Friday 25 May 2012

Travelling salesmen

When we were young, oh so many moons ago, our parents bought us a set of Encyclopaedia Britannica. I believe we had the salesman come knocking, door to door, to make the sale. Boy do I admire people who can do that, it must be a tough thing to do. Not only are you competing with Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and Girl Guides for the time of the homeowner, you have to convince them they need encyclopaedias, which are less tasty (to some) than Girl Guide cookies, and won't save your soul (if you believe that to be true).

I'm glad that I'm trying to do my sales in a day and age where I can hide behind my website and emails. I know there's nothing like face to face contact to make it more difficult for people to say no, but I'm too thin skinned to face endless rejection.

Speaking of which, I contacted the store that I had approached a few weeks back. Their answer? Well it wasn't an outright no, but it's not fitting into their current inventory. So I'll just have to make a note to approach them again in six months to a year. After all, according to people in sales, it takes at least five attempts at a sale before you're successful.



Friday 18 May 2012

Facing Fears


So last week, I said I'd approach a swanky store to see if they would carry my soaps. That was step one, and it was difficult. Never having really done sales this was a tough thing to do. Fortunately, the two gentlemen who run the store are wonderfully friendly and easy to talk to.

I tend to prepare a whole long speech in my head, and then forget 3/4 of it as soon as I am in the actual situation and this time was no different. The speech I had in my head wasn't the one that came out, although I still got my point across I think. One thing that worked in my favour is that I did remember to bring a sample for them to take him to try out. Fingers crossed that they'll like it so much they'll want to put in an order. I won't know until I call tomorrow thought, so be sure to send positive thoughts my way.

Friday 11 May 2012

Wanted: motivation




I've  had difficulty forcing myself to work on my business of late. Like most people, I want to get rich quick, without working for it. Obviously that's not going to happen, at least not unless I somehow magically transform myself into some hot sexy young thing that the media gloms onto for whatever reason.

Seeing how that's not going to happen, I need to push myself to get out there and do more to promote my soaps. To that end, I've decided that if I blog about it, I have to do it. So, tomorrow, I'm going to go to a funky store downtown and see if they'd be interested in carrying my chinese soaps since their store is asian themed. If you don't ask, you don't know right? I'll let you know how it goes next week.




Friday 4 May 2012

Where can I get buy some Black Widow confidence

We got to see The Avengers movie on Wednesday, courtesy of Acura. It's a fun movie and I do recommend seeing it. Joss Whedon as anyone who's watched his shows knows, writes some great lines into his stories and this was no exception. Robert Downey Jr knows how to deliver his lines to get the most laughs and having Chris Hemsworth in the movie didn't hurt either.

What I like about Joss Whedon's shows is he likes to have strong female characters. Black Widow, aka Natasha Romanoff kicks butt, literally. Scarlett Johansson's smoking hot but her character doesn't use her physical beauty to get her way. That's what I'd like to be like when I grow up, a confident woman who knows what she can accomplish without having to resort to using her feminine wiles.