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In this issue:
Marketing Article: Save Money, Save Time: How to Control Your Mailings - Part 2 of 3
Marketing Article: Unleashing The Inner Innovator - Part 2 of 3

Let's say your break-even or par is 5%. If you're not getting that you can do a number of things to improve your chances of success.

You can raise your price, lower costs, try another list, make your prospects a better offer, improve the quality of your marketing literature or increase the size of your average order. To increase the size of your average order, I usually offer a package deal. This is a combination of two of my most popular items that people usually buy separately. I sell it to them as a package. They get a good deal and I increase my average order.

Suffice it to say that you must keep track of everything about your mailing.

From the kind of envelopes you use to what's on the envelope you will either improve or reduce your chances for success. Every little thing in direct mail matters.

If you see your mailing is not doing well you can change it before going further. Sometimes you need only to change something very minor. You may be mailing on the wrong day. You may be using an envelope that turns people off. It could be a hundred things.

Direct mail is one of the finest ways to increase your business. Joe Danler, a RE/MAX broker in Wichita, KS, is living proof. Danler does about three very large mailings of 10,000 pieces each per year. He makes himself known to Wichita residents while other agents remain anonymous among the hundreds of other real estate agents who daily roam the streets in search of listings.

The difference is, Danler gets them. He does so well, in fact, that he's sold more homes than any RE/MAX agent in the area in the last year! And best of all, he doesn't have to cold call. People come to him because of his direct mail.

RE/MAX agents, unlike most other real estate agents, can control their own advertising. They do not co-op and are not told how to advertise. As a result, they can be very creative. That pays big dividends to people like Joe Danler.

Danler has been in the real estate business for eight years. He started using direct mail two years ago. "Direct mail has been important to reach people who weren't aware of me at all," he says.

He adds, "It's an important thing for people who have really thought about a real estate need but have not started looking yet."

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Susanna K. Hutcheson is a professional advertising and direct mail copywriter. She was the first copywriter to utilize the Internet as a place to market this type of service. Susanna has clients all over the world. She writes everything from Web site content to direct mail and radio spots. Visit her Web site at http://www.powerwriting.com . Her email address is powerwriter@powerwriting.com . Telephone: (316) 684-0457.

One of the most effective ways of setting yourself apart professionally in these turbulent times is by unleashing your "inner innovator". Learning to do this will differentiate you by making you the person who knows how to add value to your organization. How can you increase your innovative capacity and that of your enterprise? In my previous article, I introduced the concept of "The Four Thinking Lenses". Thinking like a Pack Rat, a Matchmaker, a Kid, and a Contrarian. In this article I describe the first two of these lenses:

THINK LIKE A PACK RAT
Children are creative because they are looking through fresh eyes. As adults, we start to filter everything we see, just like a polarized lens that lets in only light that is aligned one way. So to reverse the years of filtered thinking, you need to start collecting new dots. Start gaining new experiences. To paraphrase Steve Jobs, "Creativity is just having enough dots to connect ... connect experiences and synthesize new things. The reason creative people are able to do that is that they've had more experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other people." So, our first lens is to get you thinking like a pack rat. Collect and hoard every experience for later use. You never know when some randomly stored experience will be the catalyst for breakthrough thinking. Try these techniques.

Each morning, when you wake up, make believe you are someone different, a detective, a mechanic, an artist, a gardener. You will then begin to see things over the course of the day that you have never seen before, because what you focus on expands. Another approach is to look at the world in a new way. Treat it as art, as music, as simplicity. You will see, hear, smell, and sense new things through your new filter.

Or try this. As adults, we tend to do the same things over and over. Our lives repeat themselves like a broken record. Break the pattern. Pick up magazines you have never read before. Listen to music you thought you didn't like. Meet new people. Eat different food. The more you do this, the more new experiences you will gain and the more ideas you will be able to draw from in the future.

THINK LIKE A MATCHMAKER
Now that we have collected lots of new experiences by being a pack rat, we have to do something creative with them. As adults, when we try to solve a problem, we often ask, "What does this mean?" We try to pull the answer from our knowledge bank, just like finding the solution in an encyclopedia. Solve the problem the way it has been solved in the past. This can be useful, but it provides a limited set of possibilities. This is about replication and regurgitation. An alternative (and more insightful) way of looking at problems is to ask, "What is this like?" Be a matchmaker. Make connections. Try and find analogies, metaphors, and associations that fit the problem you are looking to solve. Recombine ideas in new ways. If you are redesigning a business process, borrow a best practice from a different industry. South West Airlines did this when it benchmarked an Indianapolis 500 pit crew. Or when hospitals benchmarked Marriott Hotels for the check-in processes. But take it a step further and look to non-business analogies and metaphors. Look at nature. Model your business after an evolutionary process, an ecosystem, jazz music, or whatever tickles your fancy. If redesigning a product, ask what the product is really like. If redesigning a computer chip, look to racing circuits, rivers, or anything with a flow. When you have many dots collected, you have limitless ways of recombining them to create something new. This is not about invention, which is pulling something out of the thin air. This is about innovation which is about reconstituting old ideas in new ways. Don't> always go for the obvious solution. Some of the best ideas come from some of the most unlikely combinations.

In my next article, I will describe the last two Thinking Lenses: how to think like a Kid and a Contrarian.

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Stephen Shapiro is the author of 24/7 Innovation and founder of The 24/7 Innovation Group. He has advised many of the world's leading organizations, from BMW WilliamsF1, ABB and UPS to Lucent and Xerox. For more information, go to: http://www.24-7Innovation.com.