PETTRY PICCOLOS

In the year before announcing my line of piccolos I approached Andrea at FluterScooter about a custom design for a piccolo bag. I felt that a high end instrument deserved premium accessories. We developed a design, and I was thrilled with them. While they were in production, I started crunching numbers. I had spent a lot of money on them, because custom orders like that also require minimum volume requirements. Literally thousands of dollars in bags. My piccolo production is low volume at the moment, 10 or less instruments a year. I didn’t need to keep that many bags on hand. So I started to think about how I could recover some of the costs. I asked Andrea about selling them, but was unsure how to even begin such a marketing campaign. I make and repair instruments. I don’t sell things! It was really intimidating. She said talk to Nicole. She’s your girl.

 

At this point I knew I was staring down yet another expense and my budget was already strained after paying for these bags. But you have to spend money to make money and by now I was like… I’m in this far! Can’t stop now! Screw the budget. Ramen is fine for a week. So I dropped an email to Nicole and we set up a consultation to get the ball rolling. Going into this, I had no idea where to start. I didn’t know anything about setting up marketing campaigns, planning and coordinating them, or how to run them across multiple platforms. I didn’t know anything about scheduling them, or how to even structure a campaign like this. I didn’t know how to engage a customer, grab their attention, and establish a connection with a product to close a sale without feeling like a door to door salesman. I lacked the ability to blend business with relatability.

 

The consultation was super informal, and she came prepared. She walked me through a campaign that she structured and organized, but also how to turn the plans and ideas into actions. She told me what platforms to use, what tools to use, and what methods of client engagement have the highest return on investment. She also made the point that to get someone interested in a project, they have to relate to it, and the best way to do that is to show them who you are. As an introverted person that can honestly be too direct in writing, I knew that she was right on the money. I had to do more than learn how to do something. I had to reframe how I thought about it to form a completely new approach. So I started watching her on social media and how she engages with the public and took notes. I was going to try it her way. She’s the pro in this situation.

 

We scheduled the product announcement and pre-sale during a week that I had to take off work for a conference. A week that I was not generating income, and was in fact losing income to do this. But I trusted her, and followed her instructions to the best of my ability. The pre-launch campaign had generated a lot of interest, and I was optimistic. The day the bags went on pre-sale was the first day of the conference. Let me just say that by lunchtime, I’d already turned my phone off because the notifications were getting annoying. As much as I wanted to sit on my phone all morning, I couldn’t do it. By the time the day was over, I’d already recovered the cost of the order. By the end of the week, I’d already had to call Andrea to increase the order so I would have some inventory for the instruments I would be announcing the following month with another one of Nicole’s clients, my dealer, Flutistry Boston.

 

After it was all over I started really crunching numbers. True, I’d commissioned a fantastic product. But I didn’t have the skills or connections to sell it. With Nicole’s help, I’d been able to generate a 2000% return on that single consultation. I recovered the cost of the custom order, increased the original order, reserved inventory for musicians purchasing my piccolos, and had generated profit during a week that I wasn’t working. Nicole was able to do that, and she was there to support me every step of the way. The whole endeavor was a huge confidence booster and ultimately changed the way I approach the way I engage with the public.

 

So from now on, if I want to know how to do something with marketing, I start stalking her accounts on social media looking for examples, and slide straight into her inbox. She’s so good at what she does, that it’s like she sits there printing money. When she says to do something, I try to do it as soon as I’m able. Tell me to jump? I don’t even ask how high. I jump. That’s how much I trust her.