{"id":13901,"date":"2015-08-18T09:27:13","date_gmt":"2015-08-18T13:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/?p=13901"},"modified":"2015-08-18T09:27:13","modified_gmt":"2015-08-18T13:27:13","slug":"how-i-turned-15-into-a-24k-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/the-week-in-imaging-twii\/sales-and-service\/2015\/08\/how-i-turned-15-into-a-24k-opportunity\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Turned $15 into a $24K Opportunity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"$15\"Fifteen stinking dollars!\u00a0 That was all it took for me to get in on a $24K opportunity!<\/em><\/p>\n

If you’re a P4P’er (Print4Pay Hotel) member, you’re aware that once a week (Sunday nights, except in the summer), I send an update of the past weeks threads on the Print4Pay Hotel.\u00a0For those that read carefully, you’ll see that I use Constant Contact to deliver those e-mails in a neat format where I can add pictures, links, and some content.<\/p>\n

Over the years I can’t tell you how many existing accounts I revisited and found out that they had purchased additional printers, and scanners, and I wasn’t included in that conversation of procurement.\u00a0 In addition to witnessing the additional hardware placements, I was not able to keep up with all of the technology solutions that we offered with my existing accounts. It became more of “thank you for your order,” and I was off to the next opportunity. But I knew I was losing opportunities because I was not in front of all of my accounts on a regular basis.<\/p>\n

Thus, the question was how to keep my existing accounts informed and stay in front of them on a regular basis. Phone calls were not an option because I have too many of them to make already. Mailers is an option, however, I was already doing 20 of these a month to net new prospects. The thought of adding a few hundred per month was sheer torture. \u00a0E-mailing, okay, that would work somewhat, but I didn’t have the skills to develop something from scratch in MS Outlook.<\/p>\n

That’s when it dawned on me to use my Constant Contact account that I use for the Print4Pay Hotel.\u00a0Brilliant!<\/p>\n

With Constant Contact I\u00a0was able to create a separate address book for existing accounts. I started off with 45 accounts and made sure I called each account in advance to tell them I had developed an e-mail newsletter that was focused on technology and business process improvement. I stated I would only send one per month and needed their approval (one of Constant Contacts covenants when sending e-mails). I was pleasantly surprised that all of the accounts agreed to receive the newsletter.<\/p>\n

With Constant Contact you can subscribe to the monthly service for $15 per month, which allows you to send to 500 e-mail addresses.\u00a0They have easy to use templates, and the ability to add pictures, links, and much more.\u00a0Within a couple of hours I had the first template set up for my first e-mail campaign.\u00a0 I’ve only done two of these so far; the second one took about an hour because I had to find some content that I thought would resonate with a broad base of accounts.<\/p>\n

About three weeks after sending my first e-mail campaign, I received a call from an existing\u00a0client to schedule an appointment in reference to Contex scanners.\u00a0 The account was actually interested in two high-end Contex scanners totaling $24K in revenue.\u00a0 During our meeting,\u00a0the decision maker stated, “I read somewhere that you have the Contex scanners?”<\/p>\n

At the time I didn’t give it a second thought. After leaving the appointment, I was curious how the decision maker knew that.\u00a0 After checking, I found\u00a0 the client was in my Constant Contact address book, and yes one of the articles I included in the newsletter was about Contex scanners.<\/p>\n

I may have gotten lucky, but we all know the saying, “The harder you work, the luckier you get.” Next week I’ll be sending out number three and I’ll bet that I keep on getting luckier and luckier.<\/p>\n

If you have the time and the $15, Constant Contact is a great way to do it yourself, instead of waiting for someone else to do it for you.<\/p>\n

Good selling!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifteen stinking dollars!\u00a0 That was all it took for me to get in on a $24K opportunity! If you’re a P4P’er (Print4Pay Hotel) member, you’re aware that once a week (Sunday nights, except in the summer), I send an update of the past weeks threads on the Print4Pay Hotel.\u00a0For those that read carefully, you’ll see that I use Constant Contact to deliver those e-mails in a neat format where I can add pictures, links, and some content. Over the years I can’t tell you how many existing accounts I revisited and found out that they had purchased additional printers, and scanners, and I wasn’t included in that conversation of procurement.\u00a0 In addition to witnessing the additional hardware placements, I was not able to keep up with all of the technology solutions that we offered with my existing accounts. It became more of “thank you for your order,” and I was off to the next opportunity. But I knew I was losing opportunities because I was not in front of all of my accounts on a regular basis. Thus, the question was how to keep my existing accounts informed and stay in front of them on a regular basis. Phone calls were not an option because I have too many of them to make already. Mailers is an option, however, I was already doing 20 of these a month to net new prospects. The thought of adding a few hundred per month was sheer torture. \u00a0E-mailing, okay, that would work somewhat, but I didn’t have the skills to develop something from scratch in MS Outlook. That’s when it dawned on me to use my Constant Contact account that I use for the Print4Pay Hotel.\u00a0Brilliant! With Constant Contact I\u00a0was able to create a separate address book for existing accounts. I started off with 45 accounts and made sure I called each account in advance to tell them I had developed an e-mail newsletter that was focused on technology and business process improvement. I stated I would only send one per month and needed their approval (one of Constant Contacts covenants when sending e-mails). I was pleasantly surprised that all of the accounts agreed to receive the newsletter. With Constant Contact you can subscribe to the monthly service for $15 per month, which allows you to send to 500 e-mail addresses.\u00a0They have easy to use templates, and the ability to add pictures, links, and much more.\u00a0Within a couple of hours I had the first template set up for my first e-mail campaign.\u00a0 I’ve only done two of these so far; the second one took about an hour because I had to find some content that I thought would resonate with a broad base of accounts. About three weeks after sending my first e-mail campaign, I received a call from an existing\u00a0client to schedule an appointment in reference to Contex scanners.\u00a0 The account was actually interested in two high-end Contex scanners totaling $24K in revenue.\u00a0 During our meeting,\u00a0the decision maker stated, “I read somewhere that you have the Contex scanners?” At the time I didn’t give it a second thought. After leaving the appointment, I was curious how the decision maker knew that.\u00a0 After checking, I found\u00a0 the client was in my Constant Contact address book, and yes one of the articles I included in the newsletter was about Contex scanners. I may have gotten lucky, but we all know the saying, “The harder you work, the luckier you get.” Next week I’ll be sending out number three and I’ll bet that I keep on getting luckier and luckier. If you have the time and the $15, Constant Contact is a great way to do it yourself, instead of waiting for someone else to do it for you. Good selling!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[87,1638],"tags":[106,151],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13901"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13903,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13901\/revisions\/13903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}