There is strong evidence from the Media Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that if there is one factor that correlates with a business person or a professional about to make a positive decision, it is excitement.

Whether this involves two business people exchanging business cards or whether it is someone getting ready to agree to make a purchase, the situation is the same.  What’s at the heart of each situation is excitement.

A business person getting ready to make a positive decision acts “like a kid who’s excited and bouncing around,” according to Media Lab (New Scientist, 7 July 2007).

The implication is clear – if you want to get a sale you have to generate excitement.  

Now for the telephone sales person this is simple: speak invitingly, vary the tone and volume, be really interested.  (Isn’t it amazing how many people don’t do that when selling on the phone!)

But the implication for direct mail is less obvious – simply being excited about the product and saying in gushing prose how wonderful it is doesn’t work, any more than a bland and boring description of the facts works.  

However that should not surprise us because that’s not the approach of the good tele-sales person, nor was it ever the tactic of the good door-to-door salesperson either.   They empathise, they listen, they reflect your concerns, but still somehow through all of this get you going.   That’s what good direct mail does too.

In doing this we are helped enormously by the fact that there’s a lot of recent research to suggest that far more human behaviour is automatic and determined by instinct than we ever previously imagined.  We like to believe that we make rational decisions, weighing up all the issues before jumping in.   But the fact is, most of the time this is a gloss put on our own account of what happened.  In fact 80% of our mental processes seem to be simple and automatic.

Just as the greatest footballers and jazz musicians respond automatically to what is going on around them in order to score a goal or play a riff, so all of us who drive cars or ride bikes put much of the decision making involved in such events onto auto.   And that’s not because the brain is in overload.  It is because unconscious automatic thinking can be more effective than conscious thought.

So, back to the business of selling stuff.   It looks more and more as if the best way forward is to ignore the logical, rational, consciously generated actions of individuals, and instead think of the way in which we unconsciously move together and respond to each other.   Which means, forget all the logic and boring detail.   Generate the enthusiasm, and see what follows.

If you want to know more, take a look at our latest web site, [1] www.mailings.org.uk - or to see details of our mailing lists and mailing services go to [2] www.hamilton-house.com/10%20Gateways.html  Or call me on 01536 399 000, and we can talk about how your mailing could be changed in order to gain a higher response rate.Tony Attwood