Over the last few blogs, we touched on a whole litany of different issues including how to pick your battles. The fact that you have such a limited amount of resources that consists of time, money, and energy, to allocate towards this project on a daily basis, we want to be very discriminating on where and how to best use those resources wisely.
So let’s start with the marketing aspect. Although marketing and sales, most certainly go hand in hand, they are very different from one another. Here’s an example, when you break down the anatomy of a sale, it all starts with trying to find somebody who needs whatever it is you sell at this very moment. One thing I happen to love about the Columbus t-shirt printing industry is that everyone you know is already familiar with wearable apparel and custom t-shirts. The other thing that I love about it is that in the Midwest we have what’s referred to as seasons. Therefore, the same individual who might be shopping currently for short sleeve apparel will probably be needing to switch over to long sleeve garments, as well as jackets when the season starts to change over into winter and it gets cold. The point that I’m making is that repeat clients are much easier to deal with than first timers. At the initial time you meet with a potential client, you not only have to sell them on your ability to deliver an excellent screen printing or custom embroidery product, but also you have to sell them on yourself. After all, he or she has never met you before. Therefore, you need to make the most out of this initial opportunity.
I would recommend not only making sure you give that client an excellent product, but make sure it’s also on time and maybe throw in a little something extra such as a free hooded sweatshirt. This will likely mean a great deal to them. Just imagine them opening up a box of completed items and as they’re looking through it, they happen to run across a hooded sweatshirt that they were not expecting. They will likely say what is this or I didn’t order this. Then you can reply that you could have chosen many different Columbus digital t-shirt printing companies to work with on this project but you chose us . We not only wanted to do the job with excellence and get it to you on time but to show our appreciation so here’s a little something extra.
To sum it up here, you not only gained a likely repeat customer, but you also made a friend. I would recommend keeping good records of when this sale actually took place and then give them a friendly call in the spring and ask them how everything is holding up and if they are going to potentially need anything else since the weather will soon be warming up?
At that point the resale is going to be almost automatic as you guys have a history together and are comfortable with one another. At that point in time, it’s just a matter of saying hey this is Mike how you been, and if you think you’re going to potentially need anything else coming up this spring can I at least give you a quote? The answer will most likely be a resounding of course you can.