Authors, What’s Your Version of “Bring Samples”?
Is there a command for your readers and customers that would make your life easier and their results better?
I’m standing in Chicago’s Faucet Shoppe recently with its fancy ice cream parlor spelling and gritty real-world showroom spending $300 on parts for our shower’s temperature mixer. You know what I’m thinking: Ah, so this is one of those non-glamorous small businesses that makes people the secret millionaires next door.
But I quickly move on to the T-shirts and hoodies and caps and stickers that exclaim Bring Samples! And I can’t quite figure it out because all I can think of are mini-appetizers, wine in thimbles, shampoo packets, and carpeting squares. How does this relate to their business? So I ask.
Duh. It means bring in the pieces parts you’re referring to so they can see them. They carry tens of thousands of new, rare, common, high-end, and vintage plumbing components and it’s much easier to advise you and send you on your way when they can handle your exact sample and not make guesses based on your descriptive wording. Round silver thingy. That broken rubber part that’s on the left. (Reader, not entirely a dunce, I had brought samples.)
