A Chat with August’s Profile, Chris Harris, director, direct response marketing, Becker Group Direct
CS: What was the name of the mobile company?
CH: It’s called 3united Mobile Solutions.
CS: What do you enjoy most about the catalog/multichannel industry?
CH: I was actually a political science major, I went to George Washington University in D.C. And one of the things that attracted me to political science and to Washington, D.C. was the idea of being able to understand what moved people. We have such an incredible country and we live in such a really fantastic world, so many different types of unique and interesting people, that I kind of wanted to figure out as best I could what made people tick. And political science is one of those disciplines where you’re kind of forced to segment and understand people. What drives them, based on their demographics, based on their psychographics. All these various variables.
To me it was a logical transition into direct marketing or direct response. Because you know, it’s fascinating. And the skill sets are transferable, because, frankly, a good direct marketer can go from selling B-to-B and also do B-to-C, and selling different products, because you’re taking a lot of the same skill sets. Now of course there are different elements to B-to-B and to B-to-C and any products that you’re selling, but there’s something good about that. And it can be very formulaic and it can be a situation where if you get it right, get the formula right, you can enjoy tremendous growth.
You also can enjoy considerable growth because you’re using the laws of probability to your advantage. Once you’re understanding the formula of what your particular business or niche does and does well, by targeting your audience properly, you can put out in the marketplace enough information to get a very positive response back.
What I’m getting at is in typical sales, where you’re a salesman knocking on the door, there’s a limited number of people that you can actually see and meet and greet and develop a relationship with in any particular day. In direct marketing, you can meet thousands in a particular day, tens of thousands, millions if need be. And one of the challenges, and one of the things that I enjoy, is identifying and then developing those kind of relationships, and developing a corporate culture within whatever I’m doing where we actually enjoy interacting and conversing and helping solve the problems of our customers, our clients. It’s very gratifying.
