Book excerpt: A goldmine of tested DM tips and techniques. DM guru Nat Bodian's latest direct marketing tool crams 40 years of experience into a treasure drove of response-driven strategies for racking up sales by mail, phone, and space advertising. Exhaustively indexed to make fast access easy, Direct Marketing Rules of Thumb packs 1,000 priceless time and money saving ideas you need to: prepare, use, and evaluate every DM component--from headlines to offers to credit and collections; locate, select, time, and test top-selling mailing lists for business, professions, medicine, consumers, charities, and more--plus work with list brokers, managers, and compilers; land your share of the $300 billion telemarketing business--including getting started, finding help, preparing scripts, targeting top prospects, selecting lists, and more; sell successuflly through card decks; snag the best prices on paper, printing, production, and mail shop services; create and place low-cost DM space ads; much, much more.