The Seed Newsletter

	July 2007 Newsletter

Welcome! Welcome to the July issue of The Seed’s newsletter. With the School Summer Holidays now kicking in many businesses find this the most difficult time of year to attract new customers and generate new business. With this in mind July’s issue of The Seed Newsletter will look at making the most of your existing contacts, and how you can expand your database of both current and potential customers. We are constantly looking at how to improve our service to you, and the Top Tips section of this Newsletter will tell you more about our latest enhancement and how you can make the most of the opportunity that it provides. If you have any comments or feedback on the service provided by The Seed please click here and let us know. The Seed.com Team
	The Seed News
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who took part in our recent survey – ‘Winning New Business’. We are delighted to announce the winner of the £250 theatre Break voucher prize – Laura Morrison of DDC Outsourcing Solutions. Commenting on her win Laura said: "We are delighted to have won the £250 theatre break voucher. The voucher will be donated to our social club as a raffle prize. Many thanks to The Seed.com for this wonderful prize!" Laura Morrison, DDC Outsourcing Solutions.
	Make your marketing FREE
Even though the internet is now a common place marketing tool it’s surprising how many companies still don’t appreciate the power of email. Potential prospects visit The Seed.com as a place where they can be assured they will receive a good quality of service from the suppliers on the site and are assured that the organisations on there provide excellent value for the services they supply. Each of the leads we supply you with will have potentially been on to your website to check out your company, but, this does not necessarily mean that they will have completed your enquiry form or even left you any way of knowing that they may be interested in your services or how to contact them. There are maybe hundreds of ‘would-be’ clients who leave your site without getting in touch – and that’s a lot of wasted potential. So … do you capture the email address of anyone who comes into contact with your business? Yes, yes, I’m sure you have heard this many times before and thought about it often but believe it or not most businesses still don’t collect the email address of everyone who contacts them. Everytime you fail to do this you are turning down the opportunity to contact them for FREE for weeks, months and years ahead. How do you go about collecting other email addresses that haven’t been supplied by The Seed from prospects who have visited your website? Well, you need to offer them something in exchange for their email address e.g. an offer to join your VIP club and receive top design tips for their business or a percentage off your services should they wish to use them in the future, it may even be that if they sign up to a newsletter and recommend another client to you that they win a gift of some sort be it a meal in a nice restaurant or a balloon flight, it can vary dependent on what type of business you are in and what your potential clients would appreciate. Whatever it may be, stick to your strategy, convince people to join your 'club', create regular communication and develop a great relationship. They won’t be able to resist doing business with you! Part of The Seed.com’s service is to ensure you have an email address with which to contact that next great prospect – it’s now up to you to use it really wisely and create a regular piece of communication. This doesn’t necessarily have to be to sell them anything – offer them free membership to your VIP club or include them in your newsletter for a trial period. This communication can then be used to recommend a product or service that could be of interest to them, ask for referrals or even, ask why they haven’t done any business with you! Believe it or not, by adopting an effective emarketing strategy, you could grow your business by 10, 20 or even 30%. This powerful communication tool can add real value to your customers as well as creating a great way of you keeping them informed about your activities. What you have to do is ensure that your emails make a difference to the readers and set you apart from other people who may be trying to do the same thing.
	Feedback
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		Top Tips
	The Window of Opportunity To ensure that we are always improving our service to you, we are now asking all enquirers what time of day would be best for them to be contacted by you, our customers, with regard to their enquiry. This will ensure that you are able to contact the enquirer more easily and at a time that is convenient to them. You know yourselves, even when you are waiting for a call from someone, if they ring when you are in the middle of something, you just don’t devote the attention to them that they may require. To ensure that you maximise on the lead you receive from us we would recommend that you call them as early as possible in the allocated time window and then make sure that all follow up and further correspondence is delivered in a timely manner after initial contact.

		Leads this month
	Below are a selection of sample leads generated over the last month. These example leads should give you a taste of the type of leads you will receive if signed-up to TheSeed.com. Document Scanning Tuesday 17th of July 2007 14:39 1) Electronic storage of company records for a period of 20 years, following the closure of the organisation in October 2007. 2) Scanning of company records ready for storage Additional notes from TheSeed.com: I talked to Susie and she gave me some more information regarding her enquiry. She told me that she works for a charity and are having to dissolve it. They are looking for two quotes, mainly storing documents electronically for at least 20 years, and scanning the documents themselves as well. She doesn't know how many documents there are, she knows that there are thousands that have been kept from the last 7 years. They need to be out of the office at the end of August so during August would be the best time for this service. They have not set a budget and are waiting for quotes to come back to advise them on cost, however have not had any to date. They are based in Hounslow, Susie is the best person to talk to and can be contacted at any time on the number provided. Contacted by Kim on 2007-07-17 at 15:20. Email address confirmed. Telemarketing Saturday 14th of July 2007 16:57 We manufacture chemical free systems for disinfecting public swimming pools. We are looking now for a telesales operation to make appointments for our sales people to call. Additional notes from TheSeed.com: I talked to Richard and he gave me some more information regarding his enquiry. He told me that he is based on the Isle Of Wight and is looking for telemarketing for the UK to sell a patented product that can clean and filter a pool to drinking water standard without the use of chemicals and has been used in swimming pools for the Olympics. He told me that he would like telemarketing to begin ASAP, however he would like a company that is willing to take the time to understand the product and then try and sell the product. He has been quoted £1000 week, however he has stated that money is not important, he is more concerned about the service he will receive and will pay what he is quoted. He is the best person to talk to and can be contacted at any time on the number provided or on 07714 * . He is looking to target health clubs, municipalities, private schools and heath centres. There are 7000 pools in the UK that they are looking to target of which 20 - 30 % have problems with the filtering system. They are looking for a company that will make calls, find companies that are interested and set appointments for the sales reps to visit. He will be around the area of Birmingham on the 24th July and will be available to go and meet representative from a telemarketing company in the UK. Contacted by Kim on 2007-07-16 at 15:12. Email address confirmed. Translation Services* Services Monday 16th of July 2007 11:56 We need all leaflets, brochures and other marketing materials to be double checked by a professional agency based in UK. We already have the texts in English, we only need the linguistic checking to make sure that the words we use are appropriate to the audience we are addressing (in English language). We would like to start our collaboration as soon as possible as currently we are working on a new website that should be ready by the 1st of September so please send us some quotes/price lists. Additional notes from TheSeed.com: I talked to Corina and she gave me some more information regarding her enquiry. She told me that she is based in Hungary and would like a variety of documents checking to see if they have been translated properly to begin with, then once this has been done they would like brochures, leaflets and a website translating for them and will be an ongoing process over time as they plan to market to the UK for quite some time. They have not had any other quotes, and not set a budget as they do not know how much this service would cost. She is the best person to talk to and can be contacted on the number provided. Her first requirement would be a document of 22 pages need to be checked to see if they have been translated properly. Contacted by Kim on 2007-07-16 at 14:27. Email address confirmed.