Sucking at sales sucks
Edvocator is a good concept; I truly believe it. In fact whenever I buy motorcycle related stuff, I go to the Edvocator demo school fundraising site and click on the Revzilla store link then buy my stuff. That single click earns me 3% of whatever I buy. If I buy a new $200 helmet and a $300 jacket and I earn $15.00. If this were a real Edvocator school site the school would get the lion’s share of that – between 70% and 90% ($10.50 – $13.50). Doesn’t seem like much when we look at a single sale, but imagine an elementary school where during the year 300 people spend $300. That would be $90,000 in sales which would be (on average at 3% back per sale) $2,700 in cash back. The school then gets between 70% and 90% again ($1,890 – $2,430). That folks is real money. And what did the school have to do for that? Simply remind their parents to go to their Edvocator site and click on a store link before they buy online.
So why can’t I get schools to sign up?
I suck at sales. Even though I don’t consider this sales—it really is sales. I need to find an effective way to help cut through all the noise people deal with daily and help them see the real benefit of joining Edvocator. So far I have not succeeded at that. What have I tried so far?
Well the typical stuff, I think. I have searched local school district websites, found contact information for PTO leadership, added them as leads in my CRM system (I use Zoho CRM), sent them emails only to hear crickets. My emails do (I think) a good job of explaining how easy Edvocator is and its benefits, but I can’t seem to cut through the noise and get folks’ attention. I’ve done the same thing with two high school Football booster clubs (supporting booster clubs was my wife’s great idea!) and even sent follow-up emails – again crickets. What can I do differently to generate interest?
I need to figure a way to effectively get a potential client’s attention while showing how useful Edvocator can be. My wife suggested old fashioned snail mail – another great idea. So I’m developing a half-page colorful brochure that I will mail to the school’s PTO or specific booster club. I’ve also added a way to distinguish Edvocator from the noise by adding what I guess is a bit of a gimmick. I created a 3-person superhero team out of Lego characters and named them for each step of the process (a) Click, (b) Buy and (c) Support.
My idea is to create a 3-part brochure mailing that uses these superhero characters to explain Edvocator’s benefits. Here’s a screen shot of the #1 mailing.
My hope is that when someone opens the envelope and sees this it will at least persuade them to read it Hopefully they’ll understand the benefit or at least feel curious enough to contact me. The Edvocator logo is a 3-dot triangle that represents the A-B-C concept of Click-Buy-Support. On the chest of each superhero is the dot from the logo that represents that step. Then there’s the money challenge—I have nearly none in my business account. So I need to figure a way to pay for the stamps and envelopes to do this 3-part mailing campaign. I’ve been lending the business money from my personal accounts and will probably continue to do this until I quit or succeed by the end of 2017.
So that’s the new marketing plan–a 3-part snail-mail mailer sent directly to the schools with the goal of getting folks to at least read it and contact me to discuss Edvocator. The best-case scenario (the happy-path use case) is that they simply sign up from the flyer. Even if they do that I will set up an appointment to meet with them, introduce myself and go through a demo.
Stay tuned for the #2 and #3 mailers.
Thanks for reading – as always I appreciate constructive criticism!
Rick Forristall
Edvocator.