The dream of every businessman is to own a profitable business where rest of the people would do all the work and the owner would just be required to sign the bank deposit slips and approve of the sales.
Though this is a favorite dream of many, not many know how to put together such a business, where you simply produce a product and a band of people sell it for you. This is the beginning of forming a dealer or distributor network.
Supposing you have a product with an accompanying sales kit along with lots of attractive and persuasive promotional materials. If you do not supply selling aids, you would have a hard time to convince your sales force to sell your product. You would also have a tough time recruiting people who would sell your products. Needless to mention you would hardly have any sales also.
Let us assume that you have completed writing a book which you have named: ‘How to make $100,000 Per Year Using a Typewriter at Home.’ Firstly, to sell the book, you need to make people aware of the fact that such a book is available. Advertising yourself may cost you a lot of money. Not just that, if you do not understand much about advertising, you may not be able to reach the full sales potential of the book. Seeking to know where, when and how to advertise would leave you frustrated in no time. This was of course not your idea of spending life, when you decided to write the book. Where is money? Where is the luxurious lifestyle that you imagined?
So how do you go about promoting your product, which in this case is the book that you have just written? You start by approaching advertising agencies of your area, freelancers or the advertising department of any local college. Tell them of your need to have a promotional circular which aims to sell the book. If possible, as if as an afterthought; insert a small line at the bottom of this advertising circular which says: Dealers Wanted.
After you have had a few specimen circulars on your table, choose the one, which you think is the best. Get a supply of such circulars printed at a local print shop. Then obtain a mailing list of prospective readers of your book and then mail them a copy of the circular.
As soon as you have completed the mailings, write a dealer letter which includes how you plan to ship your books, allowing them a commission percentage, the price of the book which you are agreeable to sell them at a wholesale discounted price. You also need to attach a copy of your promotional circular giving them the tacit permission to reproduce it with their name and address at the bottom on the order coupon. You might also lure them by mentioning that you could print these circulars for them with their names, etc and ship it to them at wholesale printing price.
Essentially what you are doing is to confirm to him or her that you are willing to supplement their selling efforts by supplying all these promotional tools which they need to sell your books on your behalf. If you have 1000 people helping you out with the mailing of advertising circulars and running innumerable small ads in opportunity-seeker publications, your promotional costs would be minimal whereas your sales record might touch the sky.
The very important to remember here is that you need a truly attractive and persuasive advertising circular to enable your sales force do a good job of selling. They would be using this circular on their own so you must ensure that such promotional materials are available to them in plenty.
There are twin objectives which your advertising circular ought to meet. One is that you are trying to promote your product. At the same time you are also on the look out for sound dealers and distributors who would sell the product on your behalf. You promotional circular should be compelling enough for the dealer to believe that there is money in it for him too. Just a simple line saying ‘Dealer Inquiries Invited…’ can do the trick.
Your next job is to run these ‘Dealer Inquiries Invited’ ads in as many mail order publications as possible. Such an ad could be classified or small but attractive nevertheless. A simple and short one inch display ad which says:
DEALERS WANTED! Remarkable new book now available. Talk of the town already! Copies disappearing from every shelf! Make $10 profit on every $15 sale!
Write to:
This is all that your dealer ad has to say. If you give such an ad constant exposure in all the mail order publications for a 6 to 8 month period, you could have innumerable people selling your book round the country. It may seem too simple, but it works!
I have 10 years of experience in running my business which I started from scratch. I have realized that one you have a stable and financially sound network of dealers and distributors, you could add hundreds of allied products in the chain and the orders simply keep rolling in. Give it a try today and see how easy it is to make profits.
