we must)  we are approaching the status of a ‘Trusted Advisor’. OK, enough said about ‘Trusted Advisor’ status for now.  I am getting way ahead of myself!

Since beginning this blog in March 2008, my focus has been the tactical aspects of business-to-business  (b2b) sales prospecting. I make no apologies for my posting irregularity. I feel as strongly now about my then-promise of only posting when I have something worthwhile to contribute.

These Rules still apply especially in our congested blogging community. Like many serious peers, I resent time-intrusion techno annoyances, such as Twitter, which interrupt my concentration whether I am working or playing. Twitter, to me, is still an annoying, ringing phone I am too busy to answer!

In June 2009, I ranted about Twitter, in my “Twitter, Twatter, Does It Really Matter?” blog. The overwhelming response to my commentary was from ardent Tweeters who were in favor of hanging my cyber entrails from a pole in the Internet Town Square.  God love them! They are entitled to their opinions but so am I! While Twitter has gained in popularity, it is just too real-time for me and not a technology I choose to embrace at this time.

Technology to me is like a shovel in my tool shed. It is there when I need it. I am still amazed when I see busy executives wearing two or more PDA’s, cell phones or pagers draped on their belts.  They are like newborn infants with their umbilical cords tethered to their mommas.  It’s their choice but not mine!

OK, back to my 2010 topic focus of Exploring the Fascinating World of C-Suite Access. I have received many requests to share effective techniques for gaining repeated, ethical access to C-Suite decision-makers, so this is our 2010 starting point.  I am excited and I hope you will be too with my heavily researched content. Please feel free to post comments, at will.

Certainly, I have the Recession to thank for my very positive turn of events. During good times very few marketing decision-makers need a guy to increase sales when sales are booming. But, when the ‘cupboard is bare’ as it has been for the past year, I have been busier than a one-armed paper hanger!

Sadly, a few of these inquiries waited too long and found themselves already drowning in negative cash flow or worse having their assets repossessed. They just waited too long to take corrective action.

I’m not a miracle-worker. Granted, I’ve been fortunate to account for some very exciting turn-arounds but only because the opportunities and circumstances were aligned with my expertise and skills and the clients followed through with my timely recommendations.

The old definition of luck of ‘when opportunities meet the prepared mind’ may seem trite but it’s true and I have my father and my old high school Latin Teacher, John Bell, to thank for his often quoted, “everything one experiences in life is grist for the mill”.

For years, I labored diligently and stayed the course pursuing my laser-focus of mastering the sales prospecting process rather than wandering off course and trying to become all things to all potential clients who needed presentation, closing, and customer service skills training.

Make no mistake; many times I was tempted to accept sales training assignments outside of my area of expertise to pay the bills. I stayed the course and remained focused on b2b (business to business) sales prospecting and new business development challenges and now, I’m thrilled to say, it was the right thing to do!

This past weekend, I finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, the best-selling ‘success’ book, which was filled with countless stories and affirmations of why it pays to become an expert in a discipline and how where we come from and how those around us are truly responsible for our successes in life.

“I chose the path less travelled and it has made all the difference’ Robert Frost’s memorable poetic words ring true, again. My purpose with this blog posting is to remind those who are at the crossroads of their careers to pursue a life’s work they genuine enjoy and a career where their expertise can be counted on to deliver relevant and timely value to others.

Years ago, Zig Ziglar, whom I once met at a National Speakers Association Convention, advised me to follow my heart and do well what I enjoy most even though the compensation (at that time) may not meet my expectations because eventually I would triumph and be paid what I am worth.

Those ‘years ago’ are now and I’m thankful I followed his sage advice!

Since joining their Winter Park Chapter in February 1978, the Chapter has grown to 65 members and Toastmasters International has added 100,000 members and robust chapters in nearly every country.

Toastmasters International vision statement empowers people to achieve their full potential and realize their dreams. Through our member clubs, people throughout the world can improve their communication and leadership skills, and find the courage to change.

I joined to improve my public speaking skills but I stayed for 31 years because of the camaraderie and total pleasure I experienced from nurturing others to improve their communication skills. Lifetime friendships have evolved from my active participation in Winter Park Toastmasters. I met my CPA, travel agent, doctor, financial advisor and several business services-providers plus, many of my best social friends at the chapter.

My chapter has become my ‘learning laboratory’ where I have:

• Tested new speech material for my paid sales training seminars and workshops.
• Adapted skills from impromptu speaking venues to enhance my training techniques.
• Applied many communications tools to make my presentations more memorable.
• Acquired the confidence to communicate to 10 or 1,000 audience attendees.
• Learned how to apply humor to anchor my key presentation points.
• Expanded my vocabulary and broadened my appreciation of other languages.

How has my Toastmasters’ Training improved my phone-use skills? Every Toastmasters meeting agenda includes an impromptu speaking segment called Table Topics. During this portion of each meeting, members who aren’t scheduled to participate in the week’s meeting are called upon to speak extemporaneously. The meeting Table Topics Master calls on a member, who will stand and then be given a topic to speak about for 1 minute.

Now, 1 minute may not sound like a very long time but it can be quite daunting to converse on a topic one has had no opportunity to prepare, especially in front of a room full of members.

This impromptu speaking opportunity is excellent training for sales people who use the phone to cold call or who are conducting scheduled phone communications. Its excellent training that prepares one to think on their feet and to respond to the unexpected question or phone objection by the other phone party which often occurs during a phone conversation.

Toastmasters Membership is $95 annually, plus weekly chapter meeting dues and nominal fees for Toastmasters International Training Manuals. Weekly chapter attendees have the opportunity to polish their Table Topics skills where repeated practice leads to confidence and communications ease over time.

Whenever I have been exposed to sales training client sales people who lack communications skills or who shudder at the thought of using the phone to speak with strangers, I encourage them to attend a Toastmasters International chapter meeting in their vicinity.

Hands down, Toastmasters International training is the best investment to develop one’s communications skills. Once one becomes a chapter member, they will have the opportunity to learn, by doing, which is the most effective way to anchor their newly acquired learning skills.

Go to www.toastmasters.org to find a chapter and to participate in this wonderfully relevant and rewarding learning experience.

Last week, I cold-called 90 Community College decision-maker Administrators and spoke with 57 of them. My benefit-laced calling script referenced a website that would quickly answer their questions about an exciting new seminar created exclusively for their back-to-school entrepreneurs. 

This is one of the fastest growing community college student populations.  Most of these are 40+ year old recently unemployed white collar workers who have decided to become self-employed rather than suffer this same job loss during the next Recessionary cycle. Like locusts, they have descended on community colleges in massive number throughout the nation.

I seldom cold call.  As a mail first, call second advocate for 32 years, I seldom break my own rules. I also consider myself a leading edge tactical sales trainer so I cannot afford the luxury of resting on my past accomplishments.

Staying current and relevant means getting my hands dirty, in the sales trenches, experiencing what my b2b sales trainees experience as they go about their daily and weekly sales prospecting activities.

Had I NOT coaxed those of the 57 who were not responding on their cell phones and who had Internet access, at their fingertips, it would have been very difficult to create a visual image or word picture of my calling proposition.  Difficult, but not impossible.

This is the strongest argument FOR mailing first before conducting an initial follow up phone call. An effective mailing sets the stage for the phone call. It never tells the whole story! The mailing should only tease the target prospect to want to hear more during the announced, expected call.

Having a website which features quantified testimonials and very specific program benefits enables one to sell very effectively when cold-calling, since an electronic brochure is a timely tool.

So, if you plan to conduct cold calls, make sure your website is easy to navigate and visitor-friendly. Recently, my website, www.salesprospectingexpert.com was face lifted with this process in mind.

Those who go to my Contact Us page can, by providing minimum information, receive a PDF download with itemized details for whichever program they select. It’s a simple, non-intrusive method for responding to all inquiries. It works well and it’s generating more inquiries than I ever anticipated.

1. To transition from printed mailing piece to spoken, opening dialogue.
2. The person conducting the follow up phone calls felt less like a cold-caller and more like a selling professional who is following up with a promised call, on a tasteful, relevant direct mailing! 

The most frequent question raised by attendees at my sales prospecting seminars is: how do you know this copy and this greeting card selection will work?

My answer: I do not, but I do understand Human Nature. If you do something tastefully different with a whiff of imagination and you make a relevant point, mailed recipients will most often respond in a positive fashion when you call them.

Personalized greeting card mailing campaigns eliminate the cold-calling stigma. No matter how call reluctant or green a sales person,  this process has repeatedly achieved remarkable results.

In the course of my 32 years of conducting thousands of client direct mailing campaigns, I have dropped a few real direct mail bombs! 

For one client many years ago, who was selling $500,000 ocean-front condominiums, we created a very unique mailing piece with fine silica sand to remind recipients of their beautiful new ocean-front addresses nestled on the shores of one of Florida’s most pristine beaches. The accompanying 4-color glossy mailing piece and matching copy were brilliantly creative and printed on the most expensive paper.

The recipients never received their mailings! We failed to print ‘hand-cancel’ on each envelope. The Post Office sorting machines at the mail processing center ruptured some of the interior envelopes and literally ‘ground to a halt’ when the fine silica sand jammed their sensitive gears!  It happened with a few pieces so equipment operators shut the system down before irreparable damage occurred. 

When someone else handles the entire personalized message preparation with variable name-insertion for multiple addressee mailings and mail processing is completely automated including stuffing, addressing, affixing first-class stamps, sealing the envelopes and mailing;  it is a very welcomed relief.

Pictures and cartoon drawings of animals work well on greeting card covers.  The desired response is a person opening the folded greeting card to peek  inside.  One of my most effective greeting cards pictures a cat looking down at a tiny mouse inches from its nose. “Someone not doing their job?” is the caption copy.  Inside the card copy is: “We will”!

Suppose you were trying to get the attention of Information Technology (IT) Managers at Fortune 100 corporate data centers?  This serious group of decision-makers is under constant pressure. But, they are still people who enjoy a humorous pause from their stressful daily regimen. 

Back to the cat and mouse stare-down greeting card with “Someone not doing their job?” Add a 17-word sentence, inside the card, conveying the message your company “can do the job”.  Then, a second greeting card received by this same person 5 days later with an IT Manager’s testimonial quotation serves to reinforce your ‘can do’ theme. 

And, 5 days later a third, and final greeting card, arrives with another ‘can do’ statement and an announcement to expect a phone call, soon.  This is all it takes. Three folded greeting cards inside envelopes with affixed first class stamps, direct-addressed, not a label-address on the envelopes.

Our 2006 Test Mailing response rate of 83% was no accident. Proof: multiple, 3-peat greeting card mailings to b2b decision-makers in 55 industries since 2006 with response rates of seldom less than 62%. 

In our Age of e-mail and v-mail, this is proof snail-mailings thoughtfully executed can very effectively set the stage to enable sales professionals to ethically access decision-making prospects, on the first call.

If you are inclined NOT to experiment, buy my $40 Power Prospecting® eBook. This process is well documented and includes the original 83% response mailing campaign conducted in 2006. You will also find a set of follow up phone calling scripts with all working forms and a chapter of expectations and reality performance yardsticks to guide you through the process.

Now: But, 1 year ago, more of us than anticipated did the American Thing. We dug our heels into the dirt, rolled up our shirt sleeves and did the heavy lifting. We did what Americans do best when others doubt us: we demonstrated our true grit!

Here is the true story of one small business owner who demonstrated the guts to grind it out and succeed in this tough 10 month economic period. He did it without any fanfare, government handouts or help. He prospered, in an industry which experienced a 56% failure rate of his service-provider peers, serving a former Top 5 Florida Growth Industry which has experienced an 81% decline since December 2008.We met in November 2008. A business associate who knew us both brought us together.

He described it as: the ideal marriage. The client needed a marketing guy with fresh ideas and a proven track record for making positive change become a bankable reality. I needed a new challenge, in a new industry plus, a client with the ability to pay me and the courage to step outside his comfort zone to try something new.

Together, we made it happen for less than an investment in 1 Chevy from the New General Motors. Our process increased his monthly sales 273% over the same 2008 period. He added new jobsite work crews while his competition’s assets were being auctioned on the courthouse steps. 

He insisted I add his testimonial to my website at: www.salesprospectingexpert.com. Remember folks, ‘it ain’t boasting if you make it happen’, in the homespun words of FSU’s most famous football coach. The process began with a quality mailing list of ideal target prospects.  So, what’s ideal? Ideal prospects were large enough to weather the peaks and valleys of this economic storm with the ability to pay plus, a continuing need for my client’s services.

We needed a ‘scrubbed’ list of named decision-makers with their current business addresses and phone numbers. There were 2 sources. One, at the Florida Department of Professional Regulation in Tallahassee which maintains the database of all licensees, permitted to offer these services inside the state. The other, and the one we chose, was the statewide membership directory of their professional trade association.

 It was harder to get and it took 3 months of happy hour drinks to get one printed directory. Next, we assigned a telemarketer to call every ‘pre-selected’ name in the directory to correct any changes or inaccuracies. This ‘scrubbing’ process, no matter how time-intensive, was critical to the success of our mailing campaign.

 During my 32 years in business, I can name, from memory, each mailing list vendor who didn’t bother to verify the correct spelling of my name. You would be shocked at the number of misspelled versions of my name, Gordie Allen!  Spelling someone’s name correctly demonstrates respect and professionalism. It takes minutes but it’s worth it, especially when you may ask this person to take action on your behalf at some future time.

In my next blog, I’ll discuss the mailing campaign which led to the resulting 273% monthly sales increase.

 OK, it’s your turn! Please share your good, bad or even ugly mailing list experiences.