Plant Today’s Seeds for Repeat Sales

Many years ago, one of our clients, Rabbi Mel Glazer (Of Blessed Memory), discussed how we could help him publish information near and dear to his heart. He had advanced training in grief counseling and wanted to write a book to guide Jewish families in observing the specific traditional rituals and their sequence titled "When Death Visits a Jewish Home."

While we enthusiastically encouraged Rabbi Mel on his important and highly helpful journey, the biggest thing we strongly suggested was to create the BOOK second rather than first. When death visits a Jewish home is NOT the time people can absorb a lot of information. They are in shock and in mourning. The best way to serve them at that time is in highly focused, small bits of simply presented information. There could not be a better application of how-to tips than that situation.

We further advised him to identify as many suppliers of end-of-life services and products for traditional Jewish customs. That runs a wide gamut from funeral homes, urn creators and distributors, officiants, professional obituary writers, kosher caterers, cemeteries, headstone crafters, synagogues, Jewish day schools, to many more. Sell those businesses and organizations thousands of copies at a time, each with the organization's name and contact information on them. The business or organization would distribute a copy of the short tips (50 words or less per tip) when a family member or friend comes to explore engaging their services or purchasing what they provide.

Additionally, we advised Rabbi Mel to elaborate on the booklet and write the book he wanted to write on the same topic, "When Death Visits a Jewish home." Go back a year later to the businesses and organizations that bought the booklet the year before and sell them the book to use in the same way for the families they gave the booklet to the previous year. Not only are the families more able to read more information at that point, they are likely to return to that same vendor or organization when the inevitable happens of death visiting their Jewish home again or someone at a different Jewish home who needs suggestions on where to go for the timely and important information, services, and products.

By following our suggestions he was able to help many more people every step of the way, including the mourners, those who provided the booklet and book, and his own commitment to guiding people through the difficult and challenging part of life. We were very honored to work with him for these very reasons.