By contrast, over the last 13 years, first class postage for letters has risen just 12 cents per piece—just under a penny per year.  Despite basically tracking with inflation, postage increases usually draw complaints from marketers I’ve met.  And every time that penny gets added, people threaten to abandon direct mail for email, Facebook, and other online tools.

Well, the United States Post Office (USPS) must have been listening to these complaints.  The USPS dropped the postage rate on CASS-certified addresses for 8- and 12-page brochures to be the same letter rate available to 2-, 4- and 6-page pieces (a savings of 15¢-25¢ each).  And they introduced a new program called Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) that could save you over 60% on your next direct mail campaign.

Learning From the Past
EDDM is a much improved version of the old “presorted standard” mail, in which postcards, brochures, and letters were delivered to every box holder on a mail delivery route.  If you’ve seen your postal carrier with a tray of identical brochures on their front seat, you’ve seen that kind of mail in action.  There are no addresses on the pieces, because everybody on the route gets the same piece.

The knock on standard mail—even presorted standard mail—was that promised mail delivery schedules weren’t reliable for periods shorter than two weeks.  Your brochures or postcards could literally sit for days at any USPS post office or distribution hub along their journey.  In my line of work, advertising auctions, we don’t have time enough to play that Russian roulette.  And I can tell you a horror story of when an auction company played anyway and lost dramatically—probably exacerbated by mailing across state lines, which often adds one or more stops to the USPS transportation process.

New & Improved
More than a slick rebranding, EDDM is a more viable solution for marketers across the country.  EDDM now expands beyond rural and city routes to include P.O. boxes, something previously unavailable for saturation mailings.  So, now you can ensure everyone in a zip code gets a copy of your direct mail.  Maybe most importantly, marketers can now request a specific delivery date.  My regular USPS hub’s postmaster said that those requested dates can now be as short as two days after the final post offices (called “drop sites”) receive their respective trays—a far cry from “up to two weeks.”

Shearer Printing & Office Solutions, my print and mail vendor, has made this process even more efficient and reliable for my clients by calling each drop site’s postmaster to alert them of incoming trays.  And instead of dropping the trays at their local USPS hub in Kokomo, IN, where the postage would cost 19.5¢ each, Shearer ships the trays via UPS or FedEx directly to the drop sites.  For bypassing their transportation system, the USPS knocks an additional 5¢ per piece off the postage.

Case Study
One of my Michigan clients recently experienced all this EDDM savings first hand, while sending a biplane-designed brochure to three separate geographical areas spanning five routes, totaling 3,023 recipient boxes.  Shearer presorted, packaged, and shipped the trays at a cost of $241.03 for processing and $80.46 for tray freight.  Postage totaled $438.34.  That’s just 14.5¢ per piece!  A brown-shirted driver retrieved the trays on Thursday; the trays arrived at the two destination post offices on Friday; the brochures then arrived in mail boxes on Saturday in two of the areas and on Monday in the other area.  So, with EDDM, the total mail preparation and delivery cost for an 8.5×11 brochure that took three business days to go from mail room to mail box was just 25.1¢ per piece.

Hybrid Mailing
But what if you do have a trusted in-house mailing list or want to target specific companies or consumer demographics through brokered lists?  You can use them, too!  Now, with digital and variable data printing technology, part of your print run can have barcoded addresses and first class indicias printed in line; and the rest can be printed with the necessary EDDM markings.  So, you can canvas a swath of local end users AND a group of specific, qualified prospects across a region or across the country—in most cases without any difference in printing costs for brochures.  (For postcards, you would need to have slightly different trim sizes to use for each purpose.)

Special Design & Production Considerations
All EDDM-eligible pieces must be larger than letter size.  This means your piece’s final dimensions must be more than 11.5 inches long OR more than 6.125 inches tall OR more than .25 inches thick (and must be less than 15 inches long, 12 inches tall, and .75 inches thick).  So, these pieces will often be larger than envelopes and other letter-size mailers in your audience’s mailboxes.  Tabbing is not necessary or encouraged.  A different postage indicia must be used, but most print & mail shops have one; so, you shouldn’t have to obtain one just for your mailings.  All pieces must have “ECRWSS Postal Customer” (for businesses and residences) or “ECRWSS Residential Customer” (for residences only) printed on the mailer panel.  Also, because there are no addresses for USPS scanners to read, there is a lot more room and freedom on the mailer panel for images and copy.

For auctioneers, who often have limited budgets and even more limited time, Every Door Direct Mail may prove itself a long-overdue solution.  And if your proposed budget can gain dollars on the postage line, you can spend those saved dollars on more marketing in places your competition can’t.

When I was in high school and college, maintaining “good Christian” status sometimes involved accompanying people from my church as they canvassed the subdivisions on the island where I went to church.  I always felt awkward.  But I fought through that discomfort, because I thought some kind of heaven points were on the line; and I truly wanted people to know relationally the God I recognized as the source of all good things.  I must’ve thought I was vicariously knocking on heart doors like Jesus did in Revelations.

As much as I like telling people about products, vendors, and adventures that I love, I’ve always hated sales—especially theta part of trying to convince people they should purchase something.  I think that’s because I don’t like dealing with sales people or being convinced that I need or want something I previously didn’t—let alone an entire worldview system.

In the past month, I’ve heard both silly and very sad stories of people’s experiences with Every Door Direct Evangelism.  In one case, my buddy was driven away from God and church for 20 years because of a terrible encounter from door-to-door evangelists.  It made me sad.  Stories like that aren’t as surprising after you’ve lived in Ft. Wayne, IN, the self-proclaimed “City of Churches” and Lynchburg, VA, the “Buckle of the Southern Bible Belt.”  On top of my recent anecdotes, I’ve read an editorial newspaper column from a secular writer who’d been negatively impressed from this evangelism model.

I won’t go so far as to say that strategy is wrong or sinful.  I just struggle to find the biblical precedent, the relational benefit, the net efficacy. Jesus invited himself to Zacchaeus’ house but met him on Main Street; and as far as I know, the Bible doesn’t record the Messiah or his disciples hitting a neighborhood’s worth of houses.  I need to ponder it all some more.  In the mean time, I welcome your insight.

In short, it’s a social media environment that pulls inspiration from the bulletin board at your local coffee shop or the pin board in your college dorm room.  It’s a live stream of images—called “pins”— pulled from other websites and categorized topically both by the website administrators and again separately by its users.  Each image comes with three optional interactions: like, comment, and re-pin (to your board of pins).

Whereas other social media are based on users generating their own content, Pinterest‘s ease of use and popularity is mostly because its users don’t create the original content.  In fact, approximately 80% of posts are re-pins.†  To avoid copyright violation, the pictures are almost all linked back to their originating sites—be they travel, lifestyle, or entertainment websites.

One of my (4) Sisters' Pinterest Boards

Women typically account for a higher percentage of users than men do on social media*, and they account for anywhere from 68% to 90% of the activity on Pinterest—depending on where you get your stats.  Most posts are often associated with fashion, decor, cooking, crafts, and inventive solutions for household organization.

Unlike Facebook, it’s not intended for conversations.  Pinterest has grown so much and so quickly that Friendsheet.com, a site that makes your Facebook stream look like Pinterest, has garnered the favor of Mark Zuckerburg††—and might someday be a native Facebook option.  Unlike Twitter, it’s not intended to keep users updated on current events.  Unlike YouTube, it’s exclusive.  You can curate your own pin boards and list of followers only if you are invited by someone who is already a Pinterest member.  Unlike Google+, it’s growing like a weed both in number of users and the amount of time those users spend on the site (more than four times longer than Twitter users per month and almost 30 times as long as Google+ users average per month***)—exponentially expanding to over a million average daily visitors.*

So, why do we need yet another social media site?  And what does Pinterest have that we can’t get anywhere else?

Visual simplicity.

Facebook has images.  Twitter is succinct and sortable, too.  Pinterest, though, simplifies everything to one thing: pictures.  No profiles to manage for its content creators and little, if any, reading required by its consumers.  It lets our short attention spans be satiated quickly—or drawn into the bowels of online daydreaming.

If Pinterest were running for president, it’s campaign supervisor would be explaining its surge in the polls emphatically: “It’s the photos, stupid!”

Facebook, the major social media player with more average minutes of use per month than Pinterest understands our culture’s draw to images, as it sees 70% of its users’ activity centers around its photos.**  But that pales to the photo-centricity of Pinterest, which by default, has pictures at just under 100% of activity.

There’s a lesson there for every marketer.  What makes content quickly absorbable is compelling imagery, imagery which Pinterest users tend to pull from predominantly-commercial websites.  Words—even headlines—are secondary.  As a culture, we don’t’ care about explanations and slogans, if we aren’t drawn to them through the picture(s) they accompany.  As a marketer who helps other marketers, I can tell you that if the design of our marketing media centers around large, singular imagery—and those images are professionally staged and captured—our advertising will be far more effective than the current average of small business advertising media.  That goes for small business at large and the auction industry, which I serve, in particular.

Message is important.  And honing your message is crucial.  But Andre Aggassi was right: image is everything.  And, last time I checked, advertising is part of everything.  If the first thing your media recipients and viewers sees is text—no matter how large or bold or colorful—chances are good that you’re doing advertising wrong.  If they see a solid background with a collage of pictures, we are making them work harder (than if we had used one big, full-bleed image) and, in many cases, watering down the primary draw.  Look at advertising for Apple, Nike, Ford, TNT, and BOSE.  They get it.  So should we.

If potential buyers don’t like what they see in the primary image, what makes any retailer, wholesaler, or auctioneer think potential buyers would care what other pictures we have or what the advertisement has to say?

Taking it Personally

The Bible says we humans were created in God’s image (one of the ways homo sapiens were differentiated from the rest of creation).  As believers of The Way, we are to be pictures of Jesus in our culture.  While we are wrapped in individual personalities and exclusive physical containers, the essence from the new core of our souls should shine through those translucent shells.

In contrast, the entropy and temptation for us all is to talk religious words, add Jesus stickers or fabric on the outside, and gather with those who codify and police exterior criteria the way we do.  That’s lazy and destructive.  Jesus didn’t come so that we could shine through the filter of him—or worse: the filters of religion, church, and spirituality.  He came to give us life, to change our core, to change the lightbulb—not the lamp shade—in the fixture.  He wants his truth and love and other attributes to radiate from us.

If today were a snapshot of who you are, and you handed that snapshot to a stranger, what would they see?  If you had to hand it to Jesus as a photo illustration of him, what would you have changed about your day before taking that picture?

Why?

Because social media content shouldn’t be outsourced.

Social media is sold every day to small business owners as the new secret weapon in marketing.  “Get your business in front of 800 million people on Facebook and over 300 million Twitter users!”  Never mind the fact that even Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga each have only a small fraction of either of those environments, advertisers think they’ll somehow gain a hoard of followers and fans, just by opening social media storefronts.

If these participatory environments were broadcast media, it would make sense to outsource the work to agencies like mine or those on Madison Avenue.  And for those who look at Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as advertising channels, there’s software for agencies to manage the social streams of multiple clients.

The problem is that social media sites are relational environments—places to do online what we do offline, admittedly with both upgrades and drawbacks over in-person conversations.  In most situations you wouldn’t pay another company to go have conversations with people for you at social gatherings.  So, why would you pay a company to have your conversations with your prospects and peers online?

Does that mean that your company’s founder or president needs to spend their day hitting the like button and responding to Tweets?  No.  But the person doing the conversing needs to be someone who can speak for your company—someone who has bought into the culture and mission of your organization.  The same care you apply to determining who you hire to sell your goods and services to clients offline should be applied to those who represent you in online social settings.

Valuable qualification criteria for this role include:

• Positive, optimistic personality
• Understanding what constitutes your brand
• Connection to sources of newsworthy content for market and industry trends
• Professional decorum yet with a sense of humor
• Personal social streams with lots of activity (illustrating environment experience)
• Flexible spirit and commitment to be constantly learning
• Good spelling and grammar skills
• Access to company images
• 30 or more minutes available per day for conversational interaction and measurement
• Maybe even public relations training or background

In some organizations, multiple people are granted administrative access.  The main challenge of that is to make sure posts and responses are consistent from one administrator to another.  (Having pre-written guidelines and sample responses can help with this, especially for companies where social media environments are more for customer service and responding to complaints than brand building.)

The social media shepherd in your company doesn’t need to be someone in management or ownership.  But they should be someone you trust with the voice of your brand.  With rare exception, that isn’t someone on the other end of an invoice.

Taking it Personally

I am embarrassingly weak when it comes to sharing my faith in interpersonal spaces.  I can throw some words up here on my blog or even on Facebook and Twitter.  But put me in a coffee shop or living room, and I don’t have much more than psychoanalytic questions and “Let me pray for you.”

The problem is that the stakes are too high to play the “good Christian kid” card all the time.  (My dad is a minister; so, I have a large box of those cards.)  There’s more on the line than whether someone goes to church or shares my beliefs.  The potential for pain redemption, spiritual wholeness, and worldview change are incredible additions to Christ’s offer of forgiveness, heaven, and purpose.

I’ve got to stop outsourcing these conversations to “professional” Christians and power evangelists.  The New Testament tells all believers—especially me—to “always [be] ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.”  That requires more time praying for people and more time inputting Truth into my memory.

It’s good to encourage other believers and love on those far from the Way.  But stopping there is dangerous for our eternal legacy and the futures of others.

Having not seen the commercial on TV, I found the ad online.  It shows a trite caricature of an old school “colonel,” calling bids backwards as western music twangs in the background.  And then it drops these statements: “No more pricing games.  Just great prices from the start.  That’s fair and square.”

Anybody who’s been to an auctioneer convention has met or at least seen bid callers that resemble to varying degrees the bid caller hired for this TV spot.  But anybody who’s been to an auction industry gathering can tell you that he represents the exception to the rule—at least the present and future of it.  So, the industry as a whole is probably as embarrassed by this portrayal as my college friend said she was by Crocodile Dundee being a representative of her native Australia.

I think the response, though, is more to the implication that auctions aren’t fair or square sales environments.  Nobody wants to be called unfair.  That implies shady, even immoral, business.  If that were the intended statement of the commercial, I would stand with professional auction marketers around the country in their attempt to stop the besmirching of their profession.

That said, I doubted that was the intent of the ad; so, I called jcpenney’s media relations department.  Kate Coultas, jcpenney spokesperson, emailed then called me to affirm that the intention of the TV spot was to illustrate an environment where consumers are inundated with advertised price points from various places.  A live “outcry” auction proved analogous of that concept.  Having spent time in a candid conversation with Coultas, I trust that the motif was the goal and not an attack on potential customers from the auction community.

In an official statement, the company stated, “Our ‘auctioneer’ ad is part of our campaign to introduce consumers to our new ‘Fair and Square’ pricing strategy. Our new pricing strategy aims to put an end to the frustration many consumers have with today’s endless retail promotions. The ad is in no way meant to portray the auctioneer profession in a negative manner and we apologize for any offense we may have caused.”

Even before I spoke with Coultas—having watched the series of six ads in which the auctioneer spot falls, I extended grace to Peterson Milla Hocks (known as PMH in trade forums), the ad agency that put the series together to illustrate how jcpenney is breaking away from convention with their new, three-tiered pricing strategy.  And I refrained from any critical remarks of PMH, because they are not auctioneers.  They represent the marketplace, people of the population that only know of auctioneers what stereotypes and TV shows have shown them.  Sadly, in both those situations, an unprofessional or timeworn bid caller most likely contributed to those impressions.  My clients, peers, and I work through branding to combat that stigma, as does the NAA through robust continuing education, public relations initiatives, and a standard code of ethics.

That said, this situation presents itself with a chance for collective introspection—a chance to remind ourselves of how crucial public perception of the auction marketing method is.  Candid auction professionals must concede that, while auctions are above board, they do come with some obstacles to purchasing that retail doesn’t.  Using jcpenney as an example, its customers:

• do not pay a buyer’s premium
• are not charged an additional fee to use a credit or debit card
• do not have to register at the door in order to purchase
• are allowed to return items under certain terms within a documented time frame
• do not have to reveal their purchases and the amount paid for them to a crowd from their community
• are not assigned a number that they have to remember or carry with them while shopping
• do not have to wait through audible announcement of sale terms before shopping commences
• do not have to wait for a designated date to purchase an item
• do not have to wait for a list of items to sell before they can buy their desired item

Am I against auctions or the auction method?  No!  I’ve purchased multiple items in live (on site) and online auctions.  I just sold my iPhone 4 intentionally through the auction method instead of listing it on Craigslist or selling it to a local electronics dealer; and when the winning bidder was flagged as a scammer, I trusted the auction method to sell it a second time.  My wife and I were even runner-up bidders last November on a house and were fully prepared to purchase it, had the bids not gone as high as they did.  If I didn’t believe in the auction method, I’m in the wrong line of work.

What can be gained with the auction method is a liability to other sale formats and vice versa.  One of the tradeoffs for the benefits of live bidding is that an auction isn’t always the most convenient way to purchase.  Some of that is immutable—the nature of the method.  Other aspects are improvable with ingenuity and technology.

Thankfully, courageous auction professionals are working toward making it easier and more convenient to buy things through the competitive bidding environment.  Most auction firms are including simulcast online bidding for those who can’t physically be present at the auction.  Others, including many of my clients, have moved to online-only auctions in which bids can be left at the buyer’s convenience—even for real estate.  One auctioneer I met allows returns of items purchased at personal property auctions.  Another auctioneer, faced with international bidders walking out of his auctions due to the unintended intimidation through his speed talking, told me that he has killed the chant in his bid calling—as have international auctioneers I watch on Velocity.  Some firms are moving to mobile payments and/or killing fees.  Personally, I think eBay’s Buy It Now concept and auction tracking app are both positive ideas for the auction industry.  The list of innovations and redirected strategies is dynamic—a rising tide continuing to lift all progressive boats.

The fight to save and grow the auction industry is in the hands of us who market in it every day.  Our success will require us to step out of our perspective, our conveniences, our assumptions.  Our jobs will most likely continue to require more steps and a wider skill set.  I’m in this, too.  To maintain value for my clients, my responsibilities, packages, and services have changed over the past years.  Have you found that to be true?  If not, how long do you think your status quo will serve you well?

Taking it Personally

While researching for this post, I discovered that jcpenney also got negative feedback recently for hiring Ellen Degeneres as a spokesperson.  Apparently, OneMillionMoms.com, a project of the American Family Association, is encouraging people to boycott the department store for hiring a lesbian endorser.  Sadly, it’s no surprise that these calls crescendo from evangelical Christian roots and voices.

My friends and acquaintances who have struggled with same-sex attraction are no less acceptable to God than my heterosexual friends who have struggled with porn, premarital sex, extramarital affairs—or for that matter, gossip, laziness, bitterness, jealousy, overeating, or ignoring the speed limit.  We are all broken people who can’t heal ourselves.  Not one of us can attain heaven, wholeness, or God’s favor with our own effort.

So, I don’t understand the boycott—what is wanted, what is hoped.  A sinner-free jcpenney would put the chain out of business in a week for want of a single customer or employee.  Based on John 3:16, we know that Jesus wants Ellen and her partner in heaven—and heaven working here in and through them—as much as he does in and through any of us.  In light of that, how does a vociferous boycott align with those goals?  And how can redeeming, restorative love be observed by the secular world in the fanaticism from those who claim to carry the Holy Spirit in their heart?  Last time I checked, there was no passage in the Bible suggesting anyone boycott an unbeliever into soul-level repentance and saving faith in what Jesus did for them.

Then there’s the postcard I received tonight.  It made me feel icky.  Near the top of the list of headline seminars was one called “Make More $$$ Using Social Media.”

If I had a dollar for every time I saw or heard the words social media, my wife and I could go on an international vacation—and I don’t mean Canada.  I’m sure the same holds true for you.  Websites like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube are touted as marketing gold mines, the future of advertising, the magic answer for harvesting clients out of thin air.

I can understand the temptation.  Facebook is a global force, a community well more than double the population of my country.  Twitter has aided revolutions.  YouTube has changed the way we entertain each other.  Blogs have democratized the publishing industry.  Social media in most ways is all it’s been cracked up to be.  In the least, it’s where a lot of your friends are congregating.

That’s where “Make More $$$ Using Social Media” gets uncomfortable for me—at least for Facebook.  Facebook is a permission environment, a relational place.  The online equivalent of a chamber of commerce meeting, an alumni reunion, a church gathering, or the bleachers at a sporting event, Facebook centers on community.  In our offline community, we’re okay with commercial signs on the outfield wall, ads in special event programs, and sponsored arts presentations.  It’s an acceptable practice in our culture for companies to create corporate parade floats, to put their logos on the back of fundraising shirts, to have advertising on vehicles that employees drive home.

That’s why we understand ads around the periphery of our Facebook environment and company pages mixed into the entities that we can like and follow.

The social contract is broken, though, when the intent of social media use is to get friends to buy stuff.  You know that feeling, when someone invites you to a Juice Plus party or an Amway presentation.  And you know how your friendships with those multilevel marketers feel after those experiences.  There’s only so much Mary Kay items you can wear, only so much travel you can book through YTB, only so many ways you can pamper the chefs in your life.  And there’s only so much of your wallet to spend on friends’ wares.  There’s a pressure there, a pretense that often changes the nature of your relationship.

Facebook asks, “What’s on your mind?”  People in your offline life ask similar questions: “How are you?” and “What’s new?”  If you regularly answered in offline encounters, “ABSOLUTE AUCTION! I’m selling a 3BR, 2BA brick ranch in Parkland,” or “I’m having a sale on firearms,” what do you think the response would be?  Friends would suggest that your loved ones submit you to examination for potential psychological disorders.  In the least, acquaintances would start avoiding you and maybe even environments that you frequent.

When Facebook becomes a broadcast medium, an advertising channel—an environment in which you participate only for commercial reasons, you become the multilevel marketer who people cringe to invite to dinner parties and backyard barbecues.  If we don’t unfriend you, we unsubscribe from your posts or hide your updates from appearing in our feeds.

By all means, go to seminars on social media.  Actually, go to lots of them from multiple presenters—especially by those with Klout and PeerIndex scores higher than your own.  There are a range of diverse opinions, helpful expert specializations, and technological updates to consider in developing your strategy in these environments.  So, it’s good to absorb a range of recommendations in best practices while honing your online participation.

Just be wary of emphasis on monetization of relationships.  You would probably never attend a seminar about making money off bar mitzvahs, baby showers, or birthday parties (as a participant, not a vendor).  You might, however, read articles or watch videos on how to organize one of these social environments better or to know what’s appropriate to bring to them.  See the difference?  There are appropriate ways of talking about your work and promoting your business in social contexts.  The way we do it online needs to resemble the way we do it offline.

Taking it Personally

I wish all my friends and family knew Jesus on a personal level, where they feel his pleasure and hear his promptings.  I wish everyone could experience the spiritual highs I have—to feel the supernatural.  Forgiveness, acceptance, love, hope . . . . at a core level.  Candidly, I even wish that they could feel the corrective convictions, the distance of disobedience, and the stretching challenges that have brought growth and shaped my walk.

Sometimes, though, I feel like a religious multi-level marketer.  The way Christianity is too often sold (when not yelled with ultimatums and jingoism) regularly has the same elements: trying to get people to buy into a system and then get their friends’ friends to buy into a system.  We even have the rallies for the ambitious sellers, the marketing bumper stickers, the prospecting home parties.  I’ve even seen churches offer incentives for bringing guests to church.  And we’ve all seen or heard of the promises that televangelists make for prosperity and the ambiguous “blessing.”

The line between evangelism and multilevel marketing for me, I guess, is the heart and its motivation.  Am I wanting someone to get counted as a person I led to Jesus, or do I love someone enough to change their eternal trajectory?  Am I trying to earn favor with a God (who can’t be earned), or am I trying to share a wonderful gift?  Am I trying to sell my church and grow my personal kingdom, or do I want more in heaven and more of heaven on earth?

In short: if I am I trying to sell real estate in the afterlife or peddle a religion, I am an idolator.  If I love truly love people, though, my evangelism will be shaped with compassion and patience, authenticity and tempered courage.

The way you present it.

Our culture is becoming more and more visually stimulated and educated; and your marketing materials need to reflect that—especially your proposals.

Display media choices & other marketing tools.
Don’t just list the media you plan to use; show it.  Grab screen captures of the websites on which you plan to list.  Splay covers of brochures or postcards of similar properties you’ve sold.  Maybe even include a digital tear sheet showing what their ad will look like in the newspaper.  You can find similar ways to illustrate press release work, too.  This tactic will save you from burning through past auction brochure samples and allow you to include these samples in PDF presentation via email.  In the past, I’ve even inserted a chart showing the subcategories and quantities of planned direct mail lists.

And it wouldn’t hurt to show online bidding screens or a picture of someone bidding online to illustrate that process, especially for an online-only auction.  On at least one occasion, an auctioneer has hired me to build a sample ad or even a full direct mail piece of the property to demonstrate to the seller what they can expect.

Demonstrate numbers with charts & graphs.
Sir Francis Bacon said, “Knowledge is power.”  But knowledge that isn’t easily understood or retained loses its power.  Charts and graphs not only make your information more indelible, they allow you to impress people by the fact that you’re even curating the statistics they illustrate.  If you have some of the following information—and it it puts your work in a favorable light—leverage it for your case!
• Percentage of bidders and/or buyers (on-site vs. online)
• Average quantity of registered bidders per asset type or per geographic location
• Sale prices vs. assessed values

• Price per acre per crop type or land location

• Breakdown of areas of specialty by quantity of auctions in each category

• Quantities of online only, simulcast, and offline auctions

• Media (specific or categorical) choices by number of past bidders or buyers
Illustrate your experience with maps.
My chiropractor has a map in his waiting area showing all the countries from which his clients have come.  Anecdotally, I’ve found that biplane‘s coverage map has given my career experience more credence than the number of auctions I’ve advertised or even the years I’ve been in the business.  To many folks, those units of measure are ambiguous.  Numbers might be relative, but geography is typically a concrete value—especially when selling real estate.  So, show your prospect the nearby locations where you’ve held similar auctions: ““We’ve sold X properties near yours.”  Or show them the geographic expanse of your work, whether that’s by county or by state: “We’ve sold your type of asset from coast to coast.”

The free website, BatchGeo.com, can help you quickly create maps of multiple locations from your database.  Or maybe create a state or county map showing the number of properties that you’ve sold in those boundaries or number of acres successfully auctioned in them.  I’ve been impressed by auctioneers who have mapped in what states and countries they had online bidders and from which they had online buyers.

Your offer—all the things you are promising to do and for what price—will be the deciding factor in whether or not you get the job.  For situations when the proposals on the table will all have similar offers, make sure your proposal gives the impression that you’ll execute the auction with unmatched dexterity.  One way to do that is to use fewer words and more images.

Taking it Personally

I’m not sure that I’ve ever read an entire real estate sales contract, even though we’re preparing to buy our third home in less than a decade.  I’ve never finished reading the iTunes service agreement or all the entry rules in contests to win a trip to the Super Bowl or a new F-150.

And I’ve never read the Bible from cover to cover.

There.  I said it.

I’ve memorized literally chapters of the 66 books—including every verse of Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the canon.  I’ve studied entire books going verse by verse.  But genealogies or major prophets usually kill the hitting streak.

I’m grateful that God supplemented all those inspired words with his inspired nature.  Even in its “groaning,” decaying state, Creation teems with colorful illustrations of his creativity, evidence of his perfect engineering, and analogies for his transcribed principles.  It’s no wonder that Romans says nature alone is enough to show us our need of redemption—a rescue from the entropy of our soul.  And it’s critical that we, who have been restored, worship his revealed glory—so that the rocks don’t have to cry out in our place.

This past year, Bill Hybels, the event’s creator and host, left us with a challenge, the completion of which has been on my to do list until tonight [New Year's Day].  The assignment: define your organization in just five words.

For years, I’ve rolled my eyes at mission statements and the like, especially the ones that get posted on store walls or printed in company brochures.  I don’t really care what a company’s mission statement is.  If your customer service and marketing already exemplify it, I already know your vision and values.  If they don’t, why give me a yardstick to to measure your shortcomings?

Tonight, though, I finally assembled five words to define my company.

For the past week, I’ve been working on my content for 10.5 hours of classes I’ll be instructing at the Certified Auctioneer Institute (CAI) in March.  Tonight, I was working on a section of the material about defining your brand and then filtering various business and media decisions through that brand.  That’s when I bumped into the challenge of the five-word sieve.

After making my list of five words, I wondered what my clients would list as my five words and if any of their lists would resemble mine.  I also thought that it would be entertaining to hear from my friends, industry peers, and family as to what they, too, would list as biplane productions‘ emphases.  But it was my five words that stared at me like a list of New Year’s resolutions—to conduct my business in such a way in 2012 that the definitions of biplane productions‘ observers would fall as close to these five words as possible.

The point of this exercise wasn’t to create magic words or build a corporate guessing game for you.  My goals for biplane productions aren’t much different than yours: create mutually-beneficial transactions, cultivate long-term relationships (with both industry peers and clients), nurture an expert brand to an expanding audience, and get bigger black numbers that come with smaller red ones.

No, the point was to create a filter that will guide your brand and mine at each decision of literally hundreds or thousands of decision points—from website user interface to direct mail style sheet, from voicemail greetings to email signatures, from company dress code to bidding platform(s).  The ramifications of those cumulative choices will, in turn, move our companies closer to or farther away from our respective goals.

All of us may not need to make a five-word list.  We certainly don’t need another plaque on the wall.  But we all need to be looking at our everyday decisions through the lenses of our brands.

Taking it Personally

I lead one of the three squads of the parking team at my church.  Eight of us direct traffic for the 8:30am service.  After we get everybody into the building and the signs & cones rearranged for second service, we eat breakfast together in our church’s cafe.  During one of these breakfasts, I had each of the team members discreetly write the five words they’d use to describe who we are and what we do.  Using a flip chart, I transcribed the cumulative list of words; then we tried to find five common denominators.  It was a great exercise to recast the vision of why we exist and what we do.  I love the heart of my team mates, as they were expressed in these summations:

RESPONSE
The working definition of worship at our church is “the appropriate response to God’s revelation.”  So, serving is part of our response to unmatched grace, mercy, love, acceptance, and truth.  We hope that people can see worship in what we do and how we do it.  Words that came in this category included: joy, serve, glorify, awesome, expressive, and excitement.

IMPACT
Every encounter with Christ and Christians either pushes people toward Jesus or away from him.  What we do out on the asphalt (and grass) could change someone’s trajectory; and we’ve heard multiple stories of those new vectors from attendees, other servers, and other team members.  This is more than showing up to check something off a guilt list; this is ministry.  Words that came in this category included: greet, desire, energy, welcome, encourage, smiles, safety, connect, humble, and touch lives.

COMMUNITY
The Christian journey was designed to be completed with other travelers, each helping one another grow closer to Jesus.  Even the toughest personalities on our team are frail, because we’re all human.  We need encouragement, accountability, acceptance, and even boots to our back pockets.  Some of the most authentic conversations I’ve experienced have been with members of my team.  Words that came in this category included: love, unity, observe, conscientious, encourage, connect, humble, growth, and initiative.

PRAYER
I have cried during our pre-game prayer circle time.  I’ve locked arms with friends, laid hands on those who’ve made themselves vulnerable, and heard prayers that have to shake heaven.  In the least, they have shaken me—shaken us.  I’ve held Rick’s iPhone on speakerphone, as we prayed with someone in prison.  When a need or hurt is expressed by a teammate via email or group text, prayer ensues.  Listening to new believers pray has been both precious and convicting, as they skip religious jargon for straight-up conversation with heaven.

LOVE
This word appeared over and over again.  True, biblical love expresses itself in many ways—often in the ways categorized in the other four words.  Our pastor quotes some famous writer all the time: “Love is always on its way to someone else.”  As a parking team, it’s our role to be conduits to each other, to friends, to strangers—even to the combative.  If love isn’t the filter for our response, all of the above degenerates.  Love is the reason, the expression, the connection.  As Paul wrote, without love, we are nothing.

How would you describe the ministry or serving team to which you contribute?  Is it where you’d hope it would be?  If not, what can you do to affect change in the direction of that ideal?

I spent more time on this Christmas letter than on any of the previous ten.  And I designed it somewhat in community through a creative group in which I participated this fall.  The talented folks in that circle truly did help me create a better product.  It’s not perfect; like all projects, it’s not really finished.  But this had to get out the door, and outdoors it now is.

The link below downloads the PDF of the piece, and it includes hyperlinks to websites that add texture and context to the stories.

2011 George Christmas Letter

My side of the family makes it even easier by creating a message thread on Facebook where we post our respective wish lists for our secret sibling to use for reference in their holiday shopping.

To keep you reading, I’ll show you what I posted.

(in this order):
anything from here: http://www.gfa.org/gift/home
gift cards from iTunes, REI, or Dick’s Sporting Goods
solid-color winter beanies
Smart Wool® socks
black Crocks (size 10)
solid color fleece sweatshirts or hoodies
athletic ankle socks
100g Jetpower micro-canister

What you’ll notice is that I didn’t write, “Something nice,” (though everything on this list is nice to me) or “Great deal for the money” (though I hope my sibling finds the deal of a lifetime).  Why?  Because those are ambiguous requests—unhelpful direction.  See, when they go to a store, there won’t be an aisle for “something nice” or “a sweet deal!”  If they Google search for “something nice,” they will get these random acts of results.

This makes sense on a personal level; but, for some reason, auction marketers disregard this common wisdom when advertising the assets in their auctions.  Their headlines, line ads, and websites lead with information that buyers will not type into their search engines, apps, or wish lists.

Raise your hand, if you’ve seen an auction advertisement that said “Investment Opportunity!” Now keep that hand raised if you think anyone is searching for an office building, flatbed truck, bass boat, or 1950′s Texaco sign with those two words.  In our search culture, advertising needs to focus on the facts, not the pitch—even for offline media.  You might be able to schmooze bidders at open houses or at the auction, even though our culture is growing less tolerant of the commissioned sales schtick.  But you’ll be hard pressed to find advertising that works that way.

Recently, I was asked to rewrite some sales copy on a luxury home, since [I assume] it wasn’t getting many bites.  I couldn’t change the facts, just the adjectives and syntax.  Even if I were J.K. Rowling, I couldn’t rewrite that paragraph in a way that would change someone’s mind about that house.  Either they wanted what it had or they didn’t.  If they wanted four bathrooms and an in-law suite, only a house with those specifications would work.  If they wanted an in-ground pool, stables, and a riding ring, they were looking for those words in whatever media they’re using to shop.

Fluff text is inefficient use of space and attention.  There’s no search criteria field in Trulia for “cute,” no check box on Realtor.com for “cozy,” no ebay category for “like new.”  I just checked: LoopNet doesn’t have a menu selection for “potential.”  Pictures, dimensions, location, age—immutable, objective data—will tell someone if an asset matches their wish list; their own emotional and financial situation will translate that information into subjective evaluations.

I’m regularly amused by auctioneers telling their audience that an address is conveniently located in reference to places a half hour or more away from the subject property.  Convenience is a relative value.  Oh, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen “Unlimited potential!” as a real estate headline or bullet point.  I don’t have a real estate license, but I’d imagine legal boundaries and zoning commissions significantly restrict infinity.  But even if the future development of a property were somehow unlimited, who’s searching for that ambiguity?

Whether searching for Christmas gifts, farm equipment, or a strip mall, consumers will echo what Detective Joe Friday said on Dragnet, “All we want are the facts.”  It’s insulting to tell a buyer what the facts mean.  Buyers will most likely know if what you’re selling is a collectors item, if a home is designed for entertaining, if an address is a good business location—based on the facts at hand.

Does this mean advertising should be reduced exclusively to a list of bulleted descriptions?  No—even if in many media, that’d be the most efficient strategy.  Write your sales copy as long as space and budget will allow.  Emphasis, though, belongs to the facts.  Headlines should tell people if what they want might be described in the next section.  Top billing should go to the unarguable.

Make it easy for potential buyers to compare your sale item(s) to their wish list.  That ease of comparison reflects on your brand, whether they bid or purchase from you or not.

Taking it Personally

Outside of sports programming or sitting in a waiting room, I couldn’t tell you the last time I watched TV news.  Beside how partisan each of the networks have proven to be, I’m disenchanted by the 24-hour news network ecosystem’s need to fill so much of their time with commentary.  I don’t need anyone to tell me what I should feel about a congressional bill, a televised debate, an oval office speech.  I think that’s why I’m drawn to Twitter so much as a news source.  News sources there have to dump the main point and a link in 140 characters or less.

News never has been objective; I don’t know how it ever could be.  So, I don’t ask it to be.

Maybe that’s why after sitting through literally over 5,000 sermons and Bible lessons, I’m so drawn to my TruthWorks Bible study, where I’m pointed to a passage of Scripture with three questions: “What does the writer actually say?” and “What does that mean—in a big picture context?” and then “What do I do right now with this truth?”  It’s good to have wise, educated people bring light to Scripture; and I believe teachers can be agents of the Holy Spirit.  But we need to be careful not to rely on other people to tell us what to believe; we need to be like the heralded Bereans, who “received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.”

The process was a little different for me—collaborating with an editor again, but that external insight proved both a welcome benefit and constructive challenge.

The principles in this article apply not only to the auction industry and the marketing practice but also to students, parents, employees, and non-profit workers.  I implement Google Alerts for many of the potential uses shown in the article; so, I can make these recommendations based on personal experience.

With further ado, here are the “5 Reasons You Should Be Using Goodle Alerts.”