Building trust with your audience

Take the time you need to build rapport

I receive email newsletters from a guy who's written some good marketing and sales books. He sells expensive seminars and CD collections, and I get relentless sales emails about them once or twice a week.

Here's the thing. Every one of his emails, which are constructed on rather old-fashioned direct mail principles, lights a giant fire of urgency. "The seminar is already 2/3 sold out!" "Once they're gone, they're gone!" "Don't miss out!" Everything is bolded, underlined, italicized, highlighted in flashing purple, anything he could find in his HTML for Aggressive Marketers manual.

If I don't bite at the first or second email, I very quickly tune this out. It clearly isn't true. OK, maybe this seminar will eventually sell out, but it's obvious that he's always got a seminar or a webinar or a CD product to sell. I can buy whenever I want to.

And his messages aren't building any rapport or trust. In fact, they're making him seem creepy and tiresome. I was interested in one of his packages--a collection of CDs and books that looked worthwhile. He's selling the package for about $200, which seemed fair to me. But the more email I get from him, the less inclined I am to buy.

The more I hear from him, the less I trust him.

Email is cheap. You can afford to build customer relationships at the right place. Credibility is expensive. Mean what you say.

Most people hate feeling like they're being sold. Every year more prospects tune out of this type of sales message.

To recapture their attention, be worth tuning in to.

Next action: If you use a sales letter, other direct mail piece, or sales email, look it over. First, get rid of all the boldface for anything other than a header. Next, get rid of all the underlining. And the p.s. and the fake handwritten notes. All that baloney tells your customers "I'm trying to pull a sales move on you."