Seeing In The Marketplace — Six Steps

I’ve just finished a ministry cruise and I learned several things about marketing – okay, it was a ministry context, but the principles certainly spill over into the arts.  So before I tell my own story, I want to challenge you to use your imagination and look around at your next art show or concert or craft fair.

I was one of three speakers and one of four worship leaders on the cruise.  We each had a book table with our various products for sale, and we each had an opportunity to take up an offering. It was a wonderful opportunity to see what works and what doesn’t.  I’m going to list six steps we took in our seeing – these steps apply to all sorts of marketing venues – and I’ll illustrate them with specific ideas we have gleaned.

1) Look around and see what others do differently. We saw two main things:  everyone else used offering envelopes, and everyone else was able to accept donations by credit card.  Then John Mark Pool graciously offered to let us route credit card donations through his ministry; these donations proved to be more than half of our income from the cruise.

2) Ask a lot of questions. I’d always avoided using envelopes, not wanting to be pushy or manipulative.  But Sandy Pool explained that people are very security conscious and don’t want to leave their checks where a stranger might be able to copy their information.  And the envelopes make a way for cash donors to get a tax receipt – duh, I should have thought of that one myself!

3) Stay tuned to the Holy Spirit. My wife JoAnn noticed that people weren’t buying much from our book table or from any of the others.  It had been so much work to drag all this stuff onto the ship that it was depressing to think I’d have to repack it and drag it back home.  So I asked God for wisdom and took time to soak.

“Give your CDs away to any donor.”  This is what I heard when I soaked, and I announced it in my first workshop.  I was surprised to find that many of the people had never heard anything like this.  Several came up to me and told me what they had given and what they had taken, and they wondered if they could have one more CD.  “Take it,” I said.  “It’s yours for any donation.”

4) Follow through with research. Everyone told me I need to start accepting credit cards, but as we asked questions we found that everyone gave us different answers.  So I got home and went online to search various merchant accounts and credit card terminals.

I quickly bogged down in information overload.  Was this really something I could do?  I have to know whether I’m working point-of-sale, as I would be at a book table, or setting up e-commerce on the web.  Eventually I need to do both, but it could take months…

5) Follow through with soaking. Like Hagar in the desert, I was so overwhelmed with my own impossibilities that it was hard to see the well God had provided for me.  It was only when I took time to soak that God made the way simple for me.  In His presence, the information overload from my research suddenly fell into neat categories with a clear step-by-step process I can follow.

6) Follow through with action. So far, we’ve made it to the first step: to print forms that would allow us to accept credit card payments on PayPal.  These forms will be on the book table the next time I minister.

Small steps add up.  If we let God open our eyes in the marketplace, He will show us one small step after another.  As weeks turn into months and months turn into years, we will become skilled at presenting our work efficiently and tastefully.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com