Small Business Sales Tip – There Is No Competition!

I was having a conversation with one of my clients the other day that I need to tell you about.

She owns a retail store and that’s what I normally coach her about, however she has another business that she has started asking me questions about and this is the part I am exploding to tell you.

I am not going to tell you what she does, it’s a great niche and I know how people love to copy what other’s are doing. The niche does have a lot of competitors also. Now here is the interesting part. The product she sells is sold by her competition for around $400.00.

She sells the same thing for $800.00 and she sells a lot of them!

I have told my kids and my clients for years you have no competition and here is another case that proves my point.

Taking my advice she has asked her customers, “what was it that made you decide to buy from me?”

Their answer is always the same. They tell here that they have contacted her competitors by phone and by email and they never call back. My client always calls back or responds to emails almost instantly. She will take the time to answer any and all questions that her prospects may have. She will keep helping them as long as they ask.

Is it worth it?

You tell me, she’s making twice as much as her competition if they do make a sale. She closes just about every prospect that contacts her.

There really are four principles here.

1. You don’t have any competition!
2. Give outstanding service to everyone!
3. People are looking for someone to give them advice and information before they make a purchase!
4. You don’t have to be the low priced leader to sell something if you can add value!

Hopefully this gives you something to think about and I think it eliminates an excuses I hear all of the time.

“There’s too much competition” That’s just B.S.! So you can stop using that one.

You can get more sales and marketing tips for free from www.GSSAM.com

Now go sell something,
Blase

Small Business – How’s Your Service?

I tear out interesting articles that apply to what I do or
what one of my clients may do and save them.

I was going through the file the other day and this article
just happened to hit me at the right time.

The article was in the Feb. 04 issue of Fast Company. It
was about two sisters; Cindy Lewis and Marian Brzykey that
were so dissatisfied with customer service that they decide
to do an informal survey of customer service.

They shopped at almost 500 retailers and spent $5,000 to
get their results. Here is what the found.

Only 3% of their store visits left them very satisfied!
97% of their store visits failed on the basics. You know
those same basic things you expect when you go shopping.

I was at my local grocery store the other day I walked up
to the casher and she didn’t even acknowledge that I was
there. She was carrying on a conversation with the girl at
the customer service counter, they were yelling back and
forth.

Then she rang up my stuff, still talking to the other girl,
she had the total on her cash register, but did tell me what
I owed her she was to busy talking. I could see the total
so I took a fifty out of my wallet and set it on the counter.
Still nothing! So I picked it up and waved in front of her
face while she kept talking. Finally she took it gave me my
change and then she said it, “have a nice day”. I kid you
not this really happened!

I’ll bet you and I could share stories all day about lousy
service. So here is the big question. What are you doing to
train your employees in even the basics of how a customer
should be treated?

Don’t assume that the basics are understood, they are not
anymore, if you doubt that just go for a drive and watch
how people drive and the ensuing road rage.

If your employees don’t treat customers they way they deserve
to be treated you will not get the customer back again.

There are six places to buy groceries within a 2-mile radius
of my home I do have choices.

To be honest with you I think this is one of the harder issues
you face as an employer.

Now go sell something,
Blase

P.S. Would you do me a favor? If you know a
business owner would you tell him/her about
this blog? Thanks again.

Small Business Marketing – Sanjaya Malakar

Who is Sanjaya Malakar?

If you don’t know the answer to that question you
must be living under a rock, or you are working way
to hard in your business.

If  the later is the case you really need to read this.

Sanjaya Malakar was a contestant on American Idol.

If you Google his name you will get over 1,710,000
pages! This is a kid nobody even knew a few short months
ago.

I say “was” because he finally got voted off this week!

This guy has drawn more attention to this show than
anybody else in history. Why you ask? Simple…

He applied a basic marketing principle that is very
seldom used these days.

I don’t know Sanjaya, so I don’t know if this was
intentional, contrived by the producers, or if he was
just lucky. But either way what he did worked and it
worked big time.

Ok already, what did he do?

He was different! Read that again. He was different!

He couldn’t sing for crap and American Idol is a singing
competition. Yet he managed to be one of the top 7 contestants.

He had different hair, he had different clothes, he had a
different personality, he has a sexy look, which all of the
young teens loved. And to top it off because he was so bad
he was an underdog, which made him popular.

All of this generated BUZZ! For Sanjaya Malakar and the show.

Can you say “jack pot”?

So what can you learn from this? BE DIFFERENT.

I think I said that before, I just wanted to be clear.

If you talk about the same things your competitors talk
about, you’re not different.

If your ads look like your competitors, you’re not different.

If your business card looks like your competition, you’re
not different.

Are you starting to see a pattern here?

For more information on how to market your business you
can get 90 minutes of free audio at,
www.GSSAM.com/members

Now go sell something,
Blase

Small Business Marketing – The Experiance

A recent experience!

My wife’s employer just had an employee appreciation
dinner for 80 people here is how it went.

The dinner was at 7:30 PM, we arrived at 7:15 PM,
and the front and back parking lots were full. Cars
where parked down the street for two blocks, keep in
mind I live in MN, it gets cold this time of year
and there was snow on the ground.

Because of the parking problem I wasted five minutes
looking for a spot, then I decided to drop my wife
off at the door and go park in a funeral home parking
lot that was almost three blocks away. Of course now
I had to walk back to the restaurant, and when the
dinner was over I had to walk back and get my car,
burr!

I decided as I was walking to the restaurant that I
wasn’t going to let this ruin my evening. Now I walk
into the restaurant and the front entrance is jammed
with people. I found my wife and squeezed through the
masses to get to the hostess, we asked her where our
party was meeting? She gave us a blank stare like she
had no idea what we talking about. She then said just
a minute and left, she came back did something else
then looked at us and said follow me.

We were escorted through two or three dinning rooms
and lots of people until we got to the end of the
restaurant, she walked us into a room filled with
empty tables and two people setting the tables. At
the other side of the room there was a group of
about ten people sitting around a table that were
not in our party. The hostess told us she thought
this was where we were suppose to be and left.

So I asked one of the wait staff if this was the
party for the XXX? He didn’t know!

So I decided to sit down, then a guy with a
microphone on his head and an earplug in his ear
came over and told us that we were in the right
room, but they didn’t want to seat us until the
other group had left and he suggested we go to
the bar.

He told me that they had paid their bill
20 minutes ago and were just visiting. I told him
that he had us booked for 7:30 PM it’s now 7:40 PM
and your front entrance is jammed with people. I
also told him that if he seated our group the other
party would leave on their own.

He must of thought that was a good idea because
all of sudden our room filled up and they did leave.

I could go on with this saga, but it would be pages
of reading so here are the highlights.

8:10 PM before we saw a server to take a beverage
order.

Only three servers for 80 people.

Servers did not use trays to serve so they carried
out two beverages at a time.

Food was served family style and we left hungry.

Room was packed so tight you couldn’t move around
and the servers couldn’t get through.

When desert trays were passed every table had something
different so you wanted what someone else had.

Separating our room from another dinning room was a
curtain, employees were sitting in the other room
talking to each other and on their cell phones, and
their language was not appropriate.

Coffee was served after the desert and our server
carried it out two cups at a time.

I am not even going to begin with how I would change
this experience, but the marketing opportunities here
are huge! If you are a competitor!

Here is the bad news, I was really looking forward to
eating here, and based on this experience I will never
go back nor would I recommend it.

Now I realize that this was a party of eighty people
so I shouldn’t be so quick to judge, however if you
own or manage a restaurant and you can’t handle eighty
people DON’T BOOK THE PARTY! What you made here will
be lost many times over when eighty people tell eight
hundred people about their bad experience.

Marketing is not just about getting prospects in the
door it’s the whole experience all the way through
the follow up long after the sale.

What’s your customers experience?

For more blow your socks off sales and marketing
help go to www.GSSAM.com.

Take care,
Blase