Some time ago they rang me up to renew my subscription to the telephone catalogue. After much deliberation I'd decided that I wouldn't do that this year. The salesperson sounded a bit shocked and tried all the usual tricks of persuasion, but I wouldn't be moved. So, obviously missing their annual injection of thousands of my Swedish kroner to their business they sent a representative to the workshop to meet with me the other day.
It was good. I could explain to her that for several years I've paid them ever increasing amounts of money and in exchange got telephone calls from 1. people asking me about my opening hours 2. people asking if I can look at their guitar 3. people trying to sell me things. In other words, no real jobs. I know this because my real customers all use my mobile number which isn't in the catalogue, and they are great, they come in with their instruments to be fixed and pay me for it.
It's a funny thing about this branch, but if you want your bass fixed, you don't go to the telephone catalogue, you ask your colleagues to recommend someone. This has worked very well for me so far. In fact up until now I haven't done any marketing at all really, apart from being in the telephone catalogue, and I always seem to get in just about as much work as I can handle.
But I'm changing my approach now and will have a website, blog and face book page instead of a directory entry, an extension of the word of mouth method so to speak, to keep in better touch with my esteemed customers who have been so faithful in recommending me to other players. In the end it's up to my customers. I hope that I will now be easier to find and to contact even though I understand that not everyone is into the social media. I suspect those that aren't probably have my number written up somewhere close at hand anyway. Comments and suggestions are always welcome.
And, sorry lady from Eniro, I'll review the situation in a year's time.
Welcome to the virtual incarnation of my workshop where you can find out about the different aspects of my work - without disturbing me. My website http://www.basscare.se/ is being kept as simple as possible. Here is where you'll find the stuff I chat to my customers about, or stuff that I would chat to my customers about if there was more time and I was more chatty. Feel free to browse around and if you'd like to get updates in your facebook newsfeed click on 'like' at my facebook page: Elinore Morris - instrument maker www.facebook.com/Basscare. The colours of this blog attempt to match the colours of the inside of the workshop, which has been renovated with historically accurate linseed oil based paint, and you can see a snippet of the newly sanded wooden floor.
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
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I need them:) I use the paper when I working with my echings and print. Te absolute best paper for that kind of work.
ReplyDeleteHelen
you can have mine that I haven't already sent to recycling :-)
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