It's been many years since I learned this tip, so I may
not recall every detail as Joe Cossman described it in his book,
"How I made One Million Dollars in Mail Order", but I can assure
you this tip is extremely valuable, and has worked for me many
times over the years.
Joe tells the story of renting a booth a the county fair,
where he was going to sell some little trinket that he was certain
would sell like crazy. As he was setting up his display the vendor
next to him was also setting up. It seems that the only thing
this guy was going to offer for sale was a little rubber shrunken
head. As he watched the guy unpack these things Joe was thinking
to himself, "I feel bad for this guy already, there is no way in
the world that those things would ever sell. They are just too
darn ugly!".
Well, as you can guess, Joe had a difficult time selling
any of his products at all because the crowd of people trying to
buy those ugly shrunken heads was blocking his booth. For the
duration of the fair Joe watched that guy sell hundreds and
hundreds of those shrunken heads, while he barely sold enough of
his own product to pay the rent on the booth.
Being the entrepreneur that he was, Joe worked a deal
with the guy to find his source for the shrunken heads, and went
on to make a ton of money selling shrunken heads via mail order.
It has been so long since I read Joe's book I don't even remember
if the shrunken heads were his first successful mail order
product or not, but I can tell you that Joe went on to sell
millions and millions of dollars worth of products through
the mail.
He recounted this story in his book because he said that
if he had not taken the chance of renting a booth at the fair,
he would have never been exposed to the success of the guy with
the shrunken heads.
You've got to expose yourself. Opportunities are not
going to find you sitting on the couch. I can assure you that
exposing yourself works. As a matter of fact, just two weeks
ago I was sitting in my recliner reading the paper on a Sunday
morning when the phone rang.
Mr. McGroarty? This is Matt XXXX. I work for your
friend Dick XXXX and he suggested I give you a call. I've got
a few thousand Junipers that I'm about to dump, but before I do
Dick thought you might be interested in buying them at a really
good price. If you're interested come down to Dick's nursery
and take a look at the plants.
I went down, wrote Matt a check for $400.00, and spent
the next few days hauling these plants back to my nursery. With
in a week I had sold over 200 of those plants at $4.00 each. In
less than 7 days I turned a $400.00 investment into $800.00 and
I've still got at least 200 plants left in one gallon containers,
plus several thousand of his rooted cuttings ready to be potted
and will be saleable next year. Before it's over I will make
several thousand dollars from a phone call I never expected to
receive.
Why did that happen, and who says it could happen to you?
After all, you're not in the plant business.
It happened because over the years I have done a series
of things that have exposed me as a player in the nursery
business. When Matt decided that he wanted to change directions
in his growing business he was looking for a way to recoup at
least some of the money that he had invested in the soil and
containers these plants were growing in. Searching his brain
for a potential buyer, Dick quickly thought of me.
Matt and I had never met before, but in just a short
conversation standing out in the nursery we got to know each
other, and realized that we share the same passion. By making
that phone call, not only did Matt get $400.00 for something
that he was going to dump, but he exposed himself to me. More
than likely Matt and I will cross paths again, and the next
time it will probably be very much to his advantage. The next
time I am talking to somebody in this industry and I hear of
somebody that is in the market to buy good quality grafted
plants, you can be sure I'll tell them to give Matt a call.
Considering that just one wholesale customer could buy
several thousand dollars worth of Matt's specialty plants each
year, and that customer could continue to do business with him
for many years to come, just one referral could mean tens of
thousands of dollars in sales for Matt. And it will have all
started with one unexpected phone call.
Expose yourself, and opportunities will find you.
One of the best ways to expose yourself is to write
articles and offer them to Webmasters and E-zine publishers
through the article announcement services you will learn about
later in this manual. Submitting articles to print publications
is also an excellent way to get exposure.
About the Author
Michael J. McGroarty is the author of the Free Report Series
"37 Secret Money Making Strategies". Stop by
http://www.homemadebooklets.com and sign up for the
entire series. This is a Free offer.