Patience When Marketing?

I think I’ve noticed a trend in e-waste marketing that is different than other sectors. In my experience there is a large time lapse between the marketing and the business generated from the marketing. For example, the winter months are normally my downtime in lawn care. I use this time to do lots of breakdowns and market e-waste. However, phone calls normally take a couple of months to start rolling in. By this time, it’s close to spring and my lawn care is at its peak. I did the same thing in the summer and it took till the fall before I started getting the phone calls. Do you guys think this is a trend or do you think that most people simply tend to do their cleaning in the Fall & Spring?

I too have noticed that there can be a long period of time between making contact with the right person and actually hauling the stuff off. There is a lot of red tape and other issues that come up that can cause a delay. If it is a large company that has a huge room to store their old stuff, they are not very motivated to get rid of it. Many of my customers are other small businesses that need to get the stuff out ASAP because they have no room.

Another thing to consider is that the fiscal year is not always the same for every business. At my "real job" it goes from March to April. Sometimes the person you made contact with is just waiting for the fixed assets(computers etc...) to fully depreciate before writing them off. On the same note, they might not have the budget to buy the new ones they want until the beginning of the next fiscal year, or quarter or whatever.

The response is going to be mixed. In just the past 2 months since I've started "full time", I have gone to a couple dozen local computer shops. About half I have not heard back from. 25% gave me stuff the same day and another 25% called me a couple weeks afterwards. My intentions are to go back to the ones I havent heard from and nudge them a bit. Some of them already have a buyer for their stuff, some are wondering if they can do what I do and increase their profits, and some just dont see the value in it (hard headed). I have noticed a huge increase in business from the trickle-down effect of handing out tons of business cards to anyone that seems interested in what I do. I have received a lot of calls from people that know someone who had my number, saw my flier, etc. Just keep marketing your business everywhere you can think of and the snowball will start rolling.

Excellent idea, old dude. I have 3 points so far for today!