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Here we go again.  It’s August and you just hit the pavement running . . . right? Well, I know how busy things get so, so I’ll just give you brief overviews in rapid-fire fashion.

WinUltra QuickStart

As we prepare for our Madison seminar, August 14-15, we are constructing some materials to help you get up and running quickly. If you have to hire in temporary help, just purchased WinUltra and are asking “what now”, or were beginning to think its too late to get started, our QuickStart materials will help.

UltraScan QuickStart

If you’ve read this newsletter long, you know I don’t do (a lot of) grandstanding, but I’ve never had a product to offer that could generate this volume of quick pay back. You’ve read that WinUltra can help you capture additional business because of the reports you can generate.  That’s true. But, from UltraScan users, we’re hearing tremendous feed-back in terms of increased speed, super accuracy and labor savings.

Our QuickStart materials will help you get up and running quickly. I can’t quite call it “plug-n-play”, but close.

In a report by Laube Sheldon of USWeb Corp, by 2001, Internet commerce is projected to be $220 Billion. Currently, there are about 60 million users with projections of 200 million by 2001, and 550 million the next year.

Do YOU have a web presence yet?  QDP is offering a new service – web page design. It is so new, in fact, that ours isn’t even complete yet.  We have a 3-pg introductory piece of information that we will fax upon request. I started to include it in this mailing, but this is not a high volume offering and we’d be in trouble (well, at least slow) if 50 people called and wanted to have a web site in the next two weeks.  So, if there are gazillions of web page designers out there (believe me, there are), why should you consider using QDP?

1. We know fundraising. Go ahead. Call someone and tell them you want a web page. Watch how long it takes them to understand what it is you do. You need to consider the value of that time as you compare offerings.  We recommend a 5-page Web Site and, in addition to knowing what we need, can plug your info in relatively quickly.

2. We know fundraising contacts. We’ll know what you’re talking about when you want to link to the different fundraising vendors.

3. We’ll be offering lower than industry standard pricing as we develop this part of our business. I didn’t say cheap, just less than some of what’s out there.

In the last couple weeks, one person called to tell me she had been offered FREE page design (flag #1) and 30-days FREE listing on the web, then $30/month thereafter for web site hosting. Also, that the vendor promised they could get all the necessary information in a 5-minute phone call.  Another caller indicated that she realized quickly in a conversation with a designer, that it was going to involve considerable time explaining her business . . .

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: “If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon.

The following is taken from a press release response:

If GM had similarly developed technology, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics

• For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

• Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.

• Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and drive on.

• Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn, would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

• Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought “Car95" or "CarNT." But then you would have to buy more seats.

• Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun,  reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads.

• The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single "general car default" warning light.

• New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.

• The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.

• Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grab hold of the radio antenna.

• GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.

• Every time GM introduced a new model car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

• You'd press the "start" button to shut off the engine

Hotline Connection Announcement

QDP’s Hotline Connection Voice Mail program was a good technology when we brought it to market. But, quite honestly, the volume has not justified continued research and development and, although we still have brochures and can still get sound boards, we are considering the product a completed program and will no longer be making changes to it.

UltraScan - Super Quick Pay Back

When I was researching purchasing a Duplicator vs a Copier, I remember the rep telling me how quickly my $5000 would come back in savings between the cost of a $.015 per page copier cost and a lower $.0025 per page duplicator cost. Of course, with the $3000 or so difference in price, I had to make a lot of copies to realize the true savings. Actually, I bought the duplicator because of its 130 cpm vs the copier’s 15 copies per minute. But he was giving me a pretty good pitch of having the copier over a number of years . . .

You’ve heard the arguments before . . . Pay a larger price now to realize savings later.

Well, let me tell you, I’ve never sold a product or service that had such a fast and significant a pay back as our UltraScan Order Package Verification program.  Instead of months or years to realize a payback, you get it in WEEKS, and depending on the size of your pack crew – it could be as little as 2-3 WEEKS.

To determine your approximate pay back, calculate the amount you spend per day or per week on labor for pre-pack.  Whatever figure you come out with, you’re going to SAVE that same amount.  In other words, if you pay 10 packers $7/hr and you’re spending $700 per day in labor, then UltraScan can help you SAVE $700/DAY.  So, if you take the average $3500 investment, THAT’S FIVE DAYS ---- ONE WEEK!  How?  By doubling your packing speed without sacrificing accuracy.

UltraScan vs Your Way

Your way - 2-Step Process

Step 1: Using a Collection Envelope or Packing Slip, Pullers gather product from your tables, racks, bins or whatever, and place it in a tub, tray or box.

Step 2: Then your Checker(s) take everything back out of the container, sort like items on the table, go down the pack slip and verify the quantities. Then they pack all the product and the packing list in a box or bag, include the pack slip, and affix a seller label to the bag and class/team box.

Your way - 3-Step Process

Step 1: Pull the product a Class/Team at a time. Count the product for the class so you’ll know the table should come clean at the end of each class.

Step 2: Pullers same as above.

Step 3: Checkers same as above.

Using UltraScan

Step 1: Pullers same as above.

Step 2: Scanner.  Order accuracy is verified (see grocery store comparison).

Step 3: Bag & Tagger. Don’t check it, don’t count it…… just put it in the bag and tag it.

Our recommended packing crew per scanner

It takes 3 Pullers to feed the scanner. And it takes 3-4 Baggers & Taggers to keep up with what the Scanner sends down.  So, assuming you have a way to keep the tables or racks stocked with product, a team of 8 people can process orders very quickly.  Our users are telling us that if they use the 2-step process above, Ultrascan is DOUBLING their speed.  And, if they used the routine of counting product per class (WE DID), then they are nearly TRIPLING their speed.

Which scanner should I use?

HAND HELD.

Advantages

1.        Light weight, easy to handle, super-bright laser beam to shoot at the targer.

2.        Scan product “in the tray” vs going from one tray to another tray.

3.        No furniture or installation.

IN COUNTER

Advantage:  Hands Free operation. Use two hands to pull product across (grocery store style).

Now Available - 360⁰ Scanners.

Newer grocery stores are starting to use them. Although currently (mostly because they are new and are actually a combination of a counter and pedestal scanner) twice the price, they are designed to scan the bar code no matter where on the package it is. Instead of “presenting the bar code to the scanner”, you simply pull the product across and in front of the scanner and it does the rest.

The Internet has grown explosively in the 1990s. There are now more than twelve million server computers on the Internet, each providing some type of information or service. The number of users of the Internet is more difficult to measure. Since each service on the Internet is used by many people, many millions of users are currently on line. The number of users and services on the Internet continues to grow as the variety of the services increases.

Perhaps the most popular Internet service, the World Wide Web, has accelerated the growth of the Internet by giving it an easy to use, point and click, graphical interface. Users are attracted to the World Wide Web because it is interactive, because it is easy to use, and because it combines graphics, text, sound, and animation into a rich communication medium.

A Reminder

We try to maintain an inventory on all our forms; Collection Envelopes, Envelopes with Labels, Pack Slips with Labels, Small and Large Adhesive Labels and Continuous 3-pt Catalog Order Takers.  Our goal is to always be ready to ship that small 1-2 case order as well as to keep our larger users in good shape.

A reminder, however, that we do not ask for projections and, although we know how many people use our software, we do not know how much each distributor has grown or changed what they use – and we are vulnerable to the October Rush. The reaction time from our forms supplier is about 4-weeks, an eternity in mid season.  Order what you need for Fall now. And if you order a little too much, they will still be good next semester…..

Form Change Coming

We’re changing our continuous catalog order taker to make it a scanner-friendly form. We’ll continue with our extra heavy duty construction so the form will stand a better chance of surviving student use.  We’ll continue with our copyrighted Safety+Salesmanship=Success on the back of the form (Scott’s of Wisconsin received permission to use that on their form – and thanks). Colors will change from red/grey/black to shades of blue and black. We’ll be using blue boxes for input where the blue will be invisible to the scanner.

Of course, the form will work whether you’re scanning it or not.

Whether you’re a 1-person operation, a mom & pop shop, or have a significant sales team, we can help. Consider the following service levels and professional services available.

TALLY SERVICE. We’ve been tallying fundraising orders for more than a dozen years now and we know what we’re doing. When QDP tallies your groups, Your Company Name prints on all your reports, not someone else’s. You won’t have to explain that other name to your group.  And this year, we should be able to provide you with even faster turn around. To expedite your ordering process, we can fax you your numbers and then ship your printouts UPS Guaranteed Ground Service (unless you need them faster, of course).

TALLY + PRE-PACK. Here, we tally your order and do the student pre-pack. We prefer to pack product that we’re already carrying and know well, but we CAN pack just about anything. Realize, of course, that if we’re packing your product instead of our product, we’ll charge a little more for our packing service because, obviously, we’re making zero on the product itself.  And, when we’re packing our product for you, we’re using our Ultra-Scan Bar Code Order Accuracy Verification System to provide you top notch service. If you haven’t established credit with us, and need work done quickly, we can now take Visa, MasterCard and Discover.

TALLY + PRE-PACK + INVOICE.  We call this our Total Service Solution. For a while, people were running away from the “I’ll sell for someone else and get a commission” concept. But now, we see distributors closing warehouses, releasing sales reps and looking for total service providers (like QDP). We can invoice your group and pay you a commission when they settle their account.

Last Modified:  05/27/2008