Assuming that you have the product, you'll also need a sales kit and plenty of impressive, eye-catching promotional materials.
If you don't supply or offer to supply materials with which your sales force can sell the product, you'll have a hard time enlisting people to sell for you, and you probably won't set any sales records relative to your product either.
Let's assume that you've just written a book - HOW TO MAKE $100,000 PER YEAR AT HOME, WRITING... In order to sell this book, you've got to get the word out to the people that you have such a book available.
Advertising on your own is going to cost you money, and unless you've got a good understanding of the advertising business, you may never reach your full sales potential - besides, the time and effort expended in finding the "right" place to advertise, the placing of your ads, monitoring your returns, and the frustrations of dealing with curiosity seekers, will quickly wear you out. Such is not the way you envisioned your life when you got the idea to write the book, get rich and enjoy a life of leisure.
So, just as soon as you've got your book written - the book is your product - get some "bids" out to the advertising agencies in your area including the free-lancers, and the advertising department at your local colleges. What you want these people to do is make up an advertising circular promoting and selling your book. Now then, in a different - maybe smaller - type, and kind of like as an afterthought - at the bottom of this circular, you include the phrase: Dealer Inquiries Invited...
Look over all the submitted circulars and choose the one(s)
you consider the best. Then have a supply of these printed up at your local print shop, obtain a mailing list of opportunity seekers, and get them in the mail or on the internet.
Now start writing your dealer/distributor letter. This should be simply an explanation describing how you will dropship orders for their customers, allowing them a certain commission on each sale and, the price per copy you'll sell your book to them in wholesale quantity lots. At the same time, this letter should include a copy of your advertising circular, and an explanation, reassuring these dealers that they can reproduce this circular with their name/address in place of yours on the order coupon.
You might even include a brief note that you will preprint these circulars with the dealer's name/address and ship them to him for a wholesale printing price. All of this boils down to your supplying him or her with whatever is needed to promote and sell copies of your book for you. The bottom line is simply that you can only reach so many people, and sell so many books by yourself.
With 1,000 people helping you - mailing out advertising circulars and running small ads in hundreds of opportunity seeker publications - your costs of running your business will be minimal while your book sales should skyrocket.
Remember though, you need an impressive, eye-catching advertising circular or mailing package for your sales force to use as their own, and you need a clear, easy-to-understand letter outlining the commissions you allow, the price of your books in wholesale quantity lots, and the availability of advertising materials for your dealers.
The advertising circular should be dual purpose - you send it out to solicit sales of your product, and at the same time, recruit dealers who are impressed with your advertising materials and feel that they can make some money for themselves by promoting your product. Again, this needn't be much more than a simple "throw-away" line at the bottom of the circular: Dealer Inquiries Invited...
Now that you're organized thus far, the next thing is to contract to run as many small DEALERS WANTED ads in as many of the mail order publications or web sites as possible. Such an ad can be either a classified or a small, but eye-catching display ad:
DEALERS WANTED! Outstanding new book. Sells like wildfire! Everybody wants a copy! Take $10 profit on every $15 sale! Details for SASE to:
Basically that's all your "dealers wanted" ad needs to say, and then with plenty of exposure in mail order publications and web sites over a period of six to eight months, you should have hundreds of people all over the country selling your book for you.
Simple, easy, almost cut and dried, but it works!
In building YOUR business, you will find that once you've
established a basic dealer/distributor network - or a list of
people selling for you - you can add hundreds of related products,
and the orders just keep coming in. Give it a try and see for
yourself just how easy and profitable it can be for you!
How to recruit dealers to sell for you - To learn more about this author, visit John Brennan's Website.
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John Brennan
(Visit John's Website)
John Brennan Ed.D.
Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal
Development, LLC, a training and
development firm. Interpersonal
Development has provided sales training
and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps
from over 100 companies.
A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan
received his doctorate from the University
of Rochester. His dissertation researched
the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling
Technology in training people in
interpersonal skills. While he has spent
most of his career designing or delivering
training, he was also a Vice-President of
Sales of a training and development
franchise with operations in 25 markets.
Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered
sales training in North America, Asia,
Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He
has been a guest speaker at numerous
national and regional professional
conferences.
When Microsoft wanted Best Practices
articles on sales for their web site, they
called Dr. Brennan. The results are at office.microsoft.com/e
n-us/FX011387391033.aspx
His firm’s clients have included Volvo,
The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman
Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the
Economist Group and countless small
businesses.
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