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In a few short weeks 2014 will end and a brand new year will begin for all of us.
So in this column I invite you to answer a simple question:
What is your 'Unfair Marketing Advantage Strategy' going to be for 2015?
In other words, what will you change (or do differently) so you get much better business results in 2015 with a lot less effort?
Regardless of what type of business you are in, you actually have a surprising amount of choice about how you sell your products and services.
You can choose which customers you will sell to.
You can choose how you are you going to position yourself to your customers.
You can choose how you will make sales.
You can choose how you are going to stay in touch with customers (before, during and after a sale.)
You can choose how you will add value to customers.
You can choose how you will explain the benefits of what you do to your customers.
You can choose the strategies you will use to attract new customers.
You can choose how you make a sales presentation.
And so on.
Changing just one of these things can be how you create an 'Unfair Marketing Advantage' in your business.
And doing this can also give your sales and profits a huge boost.
Let's take a quick look at two ways that you can create an 'Unfair Marketing Advantage' in your own business in 2015.
Unfair Marketing Advantage Strategy 1:
You can choose which customers you will sell your products and services to
Choosing who you will sell to can be as simple as asking yourself the following question: 'Who are my best customers and what do they have in common?'
Example:
A large franchise company began looking at the characteristics of their most successful franchisees, and discovered (to their surprise), that a large number of them had short haircuts. Now that was pretty unusual; so they decided to dig a little bit deeper. Further research revealed that the majority of these franchises (with short haircuts) came from an armed services background like the air force or army.
The reason these franchisees were so successful was because they were used to following orders from their armed services background.
So they tended to do everything they were told to do in their franchise manual and got excellent results when they did this.
The franchise company began to focus a lot more effort on getting people from the armed services into their franchise business and their sales went through the roof.
Unfair Advantage Marketing Strategy 2:
You can choose the strategies you will use to attract new customers
There are all sorts of things you can do to attract new customers that many of your competitors are not using.
A fun competition for a hardware store:
A hardware shop increased the number of people coming into their store with a creative strategy.
They put up a big sign in their window that said:
We guarantee that if you come into our store one of our people will professionally greet and welcome you within 20 seconds. If they don't we will give you $50.00 of hardware of your choice completely free...
People would walk down the street and read this sign. They would then mentally say to themselves 'That sounds interesting; I think I will check it out.' So they would walk inside the hardware store. The store had a bell and buzzer on their door that sounded as soon as you went in.
One of their salespeople would excuse themselves if they were dealing with a customer by saying something like "Can you just excuse me for 10 seconds" and then walk over to the person and welcome them to the store.
'Thank you for coming in today, I'm just with someone else so please free to look around. I'll be with you in a moment.'
This way the customer was always greeted professionally within 20 seconds of walking in to the shop.
Now once the people were in the shop guess what many did?
That's right they said to themselves, 'Well now that I'm here what can I buy that I might need?' Sales increased dramatically.
The good news is there are a lot of simple things you can do right now to create an 'Unfair Marketing Advantage' in your business for 2015. Take some time over the next month or so and think about what some of these things could be for your business.
Special Bonus for Herald Readers:
I have a fun guide called 'Million Dollar Thinking-how to use your idea goldmine to double your sales in the next 12 months'. This guide explains how to use a simple creative thinking system to come up with great ideas to double your sales.
One client used this creative thinking system to earn a $71,000 commission in less than 10 minutes. Another client used this creative thinking system to create $54,000 of brand new sales in less than 7 days.
Just email me using the email links in this column and I'll send you a free copy of 'Million Dollar Thinking' with my compliments. I'm sure you will it helpful.
"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing."
Walt Disney
Action Exercise:
What could be your 'Unfair Marketing Advantage' strategy for 2015?
Chris and Lee-Anne Minturn talk to Tom Raynel about the Jewellers Collective.