Getting more income with less sales

Our sales decreased a little during the pandemic, but why? I believe it was also part of His plan.

We had a sales drop of 35-31.5%. A few months later, our government provided financial support to companies with employees. One of the requirements was a minimum of 30% decline in sales. We received even more money without additional work.

Offering what we have to meet what’s needed

With the Ukrainian war, life in Poland seemed to stop. Everyone was focused on Ukraine and people didn’t need books.

I asked God, “What could we do as a bookstore?” thinking we had nothing to offer.

The answer was very clear. We have five apartments above our bookstore in our building. I decided to offer two of them for free to Ukrainian mothers with children. Within two days, we had three families in our building.

Three days after we gave away the rooms, the Polish government decided to pay for each person accommodated in Polish homes—and we earned more money than during the holiday seasons in Poland.

Making more money by giving away books

Then we decided to give away 5,000 books in Ukrainian with gospel content. We contacted an organization in the USA to get the rights to publish and distribute them for free. The organization called us back saying, “We will cover all the costs, but please print 50,000 copies.”

So we did, and we distributed the books at the border and in many other places where Ukrainian people lived. In the end, we gave away 240,000 books for adults and for children—and our income was higher than before, without selling the books! It was really a miracle.

Listening and obeying God: the best marketing manager

Why am I sharing this? After 15 years, I have not found a better marketing strategy than listening to God’s voice. This is the first success factor: our relationship with God and prayer. I think that God is the best marketing manager and He knows more than anyone. We have tried many marketing strategies, but they often don’t work for our company.

My question for you is, “What do you want from a marketing strategy?” This is the question. Money or lasting impact? If the answer is lasting impact, we need to take the strategy directly from heaven.

Aiming to be the best boss in the world

When I first started dreaming about my future business, I imagined being the best boss in the world. I prepared for it by attending every Global Leadership Summit.

When I hired my first employee (unfortunately it was my mom—or fortunately, because she forgave all my early mistakes as a leader), I realized that people are not machines. They have different personalities, personal problems and team dynamics.

After a few years, I wanted to quit working with people. I was exhausted and tired.

I asked God, “What should I do with them?” And God told me, “You know what, you need to work on yourself.”

This began to change me as a boss. God showed me a new structure for our company and what I needed to give to all my workers. From that moment, I have had a really great team, and now this journey is a pleasure, not a dark wall as it was earlier.

Team time in prayer, reading and celebrating

Why am I talking about the team when discussing marketing? Because I believe that the second main factor in marketing is the company culture.

Every day, as a team, we pray together. We have about 20 minutes together and we are praying, sharing our testimonies or reading books or devotionals.

We also celebrate important days. Birthdays, everything that is important for our people, we celebrate. (Even if you buy a new car, we celebrate it. Then you need to bring some cake.)

Creating company rules together

We also create company rules together. It’s a mistake to create rules for a company without people, so I decided to do it together with my workers. We have a list of rules in our company, and at the beginning of the month, we read the rules for ourselves just to know what is important for us. We are also together during the sad moment of someone’s life, and we care about each other and about our customers. And we eat really so much. We love food.

The most important thing, the biggest joy

My wife always says people are more important than projects. After a few years, people will remember how you treated them, not the project itself.

And here is our testimony that the project is not the most important thing—two of our employees decided to receive Jesus as their Savior, and it happened during our work. That was really an amazing moment. Even if all these years were just for them, it was worth it. It was, I think, the most important thing in our company. The biggest joy was in that moment.

Strong foundations lead to building relationships

If our lives are in a good condition with God, and we are building a healthy company culture in our company, this creates a strong foundation to go further and to build relationships with suppliers and customers.

This is the next success factor: relationships with deliverers and customers.

I had a big problem with jealousy. When I saw that my colleague published something that I wanted to publish, it made me sad and jealous. I needed to change my mindset. I wanted to see it from heaven’s perspective. I came to see that God cares for all market participants. Now I’m grateful that all of us have really good projects.

At the beginning of our business, we decided that we wanted to pay all invoices on time. It is a sign of respect, but also reflects a sincere attitude. This has opened the door to trusting relationships.

The Christian market as God’s one big project

There have been a few times when a publishing house decided to close its business, and we proposed working with them to continue distributing their books because we wanted to have these books on the Polish market. They agreed because they trusted us. Now we are distributing books for a few publishing houses.

If you see the Christian market as one big project of God, you will be aware when your competitor has a problem. You will help them, even if it means investing in their project. It works really well when we see each other and we care about even about our “competitor.”

We are cooperating with organizations, including one from Holland that is giving us books for free in Polish. We are giving books for free to each other.

We buy from those we trust

Customers know you through your employees and your suppliers. When they hear that your company is trustworthy, they will buy from you. Even if you don’t have the cheapest product, they will buy from you because they know you.

We have many rules about how to treat our customers. For us, returns are really important. This is a very important aspect of customer relationships. I always say the measure of a company’s quality is how it resolves problems.

One of the most important things we do is to make things in a really good condition. Then we can gain many, many new customers and they are with us a long time.

“Wherever you are, customers are there”

How we talk to people is really crucial. One of our rules is to apologize for the company’s mistake. We also never complain about another team member in front of customers. This is really important for us.

Here’s a funny story about how our customers perceive our company culture and the fragrance of heaven. In 2019, we moved to our new building and the two companies that were in our previous neighborhood decided to rent spaces near our new building.

I met them and asked why they did it, and their answer was, “We know one thing: wherever you are, customers are there too.” Then we realized that we are not a normal company—we have something more, we have a good purpose for what we are doing.

Reaching new audiences through beautiful things

From the beginning of our company, we started producing various accessories like magnets, cards and mirrors, which became effective marketing tools for us. We aimed to create products that would open the Catholic market.

We also decided to attend the Catholic book fair. At first, we received many negative comments. After a few years, people began to recognize us as a Christian publishing house, even in the Catholic market. Now we have many good connections with Catholic bookstores, monasteries, and other institutions. They are also buying books, especially novels, and other titles.

What do the additional products do? They help us reach new audiences, build relationships, expand our influence in the market—and spread the gospel. We believe that God’s Word is still alive, and when they are reading on the products something from the Bible, it can change their lives. And, of course, people love beautiful things.

So we offer products for everyone, not just for our evangelical market—and make money for publishing important books. This is really important for us because sometimes when we publish books, they’re not popular. We can put the money from our sales of additional products towards these projects because we want to, for example, influence leaders through books.

Coming back for more

We offer gift vouchers that people can buy and give as gifts. Online, they can buy a code and give that as a gift. We also offer special prices such as a discount cart—the more they buy, the bigger the discount for the next purchase. And when the cart is full, some products are free.

We reward each purchase. As they buy, people collect points on our website. In our bookstore we have a special card where buyers receive a stamp for every purchase. We have a coffee place where they can sit and drink coffee, and meet together. Our bookstore is still is growing, but the building is not growing. The place is now too small for us.

Collaborations and online content about Christian living

We create a lot of additional content about Christian living. Sometimes we show our products in these videos and sometimes we don’t. For us, it’s important that we can share about our faith. Sometimes we talk about what can be found in our books, but the most important thing is that we can influence people, to give them something from our life and our thoughts.

Collaborations with organizations often help us to decide which titles to produce, and allow us to organize events or training sessions where we can present or use these titles. Then when we produce books, we know that someone will buy it.

In today’s world, we need to work with people who have social media channels, and we have agreements with many influencers who promote our products. We pay them for each purchase made through their channels.

Sharing publishing life through social media

We want what we sell not only to be a product, but something that changes lives. I am willing to do interviews—not necessarily about our company, but since my life is so connected to Szaron, wherever I go and share what God is doing in my life, people also learn about Szaron.

Our content on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok is not just about products. Half of our content is about our company lifestyle. People want to see what we are doing during our breaks, how we package the packages, the life in our company.

Building relationships the old-school way

We attend major events in our country with a bookstore, preparing large, beautiful spaces which allow our customers to see that we offer a wide range of products. For instance we were at a conference in Warsaw for 3,000 people (in Poland, a conference for 3,000 people is really big). It also gives us the opportunity to talk and build relationships.

We also produce separate catalogs for books, accessories and booklets. Each month, we have different booklets that we include with each order.

At Christmas, we give Christmas gifts to our customers. And for our best 100 customers, we prepared a gift is such as a book, chocolate, tea and bookmarks. We also send our distributors and regular retail customers a gift—a special book about our company and our testimonies. We see that people really love to read stories about our company and our team.

This year is our 15-year anniversary—maybe we will write another one! We hear really good testimonies about our gift books. People call us saying that they didn’t order the book, but they want to pay for it because it’s really important to them, and we explain it’s for free as a gift.

God owns our Christian publishing house

God’s values connect with good marketing from heaven. Obedience produces miracles and fruits, and honesty produces new projects. This is our motto. God is the owner of Szaron. This is the most important thing I have in my head: it’s impossible to do it without Him as an owner.

Pray, be with God, and listen to what He has for your company. If you have a Christian publishing house or a bookstore, it’s because of God and it’s needed in this time, in this place—and you are the person who is responsible for it.