PracticingAcceptance
Senior Member
- Messages
- 1,861
Hello all! I used to be an entrepreneur and asked for free stuff from companies for goodie bags for my clients. It occurred to me that I could ask for free stuff for myself and for the others on my symptom management course at hospital.
I sent out an email last night to 5-6 health food product companies, and two have them have already come back to me today, saying they've put 20 samples in the post - enough for my whole course. What a success!
If you have meet ups with other people with ME/CFS, you could ask for free samples too. All you need to do is ask.
Here's the email I sent. You can adapt it to make it specific for you. The key thing is to be relevant to them.
It includes:
- my personal sob story (replace with your own, and keep it short)
- specific event I'm asking for samples for, with the date
- why people with ME/CFS are excellent potential customers - framing this as an opportunity for them
I read the 'values' section on each of the websites of the food products, and included the words they used, and mentioned the issues they care about. For a product geared towards losing weight, I said that many of us are afraid of putting on weight because we move less now.
______________________
Hello
I have an incurable disease called ME/CFS. The symptoms include severe fatigue and concentration problems. [sob story] Up until a year ago I was a successful entrepreneur running a small annual design festival. Now, I am lucky if I am able to walk enough to leave the house. A one hour conversation with a friend often means that I need to rest in bed for the rest of the day. I have had to quit work and leave it to my team to try and make the festival happen without me.
I am on a symptom management course at a hospital and our last session for a while is coming up, on 7th June. We have all had to make a lot of lifestyle changes, both proactively and through inability to physically continue doing what we were doing when we were well.
It would be great to proactively connect with products that can help us manage our symptoms. We experiment with our eating to see if it makes a difference to our symptoms. Some of us try eating small frequent amounts. We try to eat less sugar, and we try to find healthy alternative snacks.
I love [your product], and I think my fellow ME/CFS sufferers would like them too.
Would you like to send us some samples? We're at a point where we're very open to trying new things in order to attempt to get better. I know this might seem like a depressing market for you - people with incurable diseases! - but we are very loyal to the products that work for us, because we're so afraid of getting more unwell.
Please let me know if you'd like to send us samples. My home address is [insert address here]. I will distribute any samples you can send at the next meeting on the 7th June. There are about 20 of us.
I won't tell you how long it took me to write and send this email. I apologise in advance for any delays in responding to you.
Best
Lior
______________________
Enjoy and let me know if you have any success!
I sent out an email last night to 5-6 health food product companies, and two have them have already come back to me today, saying they've put 20 samples in the post - enough for my whole course. What a success!
If you have meet ups with other people with ME/CFS, you could ask for free samples too. All you need to do is ask.
Here's the email I sent. You can adapt it to make it specific for you. The key thing is to be relevant to them.
It includes:
- my personal sob story (replace with your own, and keep it short)
- specific event I'm asking for samples for, with the date
- why people with ME/CFS are excellent potential customers - framing this as an opportunity for them
I read the 'values' section on each of the websites of the food products, and included the words they used, and mentioned the issues they care about. For a product geared towards losing weight, I said that many of us are afraid of putting on weight because we move less now.
______________________
Hello
I have an incurable disease called ME/CFS. The symptoms include severe fatigue and concentration problems. [sob story] Up until a year ago I was a successful entrepreneur running a small annual design festival. Now, I am lucky if I am able to walk enough to leave the house. A one hour conversation with a friend often means that I need to rest in bed for the rest of the day. I have had to quit work and leave it to my team to try and make the festival happen without me.
I am on a symptom management course at a hospital and our last session for a while is coming up, on 7th June. We have all had to make a lot of lifestyle changes, both proactively and through inability to physically continue doing what we were doing when we were well.
It would be great to proactively connect with products that can help us manage our symptoms. We experiment with our eating to see if it makes a difference to our symptoms. Some of us try eating small frequent amounts. We try to eat less sugar, and we try to find healthy alternative snacks.
I love [your product], and I think my fellow ME/CFS sufferers would like them too.
Would you like to send us some samples? We're at a point where we're very open to trying new things in order to attempt to get better. I know this might seem like a depressing market for you - people with incurable diseases! - but we are very loyal to the products that work for us, because we're so afraid of getting more unwell.
Please let me know if you'd like to send us samples. My home address is [insert address here]. I will distribute any samples you can send at the next meeting on the 7th June. There are about 20 of us.
I won't tell you how long it took me to write and send this email. I apologise in advance for any delays in responding to you.
Best
Lior
______________________
Enjoy and let me know if you have any success!