You should send your second sales letter approximately three weeks after the first. There are several reasons for doing so. Your initial sales letter may not have reached the hiring executive, or business conditions may have changed. An executive can quit, get fired, or be transferred suddenly. An expansion may require greater manpower needs than anticipated. Budget approvals may come through unexpectedly. Sometimes your letter is border line. Your PE needs just a slight push to get him or her to extend an invitation for an interview. Whatever the reason, your second sales letter may be better received than the first.
Finally, a second sales letter helps to establish your credibility that you are "for real." A PE who was on the borderline of responding to your initial sales letter may be convinced by your second letter. Prepare your second sales letter much like your first, with the following changes: use a different opening/attention getter; strengthen your Desire paragraphs, especially if you did not receive a strong response from your first mailing.
Send your second sales letter to all those PEs who did not invite you for an interview. These include PEs who did not reply at all as well as PEs who sent you a rejection letter, either directly from the hiring executive or from the personnel department. You should also send your second sales letter to additional PEs who have come to your attention since the first mailing. Their names should be on your updated list.
If you are getting good results, you can use your original sales letter with minor changes. However, if your initial mailing brought in poor results, something is wrong with your sales letter (assuming you followed printing and other directions carefully). Reread the early part of this chapter and review the examples. Study every sentence in your sales letter. Sometimes only a small change or omission can make a world of difference. Rewrite your sales letter and send it out again.
How to Keep Records of Your Sales Letter Results
You must keep records of the results of your sales letters so you can determine whether to change your basic sales letter and revise your mailing list for your second letter. You can use your mailing list for your records. To the right of each name draw two columns. Label the first column "Initial Letter" and the second column "Second Letter." As responses come in, put the date in the appropriate column. You can use a code for the type of response: "R" for rejection, "I" for invitation to interview. Always keep all communications and records of communications until your campaign is over.
Seeking Two Jobs Simultaneously with the Same Company
There is nothing written that will prevent you from applying for two entirely different jobs in simultaneously. Everything depends on your packaging, and your focus on different accomplishments for different jobs. If you do this effectively, you can have a much wider range of jobs available when it is time to make your final decision about which job you want. You will also have more interviews, receive more job offers, and get a job much more quickly and probably under better terms than otherwise. This does not, of course, mean using an identical sales letter for different jobs or different industries. Each must be tailored especially for a particular situation.
There are two ways of doing this. One is to write different letters for entirely different industries. For example, one job seeker conducted a successful campaign in which he sought a job as a director of engineering and simultaneously did a mailing seeking a position as a management consultant. Ultimately he chose a high-paying job as a management consultant. The money probably wasn't as important as the fact that he got much more exposure and interview experience. "When he finally made the decision to become a consultant, he knew that this was right for him.
Someone I know went even further with this concept. He was a senior engineering manager at a company supplying components to aerospace. His job objective involved switching to marketing for a major aerospace company. He wanted one of two jobs: vice president of marketing reporting to the president, or failing this, marketing manager reporting to a vice president of marketing. This industry was in a recession at the time, and to make the search more interesting, this manager was unemployed. He wrote two slightly different letters, both emphasizing his marketing (not engineering) expertise. One emphasized his top-level management experience. The other focused on his accomplishments in middle management.
Now, what do you do in this case about disguising the name on the letter? After all, here he was applying for a vice president's job, which meant he must write to the president. Simultaneously he must send sales letters to the vice president of marketing at the same company. This job hunter didn't disguise his name at all, and he mailed out both types of letters at the same time.
Eventually he got the job he sought with this dual-level approach. However, one funny thing did happen to him during his campaign. He received a telephone call from the vice president of marketing of a major aerospace corporation saying that he had received his letter and inviting him to an interview. He told his wife he was interviewing with this company and left for a morning interview. The interview went quite well. Two vice presidents took him to lunch. Normally not much of a luncheon drinker, he had a double martini with his hosts. They no sooner finished their martinis when someone at another table said, "Another round for those three gentlemen over there." So our hero had another round.
By the time they left the restaurant, they were all the best of friends. As he left the plant, the vice president of marketing grasped the candidate's hand and said, "You're our kind of guy. We like you and you'll have an offer in the mail."
The job hunter got into his car and managed to drive home. He was greeted by his wife -who observed that her husband had been drinking. "I thought you went to an interview at the ABC Aerospace Company," she said. When he answered that he had, she handed him a letter from the company where I had just interviewed, this job hunter started laughing because, as he explained to his wife, the president of this company had been and was still in Europe enjoying a vacation. What had happened was that his letter addressed to the president had been screened out by the secretary. She sent it to the human resources department. He had received the personnel manager's standard form-letter answer. He did get the promised offer from this company. He told me that he would have taken it except that he received a better one from another aerospace firm.
This incident illustrates just how far you can go in your job campaign. You may wonder whether, in any firm, the vice president of marketing and the president ever talked about the two different letters for different positions they received. The answer is yes. As a matter of fact, at the company that finally hired him, the president and the vice president of marketing had compared notes. What did they think? They thought it was rather clever. Maybe that's one reason he got the offer.
Using Technology to Update the Personal Letter Approach
Developing technology enables new twists to the personal letter approach which can be very effective. For example, a FAX will usually be read by a PE unless it is a resume. (Than of course, it will probably be sent to the Personnel Department right away). So, you may be able to get interviews quicker by faxing your sales letters to PEs. Directories of FAX numbers are published and may be available at your public library.
However, FAX numbers are also given in many directories listed previously. You can also call the receptionist using a telephone number from the yellow pages. She'll be able to give you the PE's FAX number if there is one.
Another unusual way to break through with a personal sales presentation to the PE is with a computer diskette. In quantity, diskettes can be very inexpensive. As this is written, you can get 5.25" double density diskettes for .21 each in quantities of 1000 from EM/Micro Center 1100 Steeled Road, Columbus, Ohio 43212. The toll-free number is 1-800-634-3478. Most PEs have computers today, and most diskettes will get through secretaries. Put basic instructions on the label: "For a unique proposition which can help your company's competitive position, type 'GO". There is a program which will allow you to do this which you can license for a few dollars. It is used to make computer books, but who says you can't use it for this purpose? Order from Jeff Napa, another Company, P. Box 298, Appellate, OR 97530.
If you don't want to use a special program, your label can indicate the word processor used: "For a unique proposition, read in Word Perfect 5.1."
If you have the money, video tapes can also be purchased in quantity for a few dollars each. You can either do your own taping or work with a studio. You may not send out 1000, but a hundred or less may be effective to the right PEs. Limit your video to ten minutes maximum. Use the outline of your sales letter, but speak informally as if in a conversation with your PE. Done right, videos can get you a high quality interview when other methods fail.
