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Celebrate America A copy of our exclusive brochure may be enclosed with your Runtime. If you didn't receive it (and want a copy), give us a call. We've picked the "Best from the Best". When I look at a major vendor's largest brochure, and it doesn't matter which vendor, I can see items in the brochure that I really like and others that are questionable, to say the least. When they have a license, they want to put that license on lots of items to get volume for the licensor. When they buy rights to an artist design, they need to use that design a lot. When you look through one of those brochures, do you find items you don't like? Me too. From your CUSTOMER'S perspective, we have gone through the industry to pick the very best for them. We use the entire brochure to sell product, including the front and back cover. Do your schools teach conservation? Do they believe in efficient use of our resources, our trees? Then point out all the wasted space on the other brochures. After all, does the customer make a purchase decision based on the embossing of the cover? Nope. In fact, look behind THEIR embossed cover and see how that negatively impacts the product behind the cover. More pictures per page, tastefully organized. Notice our product descriptions. They are concise. Do people really read those paragraph-long descriptions? We gain that space to put more pictures per page. Another advantage to this approach is that a customer standing at the door can realistically look through the 106 items on our brochure much faster than the 200 items on 44 pages from other vendors. Multi-Season approach. Patriotism is not seasonal. At the end of Fall 2002, you can pull the middle four pages out of the brochure and continue with the All Occasion portion for Spring 2003. That offers a couple additional advantages to those who are doing their own product fulfillment. First, you can order more liberally in the Fall because you know items will carry over to the Spring. And then, at the end of the Fall, some distributors will sell those items to you at overstock or clearance prices. Target pages. Our pages don't have titles and absolute themes, but look at these:
When competing with the Mega Brochure programs, consider how much time the end customer will spend turning pages. We show over 100 items on 12 pages. If you really want to get your point across, use the "timer test". Timer Test: Get the biggest brochure you can find. (A competitor may have left one on the table). Ask one of the decision-makers to role play as the customer at the door. Go ahead and make them stand up, they'll do it. You're the kid at the door. As you introduce yourself and hand the brochure, make a large gesture with your stopwatch as you click it. Typically, after they've turned 6-8 pages, you'll get some variation of, "Ok…I think I see your point". I can almost guarantee you they will not flip through every page. But just in case they do, ask them if the average customer at the door or the employee lounge at work will take [insert stopwatch time]. Then, ask them what they would have ordered. There is a high percentage chance that they don't remember what it was or where it was because there are too many items on too many pages. Service Options / Product Pricing
Consider Celebrate America
Our base price will be 78% off retail (approx 4.5x mark) to the piece. If you're willing to commit to a quantity of brochures and our pre-pack service, I can do a better than that. Customize VariationsIf you like Celebrate America but need to add a page of roll wrap and accessories, include magazines or some special items popular in your area….we can do that and NOW is a great time because we anticipate doing another run. We can "gang run" yours with ours and save us both. Think through what you want and call for a quote. Low Volume Tag Sheets (see b/w sample on back)Reduce overstocks - profitably. Make a single sheet showing "clearance" items with lower prices and/or higher profit. Every retail store on the planet has "clearance" sales - why don't fundraisers do that? Make a normal black/white copy version on regular paper if your pictures show up that way. Combine glossy paper and an ink jet printer and you get some fantastic looking sheets. Let Sara at QDP help with your design, then go to the local printer for color copies. Or let Emley Design Group use a high quality printer for low volume runs on 80-100# glossy brochure stock. Sara has a new site setup to talk about her web design. Check it out at www.qdpcorp.com/spdesigns. In a recent email blast, I asked "What if…" questions. The best response came from a distributor who said, "I am interested in all of the What If's you mentioned. Fill me in." Ok. WHAT IF . . . you could have your tally entered by the school, a remote rep or workers tallying at home, and have the data transmitted to you over the net for download into your inventory computer? Actually, you can do that now with the MERGE DISK feature in WinUltra. Originally designed for a distributor who wanted to allow his groups to do their own data entry, the merge disk contains a data entry only portion of the program set up for a particular group. After entering the orders, the disk is taken back to the inventory computer and the data is "merged". The data created on that disk can be emailed, but requires the sender to know how to attach the files. A future version of UTALLY, what we're going to start calling this remote data entry feature of WinUltra, will make it easier to send that data via email. So, if you have reps who want to enter their data, or a mother with young children, who wants to take tallies home, or a group that doesn't want to give up their order forms, they can UTALLY it and send you the results. WHAT IF . . . you could scan prizes on the packing line? This has been one of the most requested enhancements to WinUltra / WinScan. The hold-up, however, has been that prizes have not been bar-coded. That is changing. From phone conversations, both Giftco and Imagination in Action claim that 100% of their prizes will be bar-coded for Fall 2002. (WARNING: Before you start representing that to your customers, get confirmation direct from YOUR prize vender) So, we are building that capability into version 2.0 of both our tally and scanning programs. Whether it is an automatic accumulative prize program with several prizes or a pick-a-prize program, you'll be able to scan the order for accuracy including the prize(s). Version 2.0 of WinUltra is currently being beta-tested, and WinScan is not far behind. WHAT IF . . . school customers (like grandma who lives cross country) could receive an email from the student at the beginning of the sale, inviting grandma to go to the distributor's web site to view the brochure being used, order and pay for the item, have it shipped directly to her, and then have that data imported into the tally system so that the student gets credit toward prizes, the school gets credit for the sale, and the paperwork indicates the amount pre-collected and due? That concept is actually a merging of several variations that are already in place in the industry. At least two magazine vendors will provide the sellers with a string of cards on which the student writes a note and addresses for several friends and relatives. Those cards are turned in, processed and magazine packets mailed to those people, who can then order a magazine, with credit going to the student and profit to the group. Consider a newer version to help move your products. Email can replace the cards and, instead of sending a booklet, grandma will receive an invitation to visit your web site. Using the invitation email, grandma will enter a school code and seller id. The school code takes the customer to the correct product and the seller id connects the sale to the proper student. Grandma selects and pays for her order, which is processed and shipped directly to her by the distributor. That data is downloaded and imported into the WinUltra tally, which will indicate the amount of sale toward prizes for the seller, the total sales, with the on-line orders separated, indicating that money is not part of what the seller is required to turn in. There are some national companies already doing this. Over the years, our niche has been our ability to enable the smaller independent distributor to compete to beat the larger competition. We're working on it for you. If you are competing with such a concept, we'd love to hear more about it. WHAT IF . . . you could do searches for special types of mailings, i.e. you have a brochure you want to send to Middle School Band Directors, and import that data into a Contact Management system and conduct organized email blast campaigns where a series of x number of mailings goes at pre-determined intervals of time - automatically? This describes two separate concepts. The first is the process of acquiring specialized data. There are lots of sources of mailing lists available. A concept that we are exploring is a company that sells subscriptions that allow the customer to actually search for specific school data. That data can then be imported into a CM (Contact Management) or CRM (Customer Relationship Management) program. The latest version of Maximizer Enterprise allows you to create an email campaign, which, for example, may contain three different email messages designed to go out in two week intervals. Perhaps the first is announcing a new program while the second informs the prospect of a discount with a deadline and the third is a reminder of the approaching deadline. The three email announcements are designed and scheduled using the Marketing Manager. The schedule is by an interval of time, not by date. So if I start 100 groups today and another 100 groups tomorrow, the emails go out based on the start date. Some call this data base marketing. When you consider the increased cost of gas AND the ability to target and conduct email blast campaigns, data base marketing can help you get your story to more people in an increasingly efficient manner. QDP doesn't sell CM/CRM software, but if you'd like to spend a day with John, let's talk consulting. WHAT IF . . . we could get inventory and brochure information from the major vendors in a format that could be inserted into your software so to reduce your manual data entry? There are a couple wrinkles in the concept. For example, with all the discounting going on by the vendors, few people seem to pay the list price. But, stay tuned….we're working on it. WHAT IF . . . you could scan the items on your packing line to update your bar code file on the packing computer? WinUltra v1.2 already allows scanning bar codes into the inventory file. WinScan 2.0 will enable you to scan them directly into the scanning computer, reducing or eliminating the necessity of passing data back/forth between inventory and packing computers. WHAT IF . . . you could use a radio frequency scanner on the pre-pack line that would give you more freedom to move around than a scanner attached to the computer? Currently, you're either using stationary scanners, or a hand scanner with a 6-8-10ft cable. The RF scanner doesn't have the cable, making it easier to move around to get the scanner to the product, instead of the other way around. WinScan users will soon be receiving a specific "deal with a discount and a deadline". If you're thinking of scanning on the pre-pack line, the RF capability adds just a couple hundred dollars to the hardware investment. *WHAT IF . . . you had a product you could sell in the retail market at higher profit than typical fundraising sales that can either give you (or your reps) income during the off-season? *WHAT IF . . . you could get residual income from product purchased even after your school sale ends? *WHAT IF . . . you could expand your offerings for the Christian
School market? *WHAT IF . . . you offered home delivery? * see Brother Jones ArtWorks™ below. Extra income after the sale!We really think we're introducing a future big name brand with Brother Jones ArtWorks™. We also think once people experience these unique cards, that they'll want more. Inside each pack of cards will be a re-order form. Cards re-ordered will be shipped FREIGHT FREE for the brochure price alone. There are several possibilities and, at this point, we're asking for opinions and suggestions, such as:
Customer enters a code (i.e. your phone number or zip code plus initials) Product to sell retail and off seasonI've been doing some research into the world of retail. Here's a little bit of what I've learned… Take off your fundraising hat for a few moments because retail is another world. Typical retail mark is 2x. REALLY? REALLY! So, if you were to approach small community gift shops about selling Brother Jones ArtWorks cards (for now - more products to come…) a typical store would expect to pay $6.00 for an item they will retail for $12.00. That $6 would be the same you would use for a 50% profit fundraiser, except that you are NOT tallying, NOT packing and NOT SHIPPING FREIGHT FREE! Home Delivery, anyone?Do you have a lot of Day Cares in your area? They are not always well equipped for some of the inconveniences of a product fundraiser, particularly delivery, distribution and collection. Consider home delivery as an optional response. Many Brother Jones ArtWorks™ cards are child-oriented. Teachers and parents of young children will tell you they struggle with cards appropriate for sending TO CHILDREN. These work. And because cards are small and light-weight, you could offer to have them shipped directly to the homes. Talk to John if you like this idea. There are some possibilities we're working on. This month in PRIORITY News
PRIORITY NEWS mails 8-12 times per year for $49. Generally, we have three types of software customers; those who want everything hot off the press, those who want to stay a year behind, and those who stay where they are. But this year, we'll be encouraging some change categories and jump up to v2.0. Here's why:
And did we mention WinUltra-Lite? For those of you who don't want "everything" or have told us you "just want to tally orders" - we will soon have a product just for you. For more, visit www.qdpcorp.com/products/winultra20 and check out the preview link. This is not a minor enhancement. WinUltra is currently going through the most closely supervised and extensively documented beta-test we've ever conducted.
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