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On Friday I got a call from a charity which uses our software. They were having a fundraiser and were looking for sponsors.
We almost never do this stuff because 80% of our customers are charities/schools etc. and if we donated to all of them, we'd have to stop paying our employees. We are a tiny Mom and Pop operation. The owner is my boss, Keith and his wife, Hanna, is our accountant. Other than them, there are fewer than a dozen employees. Our world headquarters are located in a few rooms between a dentist and a real estate agent. "For-profit" does not equal "made of money."
Anyway, I referred them to Mark, the head of marketing and told them not to get thier hopes up too much after explaining the above (kindly, of course). Mark was being kind of snarky (Snarky Mark, heh) that day and, purely out of morbid curiousity decided to see what kind of donation they had in mind.
They wanted a minimum of $1000 in either cash or goods. They then outlined all the wonderful prestige and profits that being listed as a sponsor would get us.
To Mark's credit he didn't laugh outright. He simply asked them if they could let us know the serial number of the license they had. They gave it to him.
He then promised to get back to them. So he looked it up and found that, lo and behold, they hadn't bought anything in the last few years and had five different people using an individual license.
We don't like going after customers for casual piracy like this. It's much preferred for all concerned if we find a way to convince them to become legal. They win and we win.
So Mark is going to call them back and indicate that we would be interested in becomeing a sponsor. We'd be very happy to convert their individual license to a five-user license at no cost to them, a $2000 value. And, as a matter of fact, a $2000 donation brings up to the next sponsorship level which will shower us with even more prestige and profit (according to them, anyway).
I love win-win.
I'll update when I hear how they responded to Mark's proposal.
We almost never do this stuff because 80% of our customers are charities/schools etc. and if we donated to all of them, we'd have to stop paying our employees. We are a tiny Mom and Pop operation. The owner is my boss, Keith and his wife, Hanna, is our accountant. Other than them, there are fewer than a dozen employees. Our world headquarters are located in a few rooms between a dentist and a real estate agent. "For-profit" does not equal "made of money."
Anyway, I referred them to Mark, the head of marketing and told them not to get thier hopes up too much after explaining the above (kindly, of course). Mark was being kind of snarky (Snarky Mark, heh) that day and, purely out of morbid curiousity decided to see what kind of donation they had in mind.
They wanted a minimum of $1000 in either cash or goods. They then outlined all the wonderful prestige and profits that being listed as a sponsor would get us.
To Mark's credit he didn't laugh outright. He simply asked them if they could let us know the serial number of the license they had. They gave it to him.
He then promised to get back to them. So he looked it up and found that, lo and behold, they hadn't bought anything in the last few years and had five different people using an individual license.
We don't like going after customers for casual piracy like this. It's much preferred for all concerned if we find a way to convince them to become legal. They win and we win.
So Mark is going to call them back and indicate that we would be interested in becomeing a sponsor. We'd be very happy to convert their individual license to a five-user license at no cost to them, a $2000 value. And, as a matter of fact, a $2000 donation brings up to the next sponsorship level which will shower us with even more prestige and profit (according to them, anyway).
I love win-win.
I'll update when I hear how they responded to Mark's proposal.
Oh, that's priceless.
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