Almost Anything is Possible

In the first decade of my business in the 1990’s, a tips booklet author happily called one day to share an experience that occurred in the sale of their booklet. There are typically three things tips booklet authors worry about when we first meet:

1. The value of their expertise - will anyone really want what they’re offering, especially if it is very basic “common” knowledge?

2. Who are the typical buyers of these tips booklets and how can they be reached?

3. How is a tips booklet priced, particularly in the wholesale bulk sales model I teach my clients.  

This tips booklet author’s experience checked all three boxes of concern.

It was easy to encourage the client regarding the first concern since my own tips booklet content was very basic “common” knowledge, though on a different topic than theirs. And yet, mine sold thousands upon thousands, to ultimately over two million copies in lifetime sales.

Over time, it became obvious that good starting places for wholesale bulk sales of these booklets were decision makers as high up the corporate ladder in the marketing, sales, or product development departments. The tips booklets were frequently used in a promotional context like “gift with purchase,” “gift for joining our newsletter,” “opening a new account,” and other promotional campaigns.  

Each of these corporate departments had a budget intended to support their revenue generation tasks for the company, and they had to spend those budgets. Plus these departments were reaching much larger numbers of consumers and potential consumers of whatever the company was selling than the number of employees in the company. These were the places I found to be good starting points. If some other department caught wind of the booklets and wanted to invest in them, of course we’d favorably respond to their inquiry. 

Then there was the matter of pricing the booklets, based on the quantity being purchased. It was usually a multiple of our print cost. The shipping was also passed along to the buyer. Our orders of thousands of copies in a single transaction with or without any customization was usually a 4-digit  sale price amount.

The skeleton of the process was pretty well established by the time this tips booklet author showed up. The day I received the booklet author’s call to tell me their experience, it went like this:

The corporate decision maker in the Investor Relations department of XYZ Corporation wanted to purchase 100 printed copies (you read that right - 100 copies) of these 4” x 9”  16-page tips booklets on a very basic topic, and paid a mid- 5-digit amount of money for the 100 printed booklets that had no customization on or in it.

You might well imagine I was dumbfounded, to say the least.Investor Relations was a department I had no experience of, and the amount of money was way out of line for what was being sold. After finding my voice again and congratulating my client, I advised my client to enjoy the results of that sale.

 After years of anonymously telling this story as an example of “Almost anything is possible,” and learning more about corporate architecture, all I could think of was that the decision maker of that department had leftover budget at the end of the year and had to use it or lose it. Nevertheless, as long as it’s all on the up and up legally, morally, and ethically, I suggest enjoying the anomaly!  

NOTE: I hope you can appreciate my choosing the anonymity and that the story is worth sharing with you.