Are you tired of having to travel to the expos to pick up your free software? Are those bundles of free goodies getting too heavy to lug around the show floor? There’s no need to break a sweat. Now you can sit at home and watch the free software roll into your mailbox. For the cost of mailing a few letters, you can haul in all the popular titles: Photoshop, Word, Excel, QuarkXPress, PageMaker, you name it. You can even snag great vertical applications such as AutoCAD, Director, and others. Free hardware? You got it. You can get hard disks, monitors, modems shipped right to your door! And it’s 100% legit!
In fact, it’s cheaper to just have the vendor send you their wares at no charge than it is to download it. Not only do they send you a fancy box with the docs, they even thank you to take the goods off their hands! Why settle for an imitation when you can get the real McCoy for free!!
How can this be possible? Well, as many of you who read my “Com-plete Guide to Industry Day™” and “Complete Guide to Free Software at MacWorld™” know, vendors love to give away their goodies. In fact, they go out of their way to do so. Every year vendors allocate hundreds of thousands of dollars on evaluation or not-for-resale versions of their products. These are full working versions that sit on shelves collecting dust until somebody comes to collect. That somebody could be you!
So how do you get the free wares? It’s so utterly simple, you’ll laugh. All you have to do is ask! I told people this all the time, and many thought I was crazy. But nobody thought I was crazy when I walked away from shows with two full bags of free goodies. But after a while, those bags started getting heavy! Each show there were more and more vendors, all eager to give it all away! Soon two bags became three bags; then four; then five — soon I was having trouble carrying it all. I was buried! There had to be a better way!
That’s when it hit me. Why not simply send a letter? Well, it was worth a try, anything to relieve my aching arms. And sure enough, it worked! Soon the goodies started rolling in! At first, it was just a trickle, then more, then came a tidal wave of new stuff. I had to shut my board down; it took all of my spare time to sort through all the goodies. Soon UPS started sending out my own truck to handle it all.
Now that I’ve had my fill, I’d like to pass on what I’ve learned to you. I know its sometimes a pain to write a letter, but I’ve already done a lot of it for you. Below is a template to get you started. I suggest changing the words around so you all don’t send out the same letters, but you should get similar results. I recommend printing out the final draft on your company letterhead to obtain the best effect. You also need to decide what software packages that you want, and insert the names and addresses of the appropriate vendors. You’ll have to come up with your own shopping lists. (Hey, I can’t do everything.) I suggest thumbing through MacWorld, MacUser, or MacWEEK for companies and products. Also, be sure to clear out your closets so you’ll have room for everything when it arrives. You’ll need it!!
The {Your Company Name} is a Management Consulting firm specializing in the enhancement of “white-collar productivity” through the improvement of managerial work practices and decision support systems. For the past six years we have been working with small to mid-sized companies to design and implement Apple Macintosh installations. We are responsible not only for the hardware selection, but the software selection and end-user training and internal support systems as well. We also have been working with a number of regional software retailers to help them select software to re-sell to their customers, and to train their personnel in the operating characteristics, as well as strengths and weaknesses of, respective software products.
In the past 12 months, we have expanded the scope of our consultation to include much larger companies, with much more sophisticated software requirements, including a number of Fortune 1000 firms. As part of this expansion, we are undertaking a much more thorough review of products before we can recommend their use by clients. For this purpose, we have established an in-house software testing group responsible for this function.
A review of the Macintosh product review literature indicates that you are a vendor of high quality products that might fit our clients’ requirements. We would like to include any of your products that you believe might be of interest to the small, mid-size, or larger corporate markets, including specialized product offerings and niche market products, in our software review process. We also are specializing in consultation to a number of highly lucrative vertically integrated markets in addition to general business.
If you are interested in this opportunity to get additional exposure, marketing recognition, and third party support for your products, please send review copies as soon as possible to:
{Name, Address, etc.}
Thank you in advance for your consideration and cooperation in this matter.
