I tried to give it away.

I tried to give it away.

So I said in an earlier blog post that people are lazy, I mean they like convenience. I learned that lesson again after a few months of having Epsoma available for patients in my office. I’m pretty tight with a buck so I assumed there would be some of my patients who were too. So I printed up a simple recipe for a Do-It-Yourself Epsom Salt lotion in a 3 fold brochure and had it available for patients who seemed hesitant about actually purchasing the product. If I presented Epsoma to what I thought would be a good candidate, and they hesitated, I would offer them the recipe brochure. They took it, I would ask on their next visit if it worked, I got a lot of hems & haws, stammers, throat clearing & mumbling, almost no one had actually made it for themselves. I reasoned on this conundrum for a while and figured out that…surprise…people are lazy, I mean they like convenience. So I tossed the free recipe brochure, ordered some one ounce sample bottles, had my printer make up some small labels(an ant would need a magnifying glass to read most of it)and started giving away one ounce samples, it worked, people loved it, in fact, they loved it too much. I began to notice that my sales were actually declining, but I was really moving those free samples out the door. I realized that if people were getting free samples, then they weren’t buying. *Remember what your grandmother said about getting milk for free! I started offering the full size bottle first, and only offering the free sample to those who refused. My sales went back up and I stopped sending tons of free product out the door. I tried to give it away…twice…and nearly lost my shirt both times. Lesson learned.
*My grandmother used to tell my sister, when she was approaching puberty, that if a boy can get milk for free, he won’t buy a cow! Or in today’s words, he won’t put a ring on it! If you don’t get what the milk represents in this story, ask your grandmother!