London N1 Islington Copywriter – Roger J Gould - A Pen For Hire

Traders are losing millions of pounds every day because they are too busy to sell their products.

Increased workloads caused by rocketing government demands for statistics, compliance with new laws, and more detailed record keeping, coupled with restrictions on traditional methods of selling are stopping businessmen from giving their undivided attention to selling their goods.

One trader told us, “I work harder for the government now, than I do for myself. I’d be better off as a civil servant, regular pay, holidays, pension, no staffproblems. Instead of coping with interfering bureaucrats, I’d be one.”

The effect is particularly bad on small businesses which do not have the resources of large companies who can carry larger staffs to cope with this non-productive waste of resources. Small business owners find it difficult to make time to attend to the simplest of promotional activities, such as writing sales letters, preparing marketing material or keeping in touch with existing customers.

Roger J Gould – A Pen for Hire said, “Increasingly small to medium sized companies are coming to me because they do not have the time, or the spirit, to write their sales material, at the end of a long working day.”

Have you discovered that, “When it’s raining, the bank repossesses your umbrella”?

Cash is now king; unfortunately, much of yours may be in your customers’ pockets, or of those, in turn, who owe them money. You don’t want to offend them, but you need your bills paid.

The first approach is a series of polite reminder letters. Service letters, like these, can be important out of all proportion to their length and you must hit the right note.

A few minutes spent agonising over the wording may save you many lost orders later, and once done they can be filed, as a stock letter, secure in the knowledge that they will be effective but not offensive. Get in touch »

Distress purchases happen when something breaks down terminally like Monty Python’s parrot; classically, refrigerators and other household kit and motor cars. IT specialists get it, big time, when computers crash.

These are the sales that walk off your shop floor, or forecourt, because the customer needs them NOW. But what happens afterwards?

Those same customers may want other items, or services for them, but they may only associate you with the product they bought, when you could supply so many others. They were satisfied with your service, so satisfied they never needed to return. Have you kept in touch? Have you got their details? Did you even put a self adhesive label on the product to tell them who to call for service?

Perhaps the next guy did. Satisfied customers are the low-hanging fruit it is easy to sell to again. Don’t lose their details, do keep in touch, by letter, flyer, or special offer, then when they are in need, even if not distress, they will think of you first. All the statistics about direct mail go out the window when you use a list of your existing customers. I have special programmes to help spread the cost of a sustained contact campaign – get in touch.

Press releases are often thought of as the ultimate in free advertising, but there are no free lunches, newspapers are not a soft touch.

You must have a story which will interest their readers, and what may be very important to you might not do that. From many years of placing stories in the press I know that the London and provincial markets are different.

Outside London the local newspapers still command a dedicated readership and news about a local business is read with interest, because readers can often identify it from personal acquaintanceship. In the metropolis many small businesses ply their trades in anonymous office blocks, or on trading estates hidden away from the casual visitor.

There is unlikely to be the instant spark of recognition that leads to interest which happens when the reader takes ownership of an item of news. As Editors are often unwilling to publish much in the way of contact details, their articles are often only of use as ‘press clipping’ sales tools.

However, a well placed article in a specialist, or trade magazine, may well be helpful in raising your company’s profile and the Editor may well have a more enthusiastic idea of what is news within that trade or profession.

The Big Guns have beaten their hasty retreats.
Pubs with big rooms in marginal seats,
Will not see their like, for another few years,
Unless for a tasting of real ale beers.

Frail little old ladies will never again,
Have their faces transmitted on news broadcasts, when
They debated with vigour, with this one or that,
On matters important to them, and their cat.

The ward official, who remembered your name
And loudly brought you ‘a pint of the same’,
With puzzled expression, avoiding your gaze,
Sidles past to the Con Club, an aptly named place.

The farmers have harvested, from gates, walls and hedges,
The crop of good timber that carried the pledges
Of undying service they never would shirk.
One’s gone off to Parliament, the rest back to work.

Roger J Gould
Originally written in May 1992 and first published in Spring Breezes by Arrival Press 1997.

Bernard Madoff’s tenure as holder of the title of the biggest swindler of all time may soon be over as the huge Ponzi scheme which has been operated by the British government is finally unmasked.

The essential element of a Ponzi is to pay out those wanting to withdraw their money with the new money provided by the mugs coming in. When I heard recently that the biggest employer in the West Midlands is now Birmingham City Council I realised the game would soon be up. Essentially, with any employee, about 30% of their pay is deducted as government taxes and then further taxes are levied through council tax and VAT;  probably 50% of earnings find their way back to the government. In the case of state employees this tax provides their pay, so you are paid out of tax this week and then tax is deducted which will help to pay you next week, from which tax will be deducted which will…. and so on. Of course this is always a diminishing figure and requires topping up with extra money, the ‘new money’ vital to a Ponzi.

This ‘new money’ can only come from taxes on non-government money but successive governments have either, actively persecuted, or destroyed, huge swathes of the private sector and the nationalised primary producers such as coal and steel. In the past, the best British industry could hope for was complete indifference, at least then they knew where they stood – nowhere. The price for this attitude of either crass ignorance(Tory) or doctrinaire hostility(Labour) has been the almost total disappearance of the manufacturing sector and, currently, the possible flight abroad of the service industries like banking, insurance and shipbroking.  With them has gone the tax income necessary to pay off the punters.

So will the Serious Fraud Office mount an investigation into the Treasury? Will we see Chancellors hiding their faces as they are hustled in to police cars? Will the surviving Prime Ministers of the last fifty years plead diminished responsibility?

We can dream can’t we?