White papers have been around for quite a while, but I’ve noticed that many businesses misuse the idea and get disappointing results.

I think the reason is that many people don’t understand the distinction between marketing literature and a true white paper.

Marketing literature, such as a brochure, is just what it sounds like. It’s literature intended to sell you something. It may be informative and interesting, but the purpose is clear. It works best when the person requesting the literature is curious about a specific product.

A properly-written white paper, however, is not simply sales literature in disguise. It is intended to be an authoritative report or a guide focused on an important, relevant issue. It seeks to educate readers and help them solve a problem or make a decision.

When you fail to make this distinction, you often end up with nothing but a wordy advertisement. There’s nothing wrong with long, editorial-style ads, but these are not white papers.

As an example, I offer a white paper called Getting Response in a Down Economy. I wrote this paper to counter the growing panic in the business community about falling sales. I present an argument that while the economic pain is real, the impending doom many feel is not. And I further provide many pages of tips and tactics for making sales in today’s environment.

Do I have an ulterior motive in offering this white paper? Of course. But it’s not a direct sales pitch for using my consulting or copywriting services. The information is timely and valuable whether you choose to call me or not.

And that’s where the white paper gets its power. By providing valuable information with no direct sales pitch, it helps to establish the source as an authority. For those who find the information helpful and want to overcome a particular problem, they will be predisposed to consider calling the author of the paper.

Writing good white papers is something of an art because you have to balance the sales motives of a business with the expectations and psychology of the reader and potential customer or client.

I don’t have room here to provide an extensive treatise on the subject. However, here are a few basic pointers. To write a successful white paper, I suggest that you …

• Make it 5 or more pages.
• Focus on a single, timely topic.
• Include exclusive information.
• Provide immediately useful tips.
• Avoid any direct advertising.

Naturally, you will also include contact information from the author or sponsoring business, which may include a soft call-to-action for more information.

White papers give you a powerful tactic for getting noticed and establishing yourself or your business as an authority in a given field. But they work only if you understand the multi-step nature of lead generation and avoid direct product pitches.

If I could sponsor a national conference on sales lead generation, I would simply fill a room with Rube Goldberg cartoons, herd everyone in, and lock the door for a few hours.

No speakers. No booths. No buffets of cold ham and limp green beans.

And you know what? The effectiveness of lead generation in this country would skyrocket. People would be closing more sales than their companies could handle.

Once I settled all the copyright infringement suits from displaying ol’ Rube’s artwork, I would be rich. I would be hailed as the Peter F. Drucker of sales leads.

Oh, well. I can dream, can’t I?

If you remember Rube Goldberg (1883-1970), you’re admitting your age. He amused readers for years with his fanciful drawings of ridiculously elaborate machines performing mundane tasks, such as cleaning windows, sharpening pencils, and putting golf balls on tees.

Today, his creations — and his name — have come to represent the fallacy of applying complex solutions to simple problems. The Rube Goldberg website says his cartoons take ” … a simple task and makes it extraordinarily complicated.”

And that’s the problem in a nutshell.

Sales lead generation is arguably the simplest of direct marketing tasks. Yet most businesses can’t get the results they want because instead of simply generating leads — which is little more than getting people to identify themselves as interested in something — they get caught up in too many other priorities that make the job more difficult than it has to be.

Lazy Offers and Loose Lips

The two most common ways I see businesses making things hard on themselves are 1) making lazy offers and 2) giving away too much information.

Making lazy offers is a result of allowing image and branding issues to creep into the lead generation process.

Running flashy corporate-style ads and mailing glossy four-color brochures or expensive three-dimensional items make you especially vulnerable to lazy offers. You’ll end up focusing too much on design and too little on delivering a clear offer or call to action, other than the anemic “call for more information” or the abominable “have a sales person call me.”

The latter, by the way, is the one of the most common offers made and, unfortunately, the least effective in the known universe, guaranteed to scare off prospects of all temperatures.

Running a close second with lazy offers is loose lips, or giving away too much information at the wrong time. This is a result of impatience, trying to move your prospects along too fast instead of allowing the step-by-step nature of the sales process take its course.

Go ahead, mail that detailed 16-page brochure to a cold list. Dump your product prices and specifications on those unsuspecting souls. Invite ten thousand people to browse your fact-packed website. Instead of getting responses and capturing names, you’ll just give away the store. And when your prospects’ curiosity is satisfied, you’ll never hear from them again.

Making Things Easy on Yourself

Why work so hard? The right way to get sales leads is also the easiest way.

First, offer something free. This is the key to any successful lead generation program. Whether you use direct mail, print ads, radio, television, or other media, you must offer something free to get a prospect to raise his hand and say, “I’m interested in this.”

You can offer just about anything — free booklet, free gift, free survey, free sample, free catalog, free inspection, free consultation, or anything else that’s related to your product or service.

Second, the free thing should help your prospect solve a problem. Give your offer value. For someone having tax problems, offering a “free tax reduction kit” is more appealing and relevant than “a free brochure about the XYZ Accounting Firm.” Try to solve particular problems.

Third, stay focused on getting the lead. Don’t get carried away with the creative aspects of copy, design, and production. Keep your message as simple and lean as possible. The idea is to peak your prospect’s interest in the free thing you are offering and get a request for it.

Don’t talk about your company, then tack on an offer. And don’t spill the beans, because if you say too much, you’ll prematurely quench the thirst for information. Tease, don’t tell.

Fourth, gather the information you need to make a sale. The only reason for offering something free is to get a name, address, phone number, and other information to begin the sales process.

Be careful if you ask for email response, though, because prospects may not give you everything you need. And if you want to direct prospects to your website, create a special URL that will ask for contact information first.

Simplicity Works

A direct mail piece I created for a Canadian Internet services firm illustrates how well simplicity can work. I used a plain #10 window envelope. Inside, the 2-page letter began directly: “I have a FREE Demo CD you should see. May I send it to you?” It didn’t talk about the company, but went on to describe what was on the CD.

A two-sided insert did not discuss the company’s services, but presented success stories from well-known companies who use my client’s services. A simple BRC rounded out the package. And in every piece, there was a clear call to action pushing the CD.

Did it focus on branding? No. Did it relay every detail about available services? No. All it did was generate a large quantity of qualified sales leads for my client’s sales force to develop and close.

Simple, huh?

Of course, you may prefer a Rube Goldberg solution. After all, complexity is an ideal way to impress colleagues and pad your portfolio. And you won’t be bothered by all those pesky inquiries!

A couple of years ago, I was at a party where the host challenged guests to remove a cork from the inside of a wine bottle. It was quite a challenge, the host proclaimed.

One by one, people tried and failed to remove the cork. Then the host began explaining the tricky and complex solution, and people were impressed. However, the host was unable to remove the cork after 15 minutes of fiddling.

Growing impatient, I grabbed the bottle and asked the host if he really wanted the cork out of the bottle. He said yes. So I broke the bottle and handed him the cork. He wasn’t happy with that solution and said I “cheated.” Apparently it just wasn’t clever enough, even though it worked instantly.

Too often, this is the way it is with sales lead generation. Generating leads isn’t really that difficult, but people seem to be forever looking for complex solutions to simple problems. I call these the “lead killers,” because that’s exactly what they do — they kill leads.

The best defense against these killers is to just do what works. The simpler, the better. Here are a few examples.

Make an offer to get a response. Sort a “duh” suggestion, but you’d be shocked at how many businesses make things hard on themselves by trying to generate leads without an offer or by trying to close the sale in the lead piece.

Lead generation is a multistep process. First you get a response in order to identify your leads. Then you start the process of making a sale to those leads. Take just one step at a time. The best and simplest way to stay on track is to offer something free and focus your lead generator on that free item.

Sack the silly offers. Some businesses understand the idea of offering a freebie, but they offer things like pens or calendars or mouse pads. Those have wide appeal and will generate a big response, but they complicate things because they won’t help identify the good leads.

Your freebie must relate to your product or service so it generates quality leads, not just quantity leads. If you’re a tax preparer, for example, you could offer a special report titled “7 Easy Ways to Cut This Year’s Taxes by 35% or more.”

Avoid “look at me” brochures. You might be in love with your business. But your customers aren’t. They’re only interested in their own needs and wants. So sending them chest-beating literature is a mistake.

Don’t go on at length about your corporate mission in flowery, high-sounding language. Don’t recount the history of your business minute-by-minute for the last 20 years. And don’t display heroic photos of your management team climbing a mountain. Focus on the offer you’re making. Stick to basic benefits. Keep it simple and talk to prospects about what they care about.

Tease, don’t tell. Telling too much isn’t just a lead killer; it’s more like business enemy number one. The goal is just to get a response. That’s it. And to get a response, you have to generate curiosity. Providing too much information up front not only makes more work for you, it kills curiosity.

That’s not to say your lead piece has to be small or include few words, only that it shouldn’t reveal so much that you satisfy your prospect’s curiosity too soon. Remember the vaudeville rule: Always leave them wanting more.

Include a reply card even if you want calls. By including nothing but a phone number as a response option, you’re only appealing to the hottest prospects. Occasionally, that works fine. But generally, you want to scoop up warm and lukewarm leads as well.

After all, that’s the point of lead generation — to identify who has an interest so you can focus your sales efforts, not to simply grab the low-hanging fruit. You can easily double or triple your response with a simple, little reply card.

Just send a letter. I know that sounds too simple to work. But it does. In fact, a letter with a reply card or fax-back sheet may be all you need. You can test including other literature, but often the lone letter works far better.

I just recently tested this with one of my clients, and the simple letter on stock letterhead with a reply card and BRE beat packages with the same letter plus additional inserts.

Try self-mailers and postcards. I use these all the time with fantastic results. They encourage passalongs to decision-makers. They’re easier and more self-contained than multipiece mailers. And they can dramatically cut costs compared to envelope direct mail packages.

Sometimes, their economy can even outperform everything else, including personal letters. Postcards are especially nifty for simple lead offers or for directing someone to a website or physical store. It doesn’t get any simpler than a postcard.

Here’s a warning: Just as breaking the bottle didn’t ingratiate me with my host, trying to implement some of these suggestions may not ingratiate you with some of your business associates. Many people don’t want simple. They want impressive or complex, no matter the outcome.

It’s likely that by boosting results you can change their minds. But if not, don’t say I didn’t tell you.

Lead generation is a fairly straightforward task. You reach out to a list of prospects with letters, postcards, emails, ads, or other promotional material. You offer something, like a quote or brochure or other freebie. And you follow up with those who contact you to begin the process of getting customers.

Call backs are an essential part of this process. The point of lead generation is not merely to distribute promotional literature or create awareness, but to winnow your prospects to a list of sales leads to give to your sales force.

A sales rep must then call back quickly. Why? If you’ve ever watched a blacksmith work, it’s easy to understand.

Blacksmiths put a piece of iron into a fire. When the iron is red hot, literally glowing red, they place the iron on an anvil and begin to strike it with a hammer. They must work quickly, because the iron can only be worked while it’s hot. If it cools, it becomes hard and brittle. Hammer blows are a waste of effort.

This is the origin of the phrase “strike while the iron is hot.”

Some time ago, I was helping to organize an event for about 350 people. The speaker had requested a large projection screen that was about 10 feet wide. That’s a big screen and I knew the only place I could find it was at a local event production business.

I opened the phone book to browse the ads and called two firms within a few miles of my home. It was a weekend, and most firms like this are staging events at that time, so I left a message for each.

A guy at one firm called me back within 10 minutes. He had set up messages to transfer to his cell phone so he could respond quickly. He had what I wanted and quoted a fair price.

I didn’t hear from the other firm for 2 weeks, after the event was over. He said they were busy, that they don’t answer calls on the weekend, and that he got back to me as soon as he could (meaning as soon as it was convenient for him). He then said he’d get back to me with a quote because he didn’t have his quote sheet with him. I reminded him my event was over, said thanks anyway, and hung up.

Obviously, I rented the screen from the guy who called me back quickly. The other guy probably had nice screens at good prices too, but he didn’t called when “the iron was hot,” so he lost my business.

Whether a firm is large or small, whether you’re selling a product or service, quick call backs are a no-brainer. All the money and time you put into your lead generation efforts is wasted if you don’t call back during the short time potential customers need what you offer.

Ideally, you should call back within a week. The longer you wait, the greater the chance that the lead will lose interest, forget they contacted you, or find another source for the product or service they wanted.

When you think of generating sales leads, you probably think of direct mail or telemarketing. But any medium can be used to generate sales leads, including TV ads.

Watch this TV ad I wrote for Sunbelt Software and then I’ll give you the 3 key tactics used in ads like this.

First, let me say that Sunbelt is a top-notch company with a  superior product. So that gives them a big advantage with any marketing effort in any medium.

Here, we wanted to test a TV ad to generate leads for a computer malware program. The ad is directed to IT managers and system administrators. It’s a tough group to convince, so the idea was not to sell the software but to let them try it free.

The formula is simple:

1. Present a problem.
2. Solve the problem.
3. Offer free information.

One big “pain point” with malware and anti-virus programs is that they can be a little buggy and hard to manage. It’s a major irritant, so we used this to get attention and generate interest.

The answer is, of course, our software. By providing benefits and details of the product, we presented a solution to the problem.

The call to action was an offer to try the program free with no cost or obligation. Since we knew the product was superior to competitors, and because tech guys are such a hard sell, the idea was to let the program sell itself.

That’s it. Problem, solution, free information. This formula works in nearly any medium, but it works especially well for TV because you can dramatize the problem and solution.

You can see the same formula at work in nearly any direct response TV ad selling mops, diet pills, or any product. Watch this Billy Mays commercial to see problem / solution in action. The difference is that these TV commercials seek to sell the product directly rather than generate leads. So the formula is problem, solution, direct sell offer.

I didn’t produce the spot, so the final ad deviated from my script a little. Most notably, I would have preferred that the Web address stay on the screen throughout the spot. This is standard practice for lead generation because you want people who are interested to respond even if they’re not entirely sold yet.

In a direct sell spot, you generally save the Web address or phone number for the end of the spot to avoid time-wasting inquiries. People who watch a TV ad all the way through are more likely to be sold on your product. If they respond too soon, they’ll tend to ask questions and require selling on the phone.