The secrets of flash drive marketing to the corporate world revealed.

How to Sell Flash Drives to the Promotional Marketplace.
Please don’t take this as an insult to your sales skills or a reflection of my ability to be right 98% of the time. :) Its just that I have worked both sides of the business and with so many things to sell, it always took me while to learn how to sell something new. I remember when Pima cotton first came out, I described it as a fabrication designed by Puma and this was the wicking version. Doh!
So I figured a sharing a few basics bits of knowledge about selling any Flash Drive (especially our Flash Drive Direct drives) wouldn’t hurt.......
1) What is a flash drive: A flash drive is a memory device for storing data. This includes, files, word docs, pictures, video. ANYTHING that can go on a computer can go on a flash drive.
2) It has NO MOVING parts: Beauty eh? No moving parts means no break downs.....no blue screen of death. Your PC and Mac has a Hard Drive which spins around at about a jillion revolutions per minute and has an arm (just like a turntable arm) that retrieves the data. Compare the 2....1) never breaks down......The other) will break down...it just depends on when.
3) A flash drive has NAND Flash memory? Who cares! To sell it you don’t need to know this....what you need to know is that there are 2 chips in each drive.....a)the memory chip and b) controller chip. What is important to know is that the chips are THE BEST. The only reliable mass produced chips are made by SAMSUNG and HYNIX. All of our drives are made from these chips. If you buy a drive that is not made with Samsung or Hynix you are buying crap. Simple!
4) Tier 1, USB 2.0, recycled memory, Tier 1, Windows Vista and MAC ready....what does this mean and why you should care?Simply put....a reliable quality flash drive MUST have USB 2.0 (this is a faster speedier chip) Tier 1 (means it is professional grade) Windows Vista and Mac ready...(This means the drive will run with these operating systems.....if it doesn’t have this designation you may have problems)
Recycled/re-used/Tier 2 Memory: Personally I don’t know ( or want to know) any supplier who will tell you they sell this. Why? Because it is crap.....It will fail and no one will tell you....”Buy mine...its junk”. So why do you need to worry about this? Call it what you will.... recycled memory, whatever.... it is basically “factory seconds” that didn’t make the Quality Control standards. They are often sold on a “Gray Market”.
So how do you know? 1) Ask...2) The Price....Chip prices are commodity driven and prices go up and down....all reputable flash drive makers (such as us) price the wholesale according to the chip prices that day. If you are buying a 100 pieces of a 1GB for $10-12 dollars (as I write this) then it is likely you have Tier 1 USB 2.0 Samsung/Hynix chips......If someone says you can have it for $7 ......walk away, it is probably junk.
The emotional sell, the reasons why your clients should buy Flash Drives?
Now that we have all of the geeky techy junk out of the way...trust me I could have gone on and on...and on.......you don’t sell on technical issues do you...(its just a good thing to know)?.....you sell on emotion...you must present a good reason for someone to buy what you have to sell.........fortunately Flash Drives actually have some great legit reasons for corporations to buy them.....here are just a few.
1) They can be reused up to a million times: (yes someone actually counted it) this means that their logo will be seen forever! You can’t say that about Bang Sticks.
2) They are VERY USEFUL: They can hold 1000’s of files so they can be transferred to another computer, act as a back-up for safety, put their powerpoints and other presentations on it, put pictures, music files and just about anything else from your computer on it.
3) They are an EXCELLENT business tool: Not only can they do what’s descrived above, they can do a number of other things. PRELOADS, this is when files, presentations and more can be loaded onto the drive by the supplier. This way when the drives are given away/sold the recipient will have a fully loaded presentation. These are perfect for tradeshows, corporate identity building, fund raising, team building and more....MANUALS, BUSINESS REPORTS and more........forget about the expense, time and ecological bad karma when a corporation prints a 100 page report on business. Face facts:......With a business report, the summary gets skimmed over and then....into the circular file it goes. Flash drives help save the ecology.........when their initial use is no longer valid the user just erases the files and uses it to store their Captain and Tenille MP 3’s. Simple.
4) Bigger is Better: DO NOT SELL 64 MB, 128 MB or 256 MB Flash drives.....they are too small. They are not proportionately cheaper by a long shot and the people who recieve them have no use for them. They will chuck them in a drawer. If you want to give your client something they will be happy with and that you can be proud to sell......sell them a 1 GB or higher.....they are a great deal....big enough to hold lots of information and most importantly....people will use them.
That’s the basics......there are always lots of new twists and turns with this technology....new uses and new venues for sales....but I hope the above gives you a small bit of knowledge to help you feel more comfortable about selling flash drives.

Things to know when Selling a Flash Drive Direct Flash Drive...! We make it simple.1) Minimums: Minimum orders of any memory or style is 100 pieces.2) What do you get: With each order the price includes your logo (up to 3 colors), lanyard and gift box. We can add keyrings etc, just ask.3) Pricing: Each level of memory on the Dynamic line is the same price...it doesn’t matter what the thing looks like. So every 1 GB is the same wholesale price.....there are price breaks at 500 and 1000....anything over that amount call for a quote. The Premiere Line is slightly more expensive (about 10%) but even there every 1 GB is the same price as all other Premiere styles.4) Payment: Credit Card, MC or Visa unless terms or other arrangements have been made. 5) Delivery: On average is 14 days from APPROVAL OF ARTWORK...(ie SIGNOFF).6) Artwork: EPS or AI is acceptable saved for PC.7) Artwork Charges: We screenprint or laser engrave (we do not pad print, pad printing rubs off!) On orders under 500 there is a $150 (a) artwork charge. After 500. No Charge. This will pay for up to 3 colors. All at the same price. The only variations to this charge are on a ) THE RUBY...it is a full digital photo process and the set up can and will vary. Call for a quote. b) Our new 4 color screen process. This duplicates an exact printing process with bleeds, fades etc. This is $200 (a).8) Shipping from us to you: A 2 day air-freight from Seattle or Vancouver all the way across the country is about 30 cents per drive. Use tha as a good place to estimate from.9) Other charges: None.......simple!

Thanks