Great Customer Care Item to Go With Trifle Bowls.

[pampered1224]

If you need a way to sell a trifle bowl, the best way is with recipes. How about 116 of them from fruit to chocolate to salad recipes? These are customized for you and covered in a heavy card stock and bound with a special clip. (Not like a Random House book but securely enough. They are put together in a size like that of the Seasons Best Recipe Collection. They are recipes I collected from here, Kraft and other resources listed in the book. I just could not stand not being able to find recipes all in one place and my customers had no idea what to do with a trifle bowl so they were not buying them. Once I introduced the book, they started buying. You sometimes have to tell them a lot of reasons, 116 of them in this case, why they should spend so much money on a fancy bowl.
Everything from Triple Berry Trifle to Turtle Trifle to Godiva Chocolate Trifle and Seven Layer Salad and Southwest Seven Layer Salad are represented here. It's a great promotional item and can be written off on your taxes. Ask about them here as I know several people ordered them last year at the intro price of $2 each. I had to of course raise the price due to increase costs of postage and paper but they are still a deal.
And any extra monies will help me go to National Conference. You would get a great sellign point for the bowls and be helping a fellow Cheffer get to Chicago!

 

[KateD]

Are these meant to give to people that buy a trifle bowl, or sell to them? I feel dense tonight!

 

[pampermejolene]

Isn't this self promotion?
Sorry, I'm working on making money to send myself to conference!:balloon:

 

[pampered1224]

It may be concidered that by alot of peoplebut I do have the permission of the creators of the site and I do not make that much from these. With paper, printing, binding, time and the postage at about $12 for the 10, the "profit" is less than 1/4 of the cost to you. So I would not say it is majorly profitable in any way thus not really self promotion. It is more of a tool for you to use. You pay for stuff from other vendors and they make a lot of money because they can mass produce items. I can't. So...
Then as far as what you all do with them after you get them is up to you. I have bascially used them as an incentive and give away for people who are interested in the trifle bowl but always say "Why do I want one? What would or can I do with it?" This book answers that question. Figure you get 20% of the Trifle Bowl cost of $7.80. If you are 22% you get $8.58. You still get $3.80 to $4.85 commission even if you give them a $4 book. Not to mention the bottom line is your show totals can go up with it's sale. So... You have to look at what you want to sell then decide if the "bribe" is worth the cost to you. I had a lady ask about the book simply because she had a triffle bowl from a different DS and had nothing to go with it or the time to search the internet. I sold her one at, you guessed it, $4.
Why not? She did not buy the bowl from me so I could not justify just giving her one. The whole thing is discressionary on you rpart. You decide what, who and why and how much after you get them. All I can tell you is what I did with it. So... I hope that helps.

 

[janetupnorth]

Isn't this self promotion?
Sorry, I'm working on making money to send myself to conference!:balloon:

You weren't on here last year, but Deb and Greg approved this. John is mainly doing this as a service to fellow consultants to help sell the Trifle Bowls, not to really make money.

 

[dannyzmom]

I have gathered recipe compilations for each large product we sell (12" skillet, each stone, trifle bowl, mini muffin pan, rice cooker, cookie press, etc) over the years and I email them to any customer who purchases any of those products. I can't see spending the extra $ or asking my customers to purchase a cookbook that is not Pampered Chef and is not going to help my hosts' sales or my commission/incentive points. It's a nice idea what you're doing John, it's just not for me.

 

[janetupnorth]

I have gathered recipe compilations for each large product we sell (12" skillet, each stone, trifle bowl, mini muffin pan, rice cooker, cookie press, etc) over the years and I email them to any customer who purchases any of those products. I can't see spending the extra $ or asking my customers to purchase a cookbook that is not Pampered Chef and is not going to help my hosts' sales or my commission/incentive points. It's a nice idea what you're doing John, it's just not for me.

Same here Carolyn - I will e-mail a file I have to guests, but don't purchase the books.

I'm sure John did a great job and I'm not going to knock him for his effort, or for doing things the right way because he got approval to post it here, but I don't have the need for it for my customers.

I've heard many like them though.

 

[pampered1224]

Well I can certainly respect that...No these are not for everyone. They are for people like me who simply got tired of resending, reprinting, and loosing recipes.
I have a recipe for something called Frog Eye Salad. I do it when I know there are going to be kids present at a party. I usually just print a bunch of copies or e-mail it out to guests. Well, I have not done this recipe since 2006. This past October, I got 34 requests for a copy of that recipe from guests who atteneded the parties where I prepared it and they all got copies then. You know why? Because they lost 'em or tossed 'em. Luckily I keep copies of every recipe I have done over the last 6.5 years and can go back to the computer. But this time I decided to take it a step forward and made the books. Not only as a way to say there are so many things you can do with thie really cool bowl, but also because I know it will never be thrown away. And my cluster liked them so much, they wanted them too. That's how it came to be. Not because I wanted to make money but because they wanted something more organized and something with their name on it that would always be on a shelf and that would probably never get tossed like a sheet of paper does. Heck even my cluster's Executive Director bought 25 and wants more. And it is a great promo or ad if you will. I had 6 guests purchase trifle bowls as wedding gifts for friends or releatives. Each got a book to go with it. I am not sure this would have happened had the book been substitued for a piece of paper with one or even 4 recipes and my name on it. I got 4 parties from those books from poeple who never, ever met me or knew who I was or attended any of my parties. So my 4 $4 books - $16, got me 4 parties that I probably never would have gotten otherwise. The commissions from those parties were well over $600 as none of the parties was under $600. So I also look at it that way.
But as I said, this is not something for everyone. And I can respect that. I just had to tell you the facts though as to what I gained from distrbuting them. And don't think they don't cost me money when I do them for me. Each book costs me about $2.25 to make. And each one takes 15 to 20 minutes to put together as it is all done by hand. I don't own a factory and have nothing more than a paper cutter, hole punch and my hands to collate the pages so they are in the correct order. They cost the same and they take the same amount of time to do no matter who I print them for. That's without postage so...

Well, little respit here, I didn't mean to get defensive but that's fine if you don't want them but please don't make me feel like a bad guy because I wanted to let you all in on somehting I found to be a great tool but can't give them away.

 

[pampered1224]

Well I can respect that...You have that choice. But like I mentioned above. I DO NOT CHARGE anyone who orders the bowl so my hosts DO NOT loose out. In fact they GAIN from the sale of the Trifle Bowl. I only charge $4 for the one I got a lady who DID NOT order a Pampered Chef Trifle Bowl.
And Janet, you're right. I don't get much from them at all. I think I figured about $8.50 per set. That might be even less because of this: this years will have color! I knew there was another reason I raised the price. There are some pictures in the book and on the cover. Because I am doing these at home I have to put them in color. That will be a nice upgrade too!

 

[pampered1224]

I did a quick check of salesand I have to ask how many bowls you have all sold since March 1, 2006. Check product number 2832 since March 1, 2006. I have had 36 parties and I have sold 28 bowls. Only 4 from March 1 to June 30 in 13 parties. The rest were sold in shows 229 to 251 - 23 parties, 24 bowls. That is a total of $1092 and a commission based on the base of 22% for a total of $240.24. Not much but it sure helped. That was after I created and started showing the book. That is an average of one per show. I also use it at EVERY party. I mean come on, with 116 recipes, it would take forever to run out of ideas. I did use it at every party from March 1 to June 30 too but without the book, they just didn't sell because I could not "show" my guests all the recipes they could do in it. Carolyn, how many of those e-mailed recipes do your guests still have? I know my guests do not save any of those or the ones I print for parties. Or they simply toss them thinking it is garbage. I know this from the requests I get from the same guests who got them from me in the first place. Why don't you do that with your recipes? I know I would love some new ideas but I just can't do sheets of paper. I loose those so easily it isn't funny. Think about it!
Oh, update as of 5/2/08 - I forgot to check but I acutally sold 34 bowls. 6 orders came in directly from my website under option 2. They were all ordered by people who knew people who ordered the bowls and got the books.

 

[pampered1224]

I Updated The Book!!I am adding about 15 more recipes and there are 27 color recipe photos as well. This will make the book even nicer.Make that 20 new recipes! I found some really great recipes and some are a little more complicated but most are very easy. My new favorites as of now are an Autumn Trifle made with roasted Apples and Pears with a Pumpkin-Caramel Sauce and a Strawberry Twinkie Trifle! I always knew there was a better use for those! And a Cranberry Trifle!

 

[pampered1224]

More recipes addedI just added a total of 20 new recipes to the book. There are now 136 recipes, 27 color pictures, and an in color cover!

 

[Jansie]

I want some!Hi John,

I am brand new and would LOVE to have something like this. Can I order 10 please? And how do you accept payment?
Thanks for the effort and the great idea.

Jansie