From the heart
The heart of Ryan Bishop’s marketing program is a letter he sends every month to about 800 current and past clients, friends, and professional acquaintances.
The letters are surprisingly personal and emotional. “I call them my letters from the heart,” he says.
A recent dispatch listed the “100 things I want to accomplish before I die” and asked recipients to compile their own lists and send them in. So far, there have been 53 responses, and Bishop plans to publish them in upcoming letters.
His pen-pal marketing approach helped him achieve a volume last year of $8 million. He works with a youthful, six-person sales team—I'm the old man of the group,” he says—selling mainly to first-time and first-move-up buyers.
“We’ve built up a huge referral base,” he says, “and it just keeps snowballing.&rdquo