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Are You Selling Pennies, Dollars or Value?

Guest post by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Article Overview: What are you selling? If you answered products or services, that may be the incorrect answer in today's 21st century or even 20th century. To increase sales you may just need to change the answer to that question.

Are You Selling Pennies, Dollars or Value?

Value is very difficult to buy and far easier to sell. For what one person values as important another discards. The reason I bring this up is because I saw a billboard that announced having the most penny slots at one of the local casinos.

Casinos have gone from a value business model to a transactional business model. This change has dramatically affected their ability to increase sales because now they have to literally invest more in salaries, facilities expenditure outlays to realize the same amount to less in revenue.

Other businesses have taken the opposite route to increase sales. Wal-Mart with its low price has expanded into grocery and upgrading some of its less expensive lines. J.C. Penny is another business that has figuratively taken the value over penny approach. Seeing the dissatisfied customers from Macy's, this retail giant has upgraded its clothing lines, expanded its fragrances and continues to add value through its customer loyalty program.

Imagine for a moment a clock and at the top is where you have the most value. As companies engaged in transactional business, the hand moves counter clockwise away from the 12 number and decreases the value being offered. For the companies that are leaving the transactional business model, they are moving clockwise closer to the stroke of noon because they are increasing their value.

The leads to the question how do you sell value and not become a transactional business if you want to increase sales? To answer that question means that you must know the results that you have delivered for your customers and potentially even their customers. For example, if your customer communication process keeps your clients updated on a daily basis then those communiqués can be forwarded down the value chain stream so that everyone benefits from a potential reduction in the various cycle times. Not only do you save your dollars for your first-degree clients, but for their clients as well.

When you sell value, you can command far more dollars and leave the pennies for others to fight over. And remember value is both a result (what you have delivered to existing clients) and a perception (what your client believes). How you learn to leverage these two elements within value will allow you to achieve your goal to increase sales.

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Article Tags: billboard, business model, chain stream, clothing lines, communication process, customer communication, customer loyalty program, daily basis, dissatisfied customers, first degree, fragrances, j c penny, macy, outlays, penny slots, retail giant, salaries, stroke, value chain, wal mart



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$1,000,000 - Hi Evan, Are you talking about US Dollars? If so, that would be approx £500,000 in the UK. The Canadian Dollars differs also from the Australian Dollar. In any case, one needs to solve problems to help people to get money. The more solutions are given to people's needs to solve their problems, the closer one gets. Finally, are we talking about 'Income' or can we talk about 'Asset'? Kindest Regards Beat "Unlock People's Potentials!"
Re: Kevin's Case Study #10 - When to become an entrepreneur? - When the bug bite you. A lot of successful entrepreneurs started in their teens or at school. Selling sweets to fellow students or lemonade to firends in the neighbourhood.
Re: This is Marketing Warfare! - Hey GT, I guess this was from a while back, and it'll test your memory a bit but could you possibly elaborate on Unique Selling Proposition? Can you give us some examples of good USPs?
Re: Where do you buy cheap airplane tickets? - Hi Evan, I have bought from Cheapflights.com, I guess and had good experiences. ASDA is an UK superstorr and part of Walmart. Recently I discovered that I can get good rates. Also, if I have a desire to fly from A to B in the US, I can also order a ticket. At least, it shows all the details of a possible flight and a order page. The only thing, it shows it in English Pounds, but it may be easily changed to Dollars when using a debitg card. Regards Beat
Blog pinging - Thanks Martin - yes, I do ping and it has been very effective. I'm currently on the first page of Google for Mastermind Group and on the second page for Selling to Small Business.


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