Why Not Retail?

Anyone who has been around my work for even a short period of time notices I don't go anywhere near retail situations when it comes to selling booklets or teaching others about selling booklets. Well, let's put it this way, I don't advocate selling booklets to retail stores for the booklets to be resold.

"Why?" you ask? There's often little booklets right near the cash register at grocery supermarkets or pharmacies or bookstores or gift shops.

Well, my answer is quite simple, and it contains a couple of parts. The sale of your booklets to a retail store will be a small sale when it is with the intention of reselling them. So that's the first reason. How many booklets do you ever see in those point-of-purchase displays? Not that many of any particular title. Plus the stores purchase from distributors who have a large list of titles to sell.

The second reason is the common business model of being able to return unsold copies back to you. I don't know about you but I like my sales to be one way not round trip. When I make the sale, I don't want to see that product coming back around to me. It's also quite common that the returned copies are in unsaleable condition. Not my idea of a good time by any definition, much less is it a great way to do business.

A better way to go when you think there's a match for you and a retail store is to talk with the store's buyer about purchasing a large quantity of your booklets for them to use as a promotional tool. It'll bring the store much more income than if they merely re-sold the booklets, you make a larger sale, and the sale has no possibilities of returned copies. The store can offer your booklet as a free gift to the first 'x' number of people who come to the store on an otherwise slow day of the week as a way to increase the store's traffic and ultimately their sales. Or it can be as a free gift to those purchasing above a certain dollar amount, or when someone opens an account, or buys a certain product. All of these ways and more are much more lucrative ways of using a booklet in a retail environment.

By the way, I've sold over a million copies of my own tips booklet, without ever spending a penny on advertising or having an ISBN number or bar code on it or selling a single copy in a retail store.

Until next time,
Paulette
http://www.tipsbooklets.com