Saturday, March 27, 2010

#1 Sales Step for customer and revenue growth

Hey gang,

I have been in the business to business industry market for a long time. I have seen companies try everything they can to generate revenue, gain more customers, and grow their business.

But the best sales step around started many years ago. This step is not hard. It's not tough. You do not have to change your sales process. Add more processes, people, or territories. You do not have to replace what you are doing now. Just enhance it.

How? It's simple. Give them what they want for less. I know you've heard all this before. But in today's economy, it works even better. Here is what I mean.

I remember working for a company that finally decided to give in and open source their software technology and product. They were losing market share and dominance they once had and enjoyed. But they refused to give in and make their product somewhat for free. As the company continued to lose market positioning and revenue, they finally decided they wanted to make their product #1 again and joined the open source community. Now Java is being used by more developers and companies in their products and this has created market share increase and revenue for the founding company. Maybe a little too late but still, some is better than none.

Remember the saying "a baker's dozen"? This all started when a baker added 1 more little cake, or donut, to the normal dozen he sold. This created more customers, and the one (1) he always gave away presented more people buying the 12 he sold. You can do the math. He dominated the neighborhood with his offerings. And whenever someone needed a dozen, they walked right passed the competitors to buy his. Why? Were they better? Who knows. The customer was able to get more for their money than was being offered by others. Resulting in more money to the baker.

So if you have a product, NO you do not have to give it away. Or do a BOGO, buy one get one free. No. Just provide free shipping. Maybe free support for a month. Something for free that will enhance your product sales and increase your customer base. Once you please one customer, word of mouth (marketing) steps in and you just got yourself more buyers without paying for marketing. See, it works both ways.

If you do service and maintenance as your business, give a month for free to existing customers. This not only will please the customer, but will get your engineers to keep the customer's product in good working order, adding value to your product line, which is your service and support offerings. When maintenance contracts are due to be renewed, your competitors may not have had the opportunity to step into the customer's environment and take your business away.

Make it easy to do business with you! If you sell products, make it easy for them to buy, install, implement, and learn how to use it. If that is a challenge, add 1 month worth of installation and training to the purchase for free. Not only do you take away the fear of the purchaser deciding to buy your product, your engineers get the opportunity to show off the workings and functions of the product because it is installed at top performance and it is "tweeked" to run like it is suppose to. Not really that possible if the buyer has to do all of the installation and tuning themselves, even if you do have the best installation training steps provided. I know myself, if I can buy something and it comes with free installation and tuning, that makes it more valuable to me to select that product over others.

But it is up to you. If you care not to give away anything, look at your competitors and see why they may have beat you over a potential customer. Did they give something for free you did not? Did they provide something you didn't but could?

Remember, when this economy begins to repair itself, and it will, more businesses will start spending money again, and they will remember the companies that helped them by providing a little something for nothing to what they were already purchasing. Guess who they will call on to reorder and may even throw in a little something extra on their part as a thank you gift? Who knows, it could be your company getting revenue you expected you would not get because you gave some of it away for free.

Want more tips, go to my websites and grab my products. And shipping is free. Don't see something you need, let me know and I'll do my best to get it to you. May even discount it as a thank you.

What do you think? Leave me a comment and let me know. Thanks. Happy marketing.