Barry: That is exactly right, and that’s great, and we appreciate you spending all that money. Let me show you how to make those ads more effective. I can show you a few other things which without spending any more money than what you’re spending right now is going to bring you in a great return.

Michael: Were you doing cold prospecting walking in cold? Or making appointments on the phone?

Barry: Usually we would walk in cold.

Michael: All right, so when you said, would they take a little bit of time and you could show them and identify how they can improve their Yellow Page advertising.

Barry: What you have to do when you go in is you have to have as in sales, an interest creating remark, an opening remark, something that’s going to get their attention. When I was selling advertising specialties, I was working off the street, and they would’ve seen three, four, five advertising salesman, maybe in that week, many times in the same day. So, the first thing they’d say if they thought you were a salesman was, “Get out of here.” All I say would be something like, “Okay, I have 40,000 potential prospects here. Let me show you how you can reach them.” Then, that would get their attention.

Michael: Then, what would you say?

Barry: Then, I would start asking them, but first let me find out a little bit about your business and make sure yours is fit for what we’re doing here. Then, I’d ask them up front. I’d ask them questions. I’d do a fact-finding. People love to talk about their business. Get them talking about their business, and right away you’re establishing trust. When you ask the right questions, you show them you know what you’re talking about. You’re also finding out the ammunition you’re going to need to present your product.

Michael: Which brings me to a point, a lot of people believe, “How can I sell this? I don’t have any experience. I don’t have the credibility.” And, what you said is when you start asking the right questions, you start establishing trust, and you start building credibility instantly. Would you agree?

Barry: There’s nothing that builds credibility like asking the right questions. Now, first of all you have to get their at least implied consent to ask those questions which mean you have to create a little bit of interest. Once you’ve done that, you start asking the right questions, and right away you know what you’re talking about. The reason I became, later became the top Yellow Page salesman in the world, for whatever that’s worth, is simply because I was going there and I wouldn’t tell them what they needed in their copy. I would just say, “Let me find out a little bit about your business.” Then, I would ask them a number of questions which I planned before I went in there about things that were missing from there – all the things that, if they were plumbers, that other plumbers did, or whatever type of business they had. I had a whole list of potential copy points that they could put in their ads, and things that they could put in their ads. When I would ask them about them, they’d realize that nobody had ever asked them about these types of things before, and they were missing from their business, missing from their ads.

Michael: So, you prepared before you went in?

Barry: Absolutely.

Michael: You know which ad they were running. Would you go for the larger ads?

Barry: Yes, but I would have a rationale for that. I wouldn’t just say, “Well, you need a bigger ad because I want to sell you a bigger ad.” I might go in there and say, “Well, I’m working on commission here. The more you spend, the more I make, but let me show you why you need to be spending your money.” The first question I would ask as a marketing consultant and as a Yellow Page rep is the same question, “Why should somebody do business with you as opposed to the competition?”

Now, the interesting thing is when you ask that question as a marketing consultant, with many small business men what do you get, you get a blank stare. So, then you persist, and you ask it again and you phrase it a little bit differently, and eventually they come up with three to five things.

Now, one of the things that I found was those three to five things are almost never in their Yellow Page ads. Sometimes none of them are in their Yellow Page ad. Just the act of doing that, showed this retailer, this plumber, this auto dealer, that he was going to get a better ad by listening to me than he’d ever had before.

So, then when I told him they need a bigger ad if that was the case, I’d have massive credibility.

Michael: Yellow Pages, how often are they printed? When you went into a potential prospect, did you know it was going to be time for them to renew, or would the sales cycle sometimes be six months, seven months, eight months until the new Yellow Pages came out?

Michael: How about the illustration? “Honor thy illustration”. In some of the direct marketing studies you hear, “Don’t waste your space on illustrations.” Have you seen illustrations outpull copy?

Barry: From the marketing standpoint, not even the Yellow Page standpoint, let me take on that direct marketing myth to not waste your money and your time and your space on illustration. That’s fine. If I’m sending out 400,000 direct marketing pieces, and I’m selling grandfather clocks for $1995, one percent of those people is what I’m going to reach, maybe two percent if I’m really, really aggressive. If I’ve got a great headline, “Like Grandfather Clocks $1995.” Before somebody sends me $1995, they’re going to read all that copy. So, I need to give them all that information. So, I may pack that ad with information. But, in a Yellow Page ad, you’re not going to be able to come up with a piece of copy that says, “Grandfather Clocks $1995.” You’re not going to be able to come up with a headline that’s that strong, probably. You’re probably not going to be able to come up with a headline that’s strong enough to get them to wade through the entire blog of copy you’ve created down there when you cram those ads with copy. There’s too many other ads selling the same thing on the page, too many other ads that are easier to read. So, with a Yellow Page ad, and with most other advertising, really when you get away from direct marketing, you need to create and ad that’s more visible, that’s more easy to read, that’s more inviting, and you need to get the best headline you can to pull them in there. The single easiest way to improve a Yellow Page ad is with a great illustration.

Michael: So, illustrations are proven winners?

Barry: The right illustration. Again, if a picture’s worth a thousand word, get it in there. If it’s not, find a picture that is.

Michael: How about the face of the owner you see so common in yellow pages?

Barry: That can be. Little old ladies particularly would like to see the face of the person they’re dealing with. The people that are calling up the phone calls, they need somebody they can trust. Very often, that can be important. The problem is if everybody’s doing it, you still need to be able to differentiate yourself from everybody else, and running the virtually same picture that everyone else is doing is not necessarily going to do that. What we do sometimes is we put the face in there smaller and use some other illustrations.
 

Michael: Let me skip to number six, “Thou shall not forget placement.” Is a bigger ad better?

Barry: Let’s face it, there’s a reason people spend more money for the bigger ads. When I was a marketing consultant, I would’ve made a fortune if I could’ve told the people that the smaller ads worked better. The bigger ads tend to work better, that’s why people who track their advertising tend to buy bigger ads whether it’s in newspapers, whether it’s in magazines, whether it’s in the Yellow Pages, but the biggest ad, let’s face it, is not always the best ad on the page either. What you put into that space is important.

Michael: How about color? Black and white or color, what do I go with?

Barry: Well, in the Yellow Pages they have something called placement. The ads closest to the front of the heading tend to get the best results, and the biggest ads of the ads closest to the front of the heading. Size and position within the heading are going to be more important than the color. If the money you’re spending on color is going to get you a significantly bigger ad with significantly better placement, I would go with the size and placement over the color.

Michael: Skipping ahead, ninth commandment, “Thou shall not squander Yellow Page dollars in the white pages.” What do you mean by that?

Barry: The directory companies also sell white page advertising. They sell lots of ads in the white pages – all different types and all different sizes now. I have yet to find a reason to buy one. If somebody’s looking through the white pages they can find you as long as they know the alphabet.