Retailing with a Catalogue - Building a Customer Base

Copyright (c) 2009 Michael Ogden

Customer Base Building

If you want to earn £250 per month, build a customer base of 350 regular customers as soon as possible. Find 1000 customers within 6 months.

Why?

1 Customers spend between £3 and £5 per order with you 2 Customers will stay loyal to you 3 You lose fewer catalogues 4 The drop is quicker 5 It is more fun!

Remember that the emphasis is on quick. If you only drop a few catalogues at a time it will take much longer to achieve a good customer base, you will get fed up and will drop out.

Treat it like a race - find your customers before you lose heart.

For example:

When you are looking for customers, to earn £42 in one week you need to deliver at least 200 catalogues.

In a road of 200 houses, if you only drop 50 catalogues at a time you have to:

Make four trips in one week to drop a total of 200 catalogues, which requires:

Four lots of car fuel

Four lots of catalogue drops

Four lots of pick ups

Four lots of reminders

Four lots of returns for stragglers

Four lots of getting wet

Four lots of motivation

Four lots of finding time

Most of your orders might come from one section or side of the road, so you might become discouraged by poor results from a small drop.

Use your account to buy more catalogues and aim to get out 200 at a time to start with. It will take two hours work to pay for each retail pack of 50 catalogues. You will end up with BIGGER orders, find your CUSTOMER BASE faster and EARN MORE per week.

KEEPING RECORDS

When you place catalogues, how do you remember where you left them? By keeping accurate records.

Every one has a different system of keeping records to suit their situation. Some use a notebook, others a complex computer database. The important thing is to keep up-to-date records or you will end up in a complete muddle and will lose catalogues, customers and orders.

We use a round book

Use a pencil; it will write in the rain!

COLLECTING THE CATALOGUES

When you placed your catalogues, you put a day slip in to tell the customer when you would be collecting the catalogue. It is essential that you return on the day you said. The customer will respect reliability, and will be confused and uncertain if you are inconsistent. So, even if it is freezing cold, foggy, pouring with rain, hailing, snowing or blowing a gale - YOU MUST COLLECT!

When you collect your catalogues take your small notebook with you, the 'Sorry we missed you - slips and the 'Thank you for the order' slips with you. A pencil with a rubber on the end is useful too, plus a spare in case of breakage or loss.

As you go to each house where you dropped a catalogue, record in your notebook as follows:

- CB (Callback): This where the catalogue is not on the doorstep and you need to put a slip through the letterbox saying "Sorry we missed you......." The are the books you need to come back for, usually that evening, as you will catch people in.

- 'L': if the catalogue has been looked at but no order. Always find the order form and check it carefully to be sure that there is not an order but no address or no total. It is infuriating to get home and find you have an order with no customer details.

- 'O' for an ORDER. YIPPEE!

- NLA: Not looked at.

If the catalogue is not out RING THE DOORBELL or knock. It saves time to start writing the note to say you called to collect the catalogue while you wait. If someone answers, ask for the catalogue and carry on as above. If there is no reply, push the slip through the door, write CB for call back and continue to the next house.

If there is an order fill in the date you plan to deliver on the 'Thank you' slip and put it through the door. This lets the customer know you have seen the order and gives them the opportunity to let you know if the time is not convenient. Customers do seem to appreciate the courtesy of being thanked. Before you move on check that the customer has filled in their name and address on the order form. If not, write in the address straight away. You will not remember by the time you get home.

You will need to return either later in the day or the next day to pick up the 'stragglers'. At some point it is worth visiting in the evening if you picked up during day the first time round. On the second visit use the 'Sorry to have missed you again' slip. We put them in small brown envelopes and put the address on the front; we find people open the envelope out of curiosity and we get a better return. It is worth going back for stragglers up to four times, for several reasons:

1 The catalogues cost money - you want to keep losses as small as possible. 2 People will remember that you bothered and might order next time. 3 There are often orders in late catalogues.

When you pick up the catalogues mark up your notes as before. We put a full stop against Call Backs's on each occasion we have to go there beyond the second callback. We don't deliver there again if they continue to be tardy in returning the catalogue, unless they order. Take account of holidays and half terms.

Remember this is only one way to keep records. The method is not important, but the accuracy is, and remember KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid!

Remember to update your master records,

REPACKAGING THE CATALOGUES

When you get home sort out the catalogues, take out the orders, throw out the wet and scruffy items and repackage the catalogues as they were before. Use new bags when necessary, as even minute holes will let in water. If the bag is looking dirty or dusty, we use a little Kleeneze Spray Polish to freshen it up a bit.

START ALL OVER AGAIN!

Continue to catalogue in new areas for about six weeks. Then start again at the beginning.

On subsequent visits, you will miss out houses where the catalogues wasn't returned or had to return more than twice to get it back unless they placed an order! Don't worry about people not looking. They have helped you to get orders anyway - they might in the future.

After people have not looked at the catalogue twice running, on the third visit we include a slip to ask if they want to see the catalogue in the future. A master is included to photocopy in due course. We also use this slip after we have left the catalogue five times, the customer has looked but not ordered.

Sometimes people will leave a note to say they do not want the catalogue. Don't get upset - it is Kleeneze they are rejecting, not you. Actually, it saves time as you can concentrate on dropping to people who do want to look and buy.

On rare occasions people are rude or unpleasant. There are plenty of nice customers so we don't need the nasty people!

Within four to six months you will have built up your customer base and will be working less for greater rewards. You will also find that you lose fewer catalogues and outgoing expense will reduce, increasing your profit even more.

To start with you will find yourself putting in maximum time for smaller rewards; in six months you will be doing less work for maximum rewards.