In B2B Direct Mail Lead Generation, Sell Your Offer, Not Your Offering

In business-to-business direct mail lead generation, sell your offer, not your product.

This sounds like lethal advice to a sales person, and it is, to a salesperson responsible for closing sales and meeting quota. But your direct mail is not responsible for closing a sale but for opening a dialogue. Your goal with a B2B lead generation letter, postcard, dimensional mailer or email is not to persuade prospects to buy but to motivate them to respond.

This makes perfect sense in B2B direct marketing more than anywhere else, particularly when you are selling to large companies, where:

  1. Sales cycles are longer (months or years rather than days or weeks)
  2. The buying process is more involved (gathering information on solutions, establishing specifications, requesting proposals, interviewing promising suppliers, checking trade references, testing the product, haggling over terms and price)
  3. The buyer isn