How do you create a person that wants to talk to you? Why do I use the word create? Because let's face it, no one wants to talk to us. They don't want to hear about our great investment or service. They are suspicious of us and our motives. Caveat emptor.

So we actually have to take someone that is skeptical and help them towards wanting to talk to you. How?

First, we have to realize the old sales adage:

They don't care how much you know... until they know how much you care.

How do we show that we care? How do we show our friends or family that we care? We contact them right? Well the easiest way to contact them is with a phone call right? But you can only make 20 or 30 calls an hour and you can only make that many because you are going to get the answering machine most of the time.

Plus by the end of the day you are going to be sick and tired of calling and you'll be ready for the funny farm by the end of the week.

What's the alternative? Very focused...Very personal direct mail. If you do it right, you can have a conversation with 1000's of people in just one week. Try that with phone calls!

How do you do it right?

1. Make it sound personal—send a targeted message to the prospect or client. If they are retired make sure the message has something to do with retirement issues. Or make it even better by targeting even more precisely...address it to the woman and make it about retirement issues for women...Or make it better yet by targeting even further...address it to the woman who retired from a teaching job...IF YOU GET IT DOWN THIS FAR...YOU'LL BLOW THE DOORS OFF YOUR PREVIOUS LEAD GENERATION!

2. Make it look personal—send your message in a manner that ensures them that you care about them as an individual...send it handwritten. It takes time and effort to write a handwritten note...when you spend time and effort on someone they know that you care.

3. Get it Read—The best message in the world is worthless if nobody hears it. You must make sure that your direct mail gets read. There is only one way that I know that guarantees your direct mail will be read. 100% of handwritten notes get read. There is something magical about a handwritten note, you can't throw it without first reading it.

When you follow the 3 suggestions above, you are going to see huge returns on investment.

Lastly, here’s the secret about direct marketing that virtually no one in the financial industry understands. In order to acquire new clients – no matter how good the offer is, a single exposure to a given group of prospective clients, it will have minimal effect. But multiple repeated exposures will have a positive effect disproportionate to the number of exposures.