[Music] chapter 12 two rules for snagging the intentional area of Vito's brain I sent 2,400 letters and I got 1,600 appointments with Vito a selling to Vito alumni Gary B Gary is one of my star students as his eye-popping numbers suggest in this chapter I'll teach you how to create a single piece of Correspondence that will yield comparable or perhaps even better response rates than the ones Gary is enjoying to begin with we're talking about that old-fashioned pre-internet communications medium Gary used to generate such astonishing results it's known as a letter as in one piece of paper you'll physically mail to Vito before you start thinking or saying out loud hey Tony I don't do letters they're a waste of time answer these two questions honestly first what would happen if you could get every qualified Vito in your sales territory to read something that told them exactly how you could help them over achieve their goals plans and objectives for this year second what would happen if after each one of those vetoes read your letter his or her phone rang and you were on the other end of the line I'll tell you what would happen you would be on your way to earning a permanent subcode in sales heaven in this chapter you'll learn what I've proven to be the very best way to approach every veto in your territory without waiting to run an ad during this year's Superbowl halftime show two rules you must follow to snag the intentional area of Vito's brain veto rule number 18 you must know which vetoes to approach and which not to approach sending a letter to veto who as no need or interest in what you can do is a total waste of time yet each and every day thousands of salespeople make an attempt to get an appointment with a completely unqualified prospect following my first rule will put an end to this wasteful activity from this point forward you will never even think about approaching Obito who doesn't fit the persona that matches up with that of your very best customers the persona of your very best customers is the role and characteristics they have in their respective industry marketplace and competitive space the more you know about the persona of your existing customers the more accurately you'll be able to select the Vito prospects to approach to follow rule number 18 you must establish the persona of your best existing customers that means you would at a minimum need to know the answers to the following 24 questions they take the time to answer these questions right now write your answers on a separate piece of paper if you have to devote some time for research or inspired guesswork to give these questions the best possible answers today then take and make that investment and don't skip any of the questions questions you must be able to answer about your organization's best customers what industry or marketplace are they in what products services and solutions do they provide to that industry or marketplace what is their competitive ranking within that industry or marketplace what is the size of their organization expressed in number of employees annual revenue number of locations or whatever other metric you can measure and apply across the board how do they create revenue do they sell directly to the industry or marketplace are they a local regional national or global provider to that industry or marketplace do they have a distribution channel do they have a private label they provide for others to sell what are they doing with what you've sold them what hard value have you delivered how are they measuring it how would you measure it what soft value have you delivered how would they describe it how would you describe it what process did they use to buy from you did they perform an exhaustive survey of the marketplace what was on their list of requirements or specifications did they shop all competitors did they grind you down on price what was the deciding factor on their purchase from you what were the benefits that got them the most excited about your products services and solutions still paying attention before you go on follow through on the promise you made to maintain and update those lists you created at the end of the last chapter take the answers you just created and look at your current sales forecast and first find the prospects that match the persona you just created and highlight them in some impossible way to ignore next take the prospects that don't match your existing customer persona to a tee and delete them from your sales forecast I know this must sound to you like I'm overreacting especially if you're getting ready to delete all of your prospects because none of them fit this persona but in all the years that I've been selling and training sales organizations and consulting with the organizations they work for I've seen countless sales vaporized from sales forecasts because the prospects just plain weren't a good fit unfortunately this vaporizing usually happened in months or even years after wasted time and effort and resources tried to fit a square peg in a round hole think back on your own history and consider what I've just told you does it in any way shape or form match up with your own experience in your heart do you sense that I'm right about this delete the prospects that don't match your best customers persona and do it now and save yourself a bunch of work and a bunch of undesirable on fulfilling unproductive sales work do it now take the prospects that are still on your sales forecast and quickly find out what Vito's name is and what their personal assistants name is if you need some help in knowing how to find out the latter of those two items no worries I'll get to that just a little while Vito rule number 19 you must know how to approach Vito within a specific industry or market the vetoes of your existing customers have precisely the same business interests as the vetoes of your prospects as long as you make sure your prospects fit the persona of your existing customers to a tee let's get back to the letter why write a letter because Vito's our readers on average they read 20 books a year of these 16 are professionally related and four are for fun and entertainment in addition they typically read the daily newspaper like this might be the Wall Street Journal or other local business journal and an untold number of newsletters internal memos blogs and whatever else suits their fancy are there any non paper-based variation you can use yes but learn how to write the letter first the next thing to remember is keep it short yep I realize I'm repeating this less is always more when it comes to selling to Vito and that applies to this correspondence approach Vito by writing a letter that features short sentences short paragraphs one-page with lots of whitespace common language simple words and phrases no words or phrases or terminology that are unfamiliar to Vito each and every part of this correspond to must stand on its own each and every part of this correspondence must tie into something Beto loves to do for instance Vito's loved to give orders and take action therefore Vito must be able to forward this correspondence to one of the decision-makers they hold personally responsible for accomplishing whatever it is that you can help Vito incorporated overachieve Vito's depend upon their personal assistance therefore Vito must get a recommendation from the personal assistant about this correspondence for the personal assistant must get the letter on - Vito's radar screen if there were ever a tightly-knit team it's this one the correspondence will address Vito's relationship with his or her assistant in a very special and appropriate way Vito has a unique mindset and unique methods therefore this correspondence must align with everything we've learned about Vito thus far about what Vito likes to do and how Vito likes to do it if you want to get on the fast track and get all those c-suite appointments you work hard for and deserve so you could sell more faster and crush your quota in the process then all you need to do is go to our site Vito sales training comm click on the take action tab scroll down till you see the Vito University logo and check it out and in the meantime have yourself a masterful rest of the day bye-bye [Music]