THE PURE JAKE NEWSLETTER

THIS MONTH'S PURE JAKE TOPICS:

• Jake's Thought For Today
• August's Featured Manufacturer: Adams Rite and the Steel Hawk
• Jake's Jabber: Have You Ever Tried?
• News For You
• Networking To Keep Working
• I Like These Links

Thought For Today

If you're not in the locksmith business to make money: why are you in the locksmith business?

--Jake Jakubuwski

August's Featured Manufacturer: Adamsrite

Adams Rite has introduced a new electrified narrow-stile aluminum door (storefront) lock that comes out of the box ready to install. This non-handed electric lock fits any 1850/4900 prep and makes upgrading a customer to EAC a snap. Check out my article: "Be A Hawk for Security" in the August issue of TNL, page 76.

The Hawk is a tough, well-designed electrified lock that can make you money. You can bank on it…

For more information call your favorite supplier or check out the Steel Hawk at www.adamsrite.com

Jake's Jabber: Have You Ever Tried?

About fifty years ago, I worked for Sears Roebuck in Annapolis, Maryland. I was a salesman in their vacuum cleaner and sewing machine department. Sears was big on having store meetings, district meetings, regional meetings - well, you get the idea.

I was at a regional sales meeting in Philadelphia and the Regional Manager for my division was doing a fair imitation of a tent preacher with a lot of arm waving, hollering and sweating. He was really working himself into a lather.

He was especially hot about finding and working prospects. Even if it meant looking for prospects in the most unusual places - like among the store's personnel!

I was kinda enjoying the spectacle of this guy in a suit getting so worked up that he shed his suit coat, loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves. When suddenly, he pointed right at me and yelled: "How many vacuum cleaners have you sold to employees in your store?"

I've never liked being singled out for special attention since like the time my first grade teacher made me stand up in class and tell everyone my name and all that stuff. I wasn't shy, mind you; I just didn't like the attention. Regardless, the Regional Manager, moved down the aisle a little (To make sure there was no mistake) and told me to stand up and he repeated his question.

I didn't have an answer. Well, I did but I wasn't ready to admit that I hadn't sold a single vacuum cleaner to a single employee in my store. Anyway, I finally said something really truly like: "Well, uh, you know, uh, probably none." Trying to make up for that idiocy; I further said: "Besides, you can't sell big ticket stuff to employees."

He grinned at me. Well, maybe it wasn't really a grin. Regardless, I knew I had fumbled the ball, so to speak. His grin got wider, wickeder and wilder as he screamed: "HAVE YOU EVER TRIED?"

After the meeting and getting back to Annapolis I decided to "try" to sell product to store employees. When we had a sale on vacuums or sewing machines I talked those bargains up to employees in the lounge, in the store and even in the snack bar. Yeah, I probably made a pest of myself but I noticed that I was selling stuff to employees that I hadn't sold before. Maybe it was only a package of vacuum cleaner bags or a sewing machine belt but I sold them something. And once in a while I made a big ticket sale to an employee.

You see, I decided to TRY and the effort paid off.

At a recent PURE JAKE seminar I was reminded of that incident while I was talking to a locksmith who was trying to decide whether or not to raise his service call rates. I advised him to do so and he said he'd like to but the folks in his area just wouldn't pay the extra.

I asked him why he felt that way and he told me that where he lived folks just wouldn't take kindly to price increases. I said: "Have you ever tried?" He admitted that he hadn't but he knew the way "those" folks were and they just wouldn't agree to higher prices.

Well, maybe he's right and the folks in his service area won't pay higher service fees. But! Maybe he's wrong and they will. He'll never find out until he tries … and that's a fact.

Here's another fact for you. If YOU don't rule out the idea that folks are set in their ways and won't accept new ideas like price increases or upgrade to better security - you're probably gonna prove to your self that they won't. After all, they pay price increases almost every time they pump gas and buy groceries, right?

News For You

The National Locksmith magazine is now on FACEBOOK! Just type "The National Locksmith Magazine" into the Facebook search bar and you're there!

Look for some major changes, overhauls or makeovers for PURE JAKE. My son and I are working on a new look, some new ideas, a weekly blog, as well as some money making ideas that you can use - for FREE! I hope we have it in place by September but considering Murphy, Mother Nature and the Fickleness of Fate, it may not launch until later. I can promise you that it will be much more then it is now but it will still be PURE JAKE to the core.

SEMINARS: I have three PURE JAKE seminars left this year. Those will be the LAST three face-to-face seminars that I intend to hold. Here's a link for the schedule: Seminar Schedule

All three will be in Oxford, NC.

ILCO: Is now offering a line of storefront hardware that apparently will have a price point somewhere between US made hardware and off-shore hardware. I have a full-blown article coming out in TNL later this year.

Networking To Keep Working

Wikipedia has this to say about networking:

"Business networking is a socioeconomic activity by which groups of like-minded businesspeople recognize, create, or act upon business opportunities. A business network is a type of social network whose reason for existing is business activity. There are several prominent business networking organizations that create models of networking activity that, when followed, allow the business person to build new business relationships and generate business opportunities at the same time. A professional network service is an implementation of information technology in support of business networking. Many businesspeople contend business networking is a more cost-effective method of generating new business than advertising or public relations efforts. This is because business networking is a low-cost activity that involves more personal commitment than company money.

As an example, a business network may agree to meet weekly or monthly with the purpose of exchanging business leads and referrals with fellow members. To complement this activity, members often meet outside this circle, on their own time, and build their own one-to-one relationship with the fellow member.

Business networking can be conducted in a local business community, or on a larger scale via the Internet. Business networking websites have grown over recent years due to the Internet's ability to connect people from all over the world. Internet companies often set up business leads for sale to bigger corporations and companies looking for data sources.

Business networking can have a meaning also in the ICT domain, i.e. the provision of operating support to companies and organizations, and related value chains and value networks. It refers to an activity coordination with a wider scope and a simpler implementation than pre-organized workflows or web-based impromptu searches for transaction counterparts (workflow is useful to coordinate activities, but it is complicated by the use of s.c. patterns to deviate the flow of work from a pure sequence, in order to compensate its intrinsic linearity; impromptu searches for transaction counterparts on the web are useful as well, but only for non-strategic supplies; both are complicated by a plethora of interfaces needed among different organizations and even between different IT applications within the same organization)."

I can boil that down to this: Find someone who can scratch your back when it needs scratchin' and whose back you can scratch when necessary. Networking is simply finding folks that you can help and who can help you when necessary.

Social sites like FACEBOOK and locksmith sites like ClearStar are good networking sites for any business person.

I Like These Links:

If you find any broken links, please let me know.

THE PURE JAKE NEWSLETTER is a FREE newsletter for professional locksmiths, professional door installers, architectural specifiers, hardware purchasing agents, facilities management personnel, security professionals, door and door hardware distributors and other interested parties.

The newsletter will be offered (FREE BY - SUBSCRIPTION ONLY) on a monthly basis to an "opt-in" subscriber list. It will be offered in electronic format only.

If you have received this newsletter and do not wish to have future newsletters sent to you please click the "Unsubscribe" button at the bottom of this newsletter.

If you received this copy of THE PURE JAKE NEWSLETTER from a friend and would like to have your own copy delivered to your desktop, or laptop, or Blackberry every month, you can subscribe by clicking here.

Your information will never be sold, traded, given away, rented, leased, bartered, or swapped for ransom.

Copyright 2011, Jake Jakubuwski - All rights reserved.