If you’re involved in any type of business where you sell products or
services, you should know that you need to sell more than one product to
be successful.  Of course, there have been exceptions, like the Pet Rock,
but those are few and far between.  You see, if you only sell one product / service, you need to find those prospective customers that want that one product. Add a second product, and you’ve opened the door to customers who want it, but not your first product.  Add a third, and you have more prospects, and so on.

You can present your products or services through separate ads or fliers,
but it’s really more efficient and professional to have a CATALOG.

Catalogs on CD are very easy to distribute, relatively inexpensive and an interesting novelty to many people (they will look at your catalog just because the presentation is different). You can use standard CD-r or a nice touch is mini CD-r.

Having a catalog will increase the orders you receive, since your customers
have more choices and you can show them everything in one mailing.

If you’re thinking of putting together even an eight page catalog, call your
local printer and ask for a price.  Get a quote on 1,000, since you’ll want
to have enough.  My best printer would charge $150, which would be 15 cents per catalog.  Then, you have the mailing cost, which would be 52 cents.
You’re now up to 67 cents per catalog.  Add in the cost of getting the name
to send the catalog to, and you could be over a dollar per catalog.  That
means over $1,000 to print and send out all your catalogs!

Worse news to come…  you won’t get rich from an eight page catalog.  If you
really intend on making it in your own business, you’d better offer at least
20 related products or services (or a combination).  That way, you can hit a
specific group of people and have a good chance of getting a decent return.
But if an eight page catalog would cost over $1,000 to print and mail, think
about a 20 page catalog!  Printing alone would be $375 or more!

You can reduce your printing and postage costs significantly by having your
catalog printed on a web press on newsprint.  The only problem with that is,
you need to print a higher quantity to make it worthwhile.  Figure on at
least 10,000. There’s an easier, less expensive way to do this…

PUT YOUR CATALOG ON A CD-ROM

See the advantages?

You can sell your products just as well with a disk catalog as with a printed one.  In fact, people will keep your catalog around longer, due to it’s uniqueness (disk catalogs are just starting to be used). So, how can you get your own high-powered order-pulling disk catalog?
Well, two ways…  you can make one yourself, or you can have an expert
put one together for you, saving you the time and effort.  I’ll explain how it’s done, and then you can make the choice.

How to Put you catolog CD-ROM

There are a multitude of ways to get, basically, the same end result. The method I will describe was chosen because it only requires tools that are free or already installed on the average PC.

What you need:

- Microsoft PowerPoint – Standard in MS Office Suite

- Auto-run software – Freeware (limited)

Retail (What you really want)

- CD Burner – Standard on most computers since the 90′s

The Steps:

1. Gather all your product / services information and your thinking cap.
2. Brain storm on the way you want your product / services catalog to look. Think of colors, fonts and backgrounds. You want to be sure your catalog reflects your products/ services, your industry and your target audience. Search the internet for PowerPoint templates (many are free!).
3. Once you decided on your template or your lay out, create a master lay slide so you don’t have to make a new lay out for each slide.
4. Create a new slide. The first slide will be your catalog cover or intro.
5. Create a new slide for each of your products. Remember to insert pictures where needed and insert the proper text.                                 Steps 4 and 5 are the most time consuming!
6. After all of your slides are completed and in order, save your presentation as a slide show executable.                                                         *At this point, the methods of making your presentation autorun are many, some more difficult than others. As entrepreneurs and business owners your time is limited and your tasks are many!!!
7. Now, close PowerPoint and open your autorun software. Take this time to put a blank CD in your CD drive. Follow your particular software’s instructions.  Most prompt you to point it to the file(s) that you want to autorun. In our case it would be the PowerPoint executable you just saved.
8. Let your software and CD burner do the rest…. You are the boss right!! :->

Finally, consider this…  you have 10,000 of your fantastic catalog printed.
You start mailing them.  All of a sudden, you discover you have to change the price of one of your products.  Or, the source for a product dries up.
Or, you want to add a new product or service.  TOO BAD!  You’re stuck with
the catalogs the way they are.  With a cd catalog, NO PROBLEM!  You make
the change on your master copy, and all subsequent catalogs are instantly
up-to-date.

Again, you will find other methods to achieve the same outcome, but this lets the software do the work for you. Design your product / services pages and let ‘er rip.

If this is still a bit beyond your comfort level, pay a couple of dollars and get a professional to do the job for you. Visions Business Services can create custom catalogs, slide shows and presentations.

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