What I will never forget is this allegory that Mr. Truntschka - a famous German ice-hockey player - told me about Direct Response Marketing. Imagine a forest with targets. It is too much work to go in and ask each and everyone whether or not he wants to buy your product, that does not work. Instead, put up a loudspeaker, shout into the forest, and wait who comes out. Only to these sell your product. That is so much easier, they have qualified themselves.

1. Direct Response Marketing
Introduction
a nice allegory to explain how Direct Response Marketing works, as
compared with the traditional door-to-door salesman game
31 January 2022

2. This allegory comes from Mr. Gerd Truntschka, a former
member of the German national icehockey team
Today, he owns and runs the
Lavita company: www.lavita.de
Lavita is a famous and unique
fruit & vegetable juice
concentrate that is sold to end
consumers

3. Imagine a large forest

4. 60 people live in that large forest: our targets

5. Only 10% of these 60 people need our product: our prospects
Unfortunately, we
do not know who
these six people
are. They all seem
to look alike

6. We have converted 5
targets into 5 leads.
And - along the way -
we found 1 qualified
lead, a prospect.
Round 1
This is how door-to-door salesmen work

7. This is how door-to-door salesmen work
You can imagine
that this is not
going to be
efficient.
We had before
converted 5 leads
into 1 qualified
lead.
And we have
converted the 1
qualified lead into
1 sales-won.

8. This is how „Direct Response Marketing“ works
Publish what you have
to sell.
Use your USP.
sell
• greed
• fear
• a vision

9. And here they come:

10. And here come the prospects, after qualifying themselves:

11. Here they are:

12. Here they are:

13. Here they are:

14. Here they are:

15. Do your
1-2-1‘s on
them and
collect their
addresses so
that you can
find them
again
Next step: get their coordinates

16. Next step: send out your salesman

17. The salesman does his talking

18. Result
We have
converted 3
qualified leads(=
prospects) into 2
sales-won
Does this look like
a sustainable
method or not?

19. Contribution
• Language is important. This is how any conversion works:
target – lead – prospect/qualified lead – sales-won/sales-lost
• Direct Response Marketing is a numbers game:
- reach out to 60 targets and create 2 sales-won
- reach out to 600 targets and create 20 sales-won
- reach out to 6,000 targets and create 200 sales-won
- wash & rinse
• Safe effort, let the prospects qualify themselves: use your USP
• Sell greed, fear, or a vision

20. This allegory can serve to explain many
aspects of Direct Response Marketing
• How can we increase the number of targets that are turned into
qualified leads?
• When and why do targets not like our efforts to convert them to
qualified leads?
• Should you start sales when the prospects turn themselves in or only
at a later time?
• How to nourish the relationship with the newly qualified leads?