The Edge Marketing

I want to share with you a story. This story happens everywhere and everyday in America . If you grasp the simple lesson from it, you can make more money each month without working harder or spending more.

I just bought a printer. My trusted ink jet printer finally gave up and sputtered to an untimely demise. Poor thing.

You see, I needed a printer fast, so I went to a local, well-known large electronics store here in San Jose. It was afternoon time, so not too busy. I clearly remember walking by 3 or 4 groups of well dressed salesman standing together chatting.

Too Many Choices....

When I arrived at the printer aisle, I was surprised at the huge number of choices. Laser-jets, ink jets, with scanner, with fax, 5000 page cycle (whatever that means)…I like to think of myself as a high tech guy but I honestly didn’t know how to estimate value for these printers.

Now mind you, I had a figure in my head I was willing to spend. That number was at about a max of $350 dollars. I was willing to walk out the door that very day with a $350 printer...if I only was given a reason to buy a $350 printer and told why I needed to pay the higher price.

Anyone There?

I was there a long time checking out all the various brands of printers. During that time, not a single salesman asked me if I needed any help. Here I am…a guy, standing there, credit card in hand, obviously only concerned with printers, and not even a single salesman stopped to help me.

I like to figure things out anyways, so I decided to go ahead and check out all the printer features. Slowly but surely I noticed the $99 and $129 started to look pretty good. They were not quite as fast, but seemed to do almost everything the $350 dollar printers could do. But really, I don’t know because nobody was there to explain them to me.

Time To Give In

So I finally decided on a $129 dollar printer. I had to look for a salesman, and tell him I made my choice. The salesman got very excited, went to the back and came out with my new printer. He seemed giddy he was able to get a commission on the $129 printer.

They Could Have Gotten So Much More

But the joke was on the salesman and the electronics store.

You see, when I walked in, I was totally committed to paying a premium for a relatively expensive printer. If someone had been there to explain why the $350 printer was worth more than the $129 one, the salesman would have gotten a $35 dollar commission instead of a $12 dollar one, and the store would have made a much larger profit.

Give Your Customer A Reason Why

Think about it. If that salesman had taken 10 minutes to give me the information I needed and give me a reason why…then the store and the salesman would have been much better off and I would certainly not have been unhappy. In fact, I still don’t know if my decision was the best one I could have made, but I had to make a decision.

Now, I know this isn't the most earth shattering story...but sometimes simple everyday stories can contain powerful elements of truth.

Educate Your Customer

So the lesson to be learned is this: if you own a small business, take the time to train your staff to freely give information to customers. The key rule can be stated: Educate your customer. Do this yourself if you are the one selling. And don’t just say “Can I help you?”. Be more specific. Offer to explain why more expensive models cost more.

Explain that they are made in the US and raw materials come from New Zealand (or wherever) and that you’ve never seen a return come in on that item because of its durability.

Explain that the widget works faster, saving your customer 20 minutes a day.

Explain that the more expensive item has more features so the customer will never have to come back and upgrade.

Small Adjustments Can Give You Big Gains

If you incorporate this form of sales into your daily business operation, you’ll see your monthly income rise dramatically. Employee salaries are the same whether a sale is made or not. Training can be done in a day or two -- a very small investment.

So let's calculate. Lets say you sell an inexpensive version of a widget as well as a more expensive version. If you just sell one more of the more expensive version per day, and if the difference in price is $50, then over a month you could add $50x6x4 = $1200 extra per month to your bottom line.

Can you see how easy this can be to implement? The good news is it will hardly cost you much to implement this idea. Just some training and a little follow through.

Now can you imagine if you took that $1200 and wisely redirected it through direct mailings to your customer list? This is an example of pyramiding I’ll talk about in future articles. Stay tuned.

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