The following three scenarios illustrate how TRAK Services can increase the profitability of small direct response businesses
SCENARIO #1 (The perfect leveraged start into the direct response business)
Ken
is an energetic and creative entrepreneur with a massive desire to
succeed. He has a great new product that is perfect for direct response
marketing. Through previous corporate experience, he knows how to put
together a successful direct marketing campaign (to include a Web site.)
He has some financial backing for product development but money is
definitely tight. The question is "how do I create the infrastructure
necessary to sell customers who respond with questions about my product,
take customer orders, process orders, ship product and handle all the
customer service issues?" There are two major problems here, one is
cash. Ken simply doesn't have the money to contract for a facility, buy
more office furniture, buy and install a phone system, establish an
order processing capability through a bank, and hire and train
operations personal. Two, (even if he had the money) he doesn't have the
time or mental focus. His experience (and interest) is in developing
ideas and marketing. The answer is to leverage into the capability.
Ken contacts TRAK Services .
The facilities, equipment, communications, computer systems and
personnel are already in-place. He sends product samples and we conduct
extensive training with our Reps. This includes the Reps using
his product until they can fully understand and advocate its benefits.
It is then a simple matter to channel his customers into the TRAK Services
system. He then has a 100 percent fully functional, totally professional
operations team in place and almost no cost. On top of that, his
recurring costs for these services are fixed as a percentage of sales
and are calculated to be less than in-house. In addition, if he has a
delay in getting started, he is not stuck maintaining an operations
team. If business slows for awhile, his operational costs drop
proportionately. If he wants to leave the business, there are no lease
termination issues or equipment to sell. Ken can just continue to do
what he does best, develop new ideas and market them!
SCENARIO #2 (An established business needs temporary direct response support)
Rob
owns a successful wholesale business. He has recently acquired a new
product line for which he wants to create a distributor network. His
plan is to conduct a direct marketing campaign for 90 days to sell
inexpensive "Demo Kits." From this, the hope is that a series of new
distributors can be established. The problem is that Rob is not set up
to do a "retail type" order taking and fulfillment business (and it
makes no sense to create one since the project is temporary.)
Rob contacts TRAK Services.
Within a few days, we are set up to process "Demo Kit" orders and
fulfill them to the end customer. Rob wanted to handle customer
inquiries in-house since his focus was on establishing distributor
relationships rather than just selling products. Since the project was
short term (only 90 days) he felt his Account Reps could handle what
miscellaneous customer service actions came up. We simply process his
"Demo Kit" orders and fulfill them to the customer. Rob doesn't have to
spend a nickel on creating an order processing/fulfillment
infrastructure. In this case, he pays for TRAK Services' services through a small "per order" surcharge added to normal shipping and handling fees.
SCENARIO #3 (An established direct response business wants to move toward a "virtual corporation" business strategy.)
Frank
owns a successful direct response business. However, he is massively
tired of personnel problems, technical equipment difficulties, and the
high cost of maintaining an under-utilized operations infrastructure
during slow business periods. More importantly, the operational details
are continually dragging him down. He no longer can focus efficiently on
new product development and marketing. Frank is a smart businessman. He
realizes that if he allows his marketing efforts to deteriorate, his
business will die.
Frank contacts TRAK Services. Although it is feasible to make a complete operational transition to TRAK Services very quickly, he is reluctant to do so without being 100 percent certain they can do the job. Therefore, the next marketing project is structured to go to TRAK Services rather than in-house. Of course, the new project was handled extremely well by TRAK Services
at a lower cost than he was doing it in-house. Frank then decided to
transition over the remaining products and phase out his in-house
system. In the end, Frank was able to completely focus on creating new
products and marketing. Operations functions were handled entirely by TRAK Services.
|