The April issue of the e-ret@iler contains:

1. The article of the month: Reviewing Your
Business Insurance
2. e-ret@iler advisory of the month: Targeting
your best customers
3. Our Power Promoting idea of the month: Postage
4. Book of the month: The Experience Economy
5. Your e-ret@iler subscription and contacting
Profits Plus and Tom Shay

=> Print the April issue of the e-ret@iler so
you can read it at your leisure.

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1. Article of the month: Reviewing Your
Business Insurance

Many business owners decide to simply renew
their business insurance year after year
with little thought. As long as the representative
makes an annual call to the store, and sends
the traditional calendar at Christmas, they
simply sign and renew the policy for another
year.

We invite you to read the article for this
month and then take some time to look at your
policy before you renew the policy for 2005.

Does this sound like some valuable information to
you? If so, read this month's article. Click on this
link to visit the Profits Plus website to read the
March article of the month.

Reviewing Your Business Insurance

0<= After printing the April e-ret@iler, check
here if you plan to read the article of the month.

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2. e-ret@iler advisory of the month: Targeting
your best customers

Those of you who have attended a Tom Shay
presentation at a trade show or conference know
that each participant is invited to send a
postcard to themselves as a reminder to put some
of the great ideas into action. There is a place
on the card where you can ask questions and make
comments.

Last year a participant asked, "What do you
consider to be the characteristics of a successful
business?" From that question has come a magazine
article, and a new presentation that has become one
of our most popular topics. In the presentation, we
list the ten characteristics that we observe in these
people and in their businesses. Beginning with last
month's issue, and continuing through the rest of 2004,
we will examine these points.

Characterisitic number two is identifying the best
customers.

Our own business is a classic example of the need
to do this. I remember a customer whose name was
Gary. As a customer, Gary was in a position to
spend a sizable amount of money with our store.

Everyone that worked in our store knew Gary by
name. This was because Gary was always looking
for something that we did not stock. While we
were always glad to look for things for Gary,
we took the time to see how much money he
spent with us over the course of a year.
Surprisingly it was less money than some
customers spent in one trip to our store.

While we continued to serve Gary's needs,
we asked him what we could do to earn more
of his business. His answer was, "Nothing."

While he did his major shopping at a big box
store, we were handy for the emergency need
items as well as for the small items the big
store did not stock. And he knew it was a
problem to special order things at the big
box store.

While we did not refuse to sell to Gary, we
did realize that we were wasting our time
doing the special things for him in an effort
to earn more of his business. And a lot of
the time we spent locating products for
Gary could be better spent following
up with the customers that were open
to spending more money with us.

For a business to be successful, it must
identify the customers that are most
attracted to it. Not only from the position
of how much time you spend with the customer
but from the point of deciding what to stock
and how to advertise to your target group.

Recently I heard the owner of a car stereo
shop explain that he knew his target market
was the 18-35 year old male. They also knew
that this group was quick to change stations
when a commercial played.

In designing their radio and television commercials,
the advertisements sound like the songs and look
like the videos this group hears and sees on their
favorite radio stations and cable channels like
BET and VH1.

The point here is not the advertising, but that
this retailer knows exactly who to target.
These are two examples of situations where a
business can work to better targer their
best customers.

Next month's topic is utilizing technology.

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3. Our Power Promoting idea of the month:
Maximize your postage

It is bad enough that postage is expensive, costing
thirty seven cents to mail a first class envelope
in the U.S.. And when you have to spend that
to send someone a statement to remind them
to pay their bill, why not make this statement
do some extra work for you? Take a look around
your business today and look at how many name
brand products you sell. And with each of those
name brand products, there is a manufacturer
that wants your customers to know about them.

All of this ties together, as you can ask
these manufacturers to give you some brochures
(and at no cost to you) that you can include
with your monthly statements. If the brochure
from the manufacturer is a standard sheet of
paper (8.5 x 11 inches) you can get four of them
in the envelope with a one page statement.

Be sure that with each of these statement
stuffers that the information about your
business (address, phone, hours, and website)
is on it so that your customer will know
who sent this reminder.

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5. Book of the month: The Experience Economy by
Joseph Pine II & James H. Gilmore

This book is great! When you think that it is
important for your business to give your
customer a great shopping experience, these two
authors will show you this is not the case. The
extraordinary business will work to transform
the customer!

And that is as far as I am going to tell you
about this book, other than to say it is one of
my favorites. Please don't miss out on some
great information by reading this book!

If you have already read this book, or are wanting
to find other interesting titles, follow this link
to the Profits Plus website where you will see
a list of suggested reading.

Book Referral List

O <= After printing the April e-ret@iler, check here
if you plan to read the book of the month.

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6. Your e-ret@iler subscription and contacting
Profits Plus and Tom Shay

The subscription is free. Just remember if you
are changing your Internet service provider, you
will need to visit enter your new e-mail address
to keep the e-ret@iler coming.

If you received the e-ret@iler by way of someone
that passed it to you, then you can easily get your
own subscription.

The upper left of this page has a link to subscribe to the newsletter.

Contacting us is just as easy:
The phone is 727-823-7205
The fax is 727-898-3179
The mailing address is:
PO Box 128
Dardanelle, AR 72834 USA

Thanks for visiting with us this month. We
appreciate your taking time from your
busy schedule. Our goal is to help you and
your business to become more profitable. We hope
we have done that.

We encourage you to seek out and do business
with other independently owned businesses. If
you are wanting people to do business with you
because you are a locally owned business, then
it stands to reason that we should be doing
what we are asking others to do.

Get your Profits Plus. May God bless you and yours.
We will see you in May.

Tom Shay