3-D Show and Tell

Prospects receive countless telephone calls and emails every day from eager salespeople who can’t wait to show them their products. So how do you stand out from the mass of contacts they face daily? Think 3-D.

“I want to find out as much about the companies and the prospects as I can,” says Floyd Hurt, president of the Rousing Creativity Group in Charlottesville, VA. “I’m looking for a way to intrigue them and pique their interest.”

Hurt encourages his clients to use three-dimensional objects of all sorts. “For instance, if I were selling fleet tires, I might take an inner tube and blow it up really big and use it as some kind of device,” he says. “Or I might send prospects one of the little things that lets the air out of a tire and say, ‘Don’t let your marketing plan get deflated.’ I always look for a three-dimensional way to make a contact, because the more I can do that, the better off I’ll be.”

Hurt also cites the example of a salesperson who had spoken to a prospect once on the telephone. Afterward, however, the prospect wouldn’t return the salesperson’s calls. The salesperson decided to do something different. “He went to Radio Shack and spent $37 on a telephone with those big buttons,” Hurt explains. “He sent the telephone to the prospect with instructions on dialing him and a list of some of the benefits the prospect would get by calling him. He got in the door with a three-dimensional item that intrigued the guy because it was different from what everyone else did.”

Floyd Hurt, author of Rousing Creativity: Think New Now! (Crisp Publications, 1999), offers training in creativity, sales, presentations, closings and marketing. For information, call 1-800-844-6568, visit www.rousingcreativity.com, or email rousing_info@rousingcreativity.com.