Overstocks Online
Celebrate America in Spring 2004
Home Delivery is Coming Here
PRIORITY News
WinUltra 2.0
WinScan Problem Solving
I-Scan
Internet Fundraising the Way It Ought to Be
End of Year Supplies Sale
Automated Data Collection
Dozens of Web Sites

FREE SEARCH TO ALL
FREE POSTING TO MANY

Visit www.qdpcorp.com/overstock to go to our Overstock Search Page. Search by Vendor or Vendor and Item ID. Several distributor lists posted. Contact them individually.

FREE POSTING for WinUltra users, PRIORITY News subscribers and Web customers (vendors excluded). Directions for sending your list are available on line.

Reasonable response with our Fall experiment. Watch the web for expanded search options (soon) as well as ways to post NEEDS and WANTS for both products and brochures.

We designed our brochure to carry over to Spring 2004. Four configurations available.

FREE INTERNET FUNDRAISING with all sales we tally and pack.

1. 4-pg. 34 items. All made in USA. Up to 5.76x mark to the piece. All products are small, lightweight, non-perishable, and non-breakable – making it “Home Delivery Friendly”. It is also heavy in child-oriented items and good for Day Cares. Q04CA04 – Now only $.15.
2.  8-pg. 74 items. 100% USA. Q04CA08 – Now only $.40.
3. 12-pg. 107 items. Q04CA12 is only $.50.
4. 16-pg. 136 items. Q03CA was $1. Now only $.50.

This includes the Fall 2003 gift items. If you have a lot of them, or know where you can purchase at closeout prices, you could offer exceptional profit to Spring Groups including “clearance” gifts. Everybody loves a sale.

You have to be careful when you use the phrase, “Home Delivery” because it can mean different things. Is Home Delivery the shipping of the Internet Sales product to the customer, is it a seller’s entire order from a local fundraiser going to one place or is it the end customer’s fundraising order shipped directly?

Internet Sales to the Consumer’s Home

Increasingly, distributors are offering variations of Internet Sales to their fundraising programs. We’ve followed some that require the child to have grandma visit a site to look at pictures and then email back an order, which the seller adds and turns in with local sales. Manual record-keeping and seller has to deliver.

DELUXE is when the you can offer your customers a program written by fundraisers for fundraisers. WebUltra™, is our patent-pending process that not only makes it easier for the seller and the customer, but also for YOU and the Group. (See Internet Fundraising.... Also, Who Pays Freight).

Seller Home Delivery

What a terrific option for Day Cares. Imagine the extra trauma when a semi pulls up in front of a day care. Even personalized deliveries require distribution and they don’t have the help most schools do.

With the right kind of product, you may find Seller Home Delivery not significantly more than what you’re spending now, especially if it is replacing your taking time and expense to personally deliver.

DELUXE would be to use a brochure containing small, light-weight, non-perishable, non-breakable items. Freight is less (freight can be a profit center), and you don’t have issues of melting chocolates or damaged candles. Some products that work well include items like magnetic photo frames, stationery, calendars, jewelry, greeting cards, picture frames. Consider the 4-pg version of Celebrate America.

You would need to collect the seller’s shipping address. You could create a small sheet to staple to the order form for requesting shipping information. The group could provide mailing address labels for affixing onto the order form. Or, you could alter your order form.

DELUXE would be software that could take that information and print shipping labels. OURS WILL!

Consumer-Direct Home Delivery

As the pressure on the school principal continues to increase to maximize “time at task”, even little things like fundraising kick-offs and delivery become a problem. Savvy distributors are resorting to VHS and DVD kick-off presentations that can be pumped to the classroom. But there is still delivery and distribution?

Nearly all distributors are getting product to the school pre-packed and separated by class/team. Here are a few procedures we know about and how they affect school time:

Orders separated by class/team in gym. Unloading the truck is easier as the gym is usually on ground level with an outside door. Use a hand-ful of students to unload. Okay, so you get the smart ones who can handle being out of class, but it still disrupts the class when the announcement comes in to send them – and then every teacher must stop teaching, bring the class to the gym, get stuff and go back to class.

Deliver from truck to class/team. Delivery takes longer. Class is disrupted as orders are being brought into the room. The teacher has no control over timing. He/she does save the trip to the gym. The rest of the disruptions remain the same.

Consumer-Direct Home Delivery. Everybody knows there is a price for convenience. Drive to Borders and pick up a book or go online and pay shipping. Why can’t fundraising offer that option?

Mrs. Fundraising Chairperson, I understand the “time at task” challenge your school faces – and the importance of maximizing instructional time. That’s why we offer two Home Delivery Options.

I can ship the seller’s order to his/her home. Or consider Consumer-Direct Delivery, full service fundraising and you don’t touch the product?

More in PRIORITY News. ($49)

Who pays for freight?

Why do fundraising distributors pay all incoming AND outgoing freight? Do schools get free freight from all vendors or just fundraisers?

I know, you don’t want to be the first to TELL your groups that you’re charging freight because your competitors will “eat you alive”. Really? I wonder. One distributor’s solution was to create terms called “Net 30 Free Freight”.

You would be completely truthful in explaining that either Seller or Consumer Home Delivery would be an additional shipping cost. But they have NO IDEA what freight costs.

Seller Home Delivery.

If your average order per seller is 7 items, and it costs you $5-6 to ship, that would represent about 5% of retail, right? Nobody gripes about the lower percentage for frozen foods. We should be able to confidently use a brochure at 5% less than peak percentage.

AND... if you are using small, light-weight items, you can MAIL for less than UPS or Fed-Ex. More in PRIORITY News. ($49)

Customer Entry

Back, in new form, for WinUltra v2.0 for Spring ’04, Customer Entry lets you enter each of your sellers’ customers’ orders so that the orders will be separated on the pack slip, including what to deliver and collect from each customer.

September PRIORITY News

• FREE Overstock Posting and Searching. (You could have known about this weeks ago).
• The Universal Computer Tech Support Squeeze, with several online options for office and home.
• The Overstock Games We Play, with distributor responses. Also, three ideas to help your warehouse sale, teacher rewards, business card coupons, direct-mail response gift idea, consignment shops and other product placement ideas.
• Accepting Credit Cards compares the pros/cons of manual vs automatic processing, and includes cautions about certain cost pitfalls.

November PRIORITY News

• Freight and Home Delivery.
• Fundraising using low volume printing to use your overstocks and offer your customers a better deal.
• The Perpetual Fundraiser. What it is and how to set it up for customers AND PROSPECTS.
• Viral Marketing. What is it, how does it work, and why is your being infected a GOOD thing?

No new version in January. Upgrade NOW!

• Get more complimentary, never-expiring Tech Support incidents with your upgrade instead of paying for additional incident support.
• Periodically-posted fixes or enhancements can be downloaded from our web site.
• ENHANCED. Import inventory info from our master file for your custom brochures. Import data, re-arrange for your brochure and then add the misc items from other vendors.
• ENHANCED. Split pack slip printing for when you tag frozen with shopper programs, pack the shopper in house and the frozen product at delivery. Works with scanning.
• Quick Books Accounting Link. More than just sending invoice totals, you can tally with WinUltra and generate itemized invoices and purchases with QB. Then, of course, you have all the benefits of a good intermediate accounting program.
• ENHANCED. Customer Entry.
• UTALLY enables remote entry. Office staff, reps, end customers can EMAIL results for easy data merge.
• UCOLLECT gives the sponsor every seller, the itemized order, the amount(s) paid and due. Designed to help with money collection and accounting of late orders and returns. Helps in pre-pay sales too. (See It’s In There).

It’s already in there.

It is always a fun conversation when we get a request from a user for something that is already in the program. The following email messages have been slightly edited for space:

John, I signed a program today. Stole it from [xyz]. Their deliveries haven’t been up to par. However, the director showed me their "cash trac" hard disc. Have you seen it and what do you think? It helps them keep up with their students turning in their money. Looked good to me.

IT’S IN THERE. WE CALL IT UCOLLECT.

* * * * * * * * * * *

John, can you help us with this? We’re sending our pre-packs off to [xyz] for pre-packing but we tally and pack our own cookie dough here. My customers are complaining about getting two sets of printouts and having to total everything together to see who owes what or has qualified for whichever prize.

IT’S IN THERE – PRINT PACK SLIPS BY BROCHURE

* * * * * * * * * * *

Joe, here’s my recommendation. First, next year, send all your business to me and I’ll send you a set of pack slips for the cookie dough.

Or – instead of having your shopper program tallied off site, you can do the tally for both programs. Print Pack Slips by brochure, which means the shopper product will print on one pack slip and the cookie dough on the other. Send the paperwork and shopper pack slips to your pre-packer. If they are using a different system to tally, we can possibly enable data transfer from your system to theirs. –John

* * * * * * * * * * *

John, we love your demo but there’s way too much stuff in there for us. All we do is candy bars and cookie dough. No inventory.

IT’S IN THERE – WINULTRA LITE

Steve, we sent you the demo for the entire program, but you can purchase a LITE version, which does nothing with inventory. We can sell it for $1000 less because there is less for us to have to support.

Each of the following happened in our packing operation.

Report indicates 1 less order packed than tallied. We found that one order envelope stuck to another and the order was never pulled and scanned. That would have been one of those “Joey didn’t get his order” calls.

This took TWO HUMAN ERRORS to pull off. We have two items on our pack line from two different brochures, but with the same 4-digit ID. That’s okay. We scan. BUT we had our first two schools return 1 each of the wrong one of those items. How did it happen? The scanner OPERATOR made the judgment call that the number was right and ACCEPTED the order. THAT’S WRONG. We reinforced our instructions that, “Nothing Gets Past You Without a Green Light!” If the scanner says something is wrong, trust the system first.

Seven years ago, when we started scanning on the packing line, we had to WAIT for a few of the suppliers to catch up. Major vendors are already coding their cases. Compare scenarios:

1. Incoming order arrives on multiple pallets.

With 175+ different items and dozens of box sizes, you have to SPREAD THE PRODUCT to count it. When numbers match, you sign the Bill and the driver, who is now chewing nails, can go.

You got the right number of boxes, but that doesn’t mean you have what you ordered. Now you must manually match the vendor pack slip with what you have.

Then you must match your Purchase Order with their Packing Slip. Have you noticed that they are never in the same order – and the vendor calls half their stuff something different from what you called it?

If everything is still perfect, you RECEIVE the merchandise into inventory.

2. Incoming order arrives on multiple pallets.

Use your scanner to scan cases as you remove them from the pallet. It is easy to do multiples of a same bar code using the keypad and screen on your scanner. Press button for BOX COUNT and sign the driver’s Bill.

Place the scanner in its recharging cradle and DOWNLOAD data from scanner to computer.

See side-by-side list of ordered and scanned. Key any changes and receive product into inventory in one click.

SEE DEMO AT SHOW

Web Design, E-Commerce, WebUltra™ Internet Fundraising

Just because a competitor says they “computer tally” doesn’t mean the group will get all we can offer. The same goes for Internet Fundraising. Everybody wants it – but how many hoops are you asking your customers to jump thru? Consider the educational value.

Joey runs home and zooms to your fundraising site to registers his name and email address. Privacy is assured.

He writes a personal paragraph to go to everyone that will receive his email invitation, types in recipient addresses on the list and clicks GO. Creating his email list is prospecting.

After sending his invitations, Joey receives an automatic confirmation listing those addresses for follow-up; a good sales and service skill.

Anytime one of his prospects orders, Joey receives an automatic notification from the WebUltra™ system so he can send a Thank You. Another good skill.

As he begins receiving sales notifications, he is motivated to email additional invitations.

At the end of the order-taking period, just prior to generating reports, sales data is downloaded from the e-commerce store and imported into the WinUltra system so that Joey gets prize credit for Internet Sales and can be recognized for his success.

What about after the sale?

Stop by and see us in New Orleans and ask about how to use a Perpetual Fundraiser™ to offer ongoing profit to the group—or even to get your foot in the door of new groups. Or subscribe to PRIORITY News ($49)

Double Discount - Net 30
or
Triple Discount
with with pre-payment
and shipment by 12/31/2003.

Normal discount is 5% on 5 cases and 10% on 10.

• Order so that we can ship from inventory prior to 12/31 and get DOUBLE discount with terms. OR
• Send check or use Credit Card (V/M/D) for 2003 shipment from inventory and TRIPLE the discount.
• Pre-pay for 20+ Cases per above and get TRIPLE discount PLUS FREE FREIGHT.

Scanning order forms
Customer Service, Marketing Surveys

Just this week, I went to the local Post Office to fill out a postage-reimbursement form for some out-dated pre-stamped envelopes and the form was very obviously a scanner-friendly form. When you open your Christmas gifts this year and fill out the warranty/survey cards, pay attention to how many of them are designed to be read with automated data collection and processing software.

If yours is a family operation with a handful of groups to tally each week, this process may not be for you—yet. On the other hand, if you get behind ordering product because orders are coming in faster than you can process them, and you can’t find (or don’t want to look for) part time seasonal help for such an important task as getting your tallies right, then our TELEform™ system can help:

• Data entry is at least twice as fast. Get numbers sooner so you can order sooner and have better chance of getting product ordered.
• Data entry operator is less fatigued, which can easily translate into higher accuracy.
• WinUltra not required. We can get the scanned and verified data into your in-house program.
• With WinUltra, verified data is imported so you can add late orders, generate reports and update inventory.
• Start with Single User license and expand as needed.

Examples of Companies using the same software we recommend for scanning your order forms.

Enclosed in this mailing is an example of a scanner-friendly order form. This is a continuous version that enables you to print personalized order forms. The scanner will have near-zero difficulty reading the machine printed names. In addition to faster scanning, there are other significant positives to personalized order forms:

• Sellers not present on kick-off day aren’t left out because their personalized packet is still there.
• Increased sales as orders get home (sellers less likely to trash packets with their names on them).
• You don’t waste time reading their handwriting.
• Even manual data entry goes faster (and time is money at data entry time).
• Fewer “no name” orders.
• You appear more professional and efficient. It sounds good to say,

“On kick-off day, I’ll arrive at your school with individual packets separated by class/team and students’ names pre-printed on their order forms."

Entering names is very fast and so is printing, as there are few lines to print on each form.

Check out the Safety+Salesmanship=Success™ on the back. If you like it, order forms from us – that is copyrighted material.

These will be more expensive than the el cheapo forms some of our vendors provide. Top sheet is heavier for better survivability. Forms are more significantly attached to reduce premature separation, and we are using 2-color printing.

If you’d like to alter our form for your use, or to get in on a gang-run of individual sets (not-continuous), call or email John@QDPCorp.com for details or quote.

More and more distributors are coming to us for web design that they could fiddle with for less – and there are good reasons.

• Search engine results. That stuff is not automatic. Just this week, a guy in Iowa doing a search on “magazine fundraising” found us. Are you getting those calls from your site?
• More efficient pictures. Compare the loading time of your site (with pictures) and some we have.
• Unique non-template design gives each of our clients their own look.
• E-Commerce and Web-Ultra™ options.

Check out Sara’s site at www.sp-designs.biz.

Thanks for reading.

Last Modified:& 11/18/2003