Learning Objectives:
1. Joint ventures, dead lists
2. Trade for advertising
3. Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
4. Other sellers to find your target customer
5. Find Problems in the Industry
Using other businesses to increase sales:
1. Joint ventures – One way to increase sales is to team up with other businesses that have the same target customer.
Example: Let’s say you own a tire store. Your target customer is pretty much men age 20 to 60 years old. You look for other businesses that have the same target customers. There is a local health spa in the area,”Gold’s Gym.” There is also a sporting goods store several blocks away.
You contact the owner or manager of Gold’s Gym and propose a joint promotion. He has about 900 males who are members of the club that he sends bill to every month. You propose that you will print 3×6” flyers offering a special discount of $200 off certain brands of tires for Gold’s Gym members.
The manager will put the flyers into the monthly bills mailed to the 900 members. You agree to pay the Gym $50 for every set of tires you sell from the flyers. It’s a win-win promotion. You get to sell to a list of customers you did not have access to.
You will make a considerable amount of sales.
The manager of Golds Gym only has to put the flyers into the bills and mail them. He gets $50 per set of tires sold for doing nothing and the customers get a great deal on a set of tires. You can do this tactic with many different businesses extending your customer reach for almost no cost.
2. Other businesses’ customer dead or inactive lists:
Many businesses have lists of prospects they had contacted to sell their products, but the prospects did not buy. The business usually tries several times to sell to that prospect list and may sell a few more. That list of prospects that did not buy is called a dead list. The business just keeps the names in the data base but has no use for them. If you have the same target customer as the business with the dead list, you can ask the business to let you market to the dead list. You will give them $100 for each person on the dead list that you sell.
Example – You are the owner of a holistic college that teaches different kinds of natural healing, spiritual development, and use of herbs to cure different ailments. Your customers are primarily females age 20-45 years old. You contact the local massage therapy college and ask to market to their dead list. You will give them $100 for each person you sign up. The Massage therapy college gets money from a list that was dead, and you get a list of the same target customer to market to. Again, a win –win for both of you.
3. Trade your services for advertising:
If you have a business that provides products or services that other businesses could use, contact a local advertising company. Radio stations do a lot of promotions and give away a lot of merchandise on air. Contact a manager of a radio station. Offer to trade your services for radio spots. Your services could be carpet cleaning, furniture, electronics, etc. Trade your product/service full retail price for the retail price of radio spots. You can do this with some newspapers, TV stations and other media.
4. Create a Unique Selling Position to make your business different from the competition:
You might promote your business to be different from the competition as faster service, lower prices, wider selection, better distribution, or best guarantee and so on. The concept can be the most powerful tactic you can do and it is free. Make your business different.
5. What do people hate in the industry?
In the medical industry people hate to wait. Doctors have a bad reputation of double booking and making patents wait too long. I have walked out of a doctor’s office before when I had to wait 45 minutes. Printers are often late delivering a printing order, it is almost a given.
Remodelers are known for taking much longer than originally promised to complete a remodeling job. Customers buying a car hate the back and forth the sales person does with the sales manager, and the customers feel like the sales people are lying to them to make the sale, you can’t believe them.
What do people hate in your industry? Take that problem and solve it. People hate to take off work to get things done like buy new tires, and get mechanic work done, go to the chiropractor or dentist. How about not having prices clearly marked on merchandise at the grocery or department store?
6. Offer what the competition can’t.
Example: www.familyvaluesvideos.com free lifetime video replacement guarantee.
Extend warrantee: Grandfather clock, the manufacturer offered a one year warrantee. The grandfather clock offered a three year warrantee because he knew there was very little chance of things going wrong.
No haggle car buying. The sales manager tell the sales person at the beginning how much he can discount the car to the customer. Let him make the decision.
Multiply your ability to contact prospects:
Make arrangements with other service businesses that sell to your same target customer. If you are an electrician, make agreements with businesses like plumbers, lawn care, gutter replacement to share contacts. Have them leave your brochure with every customer they do work for. Give them a commission for each job you get.
Summary:
Very few, if any teachers of marketing will ever teach these subjects. That’s because the only way you can learn them is by experience. These five secrets of marketing if applied, will increase sales substantially. Think about how you can use joint ventures, dead lists of other businesses, trading for advertising, and using other businesses to find new business. Look around to see what customers hate about your industry. What can you offer your customers that the competition cannot? Implement some of these tactics and it will increase sales.
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