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[CQ-Contest] CW Speed & Marketing

Subject: [CQ-Contest] CW Speed & Marketing
From: tree@kkn.net (Tree N6TR)
Date: Wed Jan 2 13:16:33 2002

Gerry, W1VE/VE1RM, wrote:

> Always remember you are marketing yourself. Have you ever noticed that
> many of the perennial top 10 finishers in contesting work in marketing
> in their professional lives?  

While I am not sure about the connection to their professional lives, I 
fully agree with the concept of marketing yourself during a contest.

This concept makes an obvious connection on phone - where your "image"
is more complicated and you have a wider audience.  Often, when you 
run out of other contest participants to work, you need to appeal to the
"average" ham for QSOs.  Simply going: "CQ CONTEST AD7KS" over and over
isn't going to hack it.  

On CW - marketing is a lot more difficult.  Much less of your personality
comes through (unless you are using a handkey or bug) and the audience is
much less diverse.  CW Speed is probably the only thing you can have
significant control over.  

It is really hard to send: "CQ silly contest - anyone can give me a point,
all I need is a QSO number, how much power you are running, when you were
first licensed and your ARRL section" on CW.

It is pretty easy to see that you should be sending fast when trying to
work other contesters, and sending slower when trying to work other 
people.  Probably the most important thing is to vary your approach,
as you will need to work both in order to win.

At any rate - the idea of keeping your "customer" in mind - and doing
your best to attract them to work you goes a long way towards understanding
one concept that I feel is important to make it at the top.  

My image is always of someone building a Heatkit (OK - Elecraft in this day
and age) on the workbench.  They tuned you in because you are loud.  Your 
job is to convince them to press the PTT switch and talk into their microphone.

It should also be noted that having poor audio is the same as eating a bunch
of garlic.  I am always amazed at people who are calling CQ CONTEST a mile 
a minute with really hard to listen to audio.  They simply aren't going to
attract the non-contester.  

73 Tree N6TR
tree@kkn.net


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