You should write your second sales letter about three weeks after your first mail¬ing. If you received good results with your first letter, you will need to make only minor adjustments. If the results were poor, you may have to make major alter¬ations. You should not hesitate to do this. The factor that distinguishes good from poor results is not replies, but interviews. You should plan on about two days to write a new sales letter.
Printing the Letterheads and Envelopes for Your Second Letter
If you planned ahead and had extra letterheads and envelopes printed at first, you may not need to do this. But if you did, don't hesitate to make an additional investment.
Mailing the Second Letter
You will not need to spend a lot of time compiling a new mailing list, since day- to-day record keeping has updated your initial list. Eliminate those companies on your list that have contacted you to set up an interview. Keep track of your second sales letter results, as you did your first, in case an additional mailing is required.
Setting Up Interviews
You will begin to set up interviews generated by sales letters about three weeks after your first mailing. Invitations will come from the executive you have sent the sales letter to as well as from human resources people and other staff personnel. The majority of invitations will come by telephone. This is one reason that practicing with a telephone is so important. Most executives will want to talk with you by phone before seeing you, especially if the interview requires travel at the PEs expense. Responses to faxes and e-mail letters will come much sooner.
You should continue to set up interviews until you get and accept a great job offer. You can always cancel an interview. It is much more difficult to arrange an interview after you have told a PE that you are declining because you expect a job offer. You may then have to answer embarrassing questions about why the offer was not extended. Of course, after you interview and have made a "sale," you are free to say you are expecting another offer or have received one.
Certain other alternative ways of getting interviews may be important to your campaign and should be integrated into your overall campaign plan.