I have the incredible opportunity to manage a technical product line for my company. From a sales perspective, technical products are kind of cheating. They make it very easy to sell based on value. That’s because the technicality of the product can become the value proposition. Which is great for me, because I love to educate my customers on why my product will be so valuable to them.
Below are ten reasons why I love selling products based on value: Continue reading
How much does a premium latte actually costs the neighborhood shop down the street to make? What about that national chain of coffee shops we all know and love? Most of us probably don’t want to know the answer to that question. We might find out just how much money we are giving away each year.
As we have seen, there are a lot of different costs we might be talking about. These include fixed costs and variable costs. Buried in those are even more costs that our accountant friends love to talk about. A person can get rather dizzy trying to sift through all the different ways a company can look at its costs. Continue reading
The graph to the right is the standard relationship between supply and demand. What I hope you will notice is that as price increases, the quantity of units sold decreases. The opposite is true as well.
So, if you are BMW, you can’t expect to sell as many vehicles as Ford while maintaining your high price. And if you are Walmart, you can’t expect to sell at the high volume you currently do if you raise prices. Continue reading
A friend and I were working together this last week on a business plan he is putting together for the company he works for. He is taking at look at bringing a few new products into the market he currently serves. So we were talking about typical business model topics like his value proposition and mission statement. The issue that really started getting me excited was trying to figure what his potential product quality and price points were going to be. His proposal depends heavily on understanding these two pieces and how they relate to the competitions strategy. So I wanted to use this post to share some of the takeaways from that conversation.
Calculating the break even point is one of the most important concepts that business owners, entrepreneurs, and general managers can understand. This is because the break even point is when you transition from operating at a loss and actually start making a profit, which is the goal of every business.
The very first question to ask is what are we trying to sell? A service, a product, or a mix of products and services? For this example we will be assuming a very simple product offering. We are going to imagine that we are opening up a coffee shop that only sells lattes. You will likely have a mix of products and services that you will want to analyze. If your cost accounting is accurate, then you should be able to determine the break even point for each product and service you offer. Continue reading
As you are working on taking your new product to market, you are looking around and quickly realizing that social media is the most effective way to get the word out. You understand that in order to build a rich network of potential brand ambassadors and customers, you have to start by helping them. So you have been scouring the internet high and low and finding relevant content to share with your network on social media. Your plan is to avoid old school marketing techniques and instead you are going to focus on building relationships with actual people.
As you begin sharing great content with others on social media, be sure that it is related to the brand image you are trying to create for your product. By aligning yourself with the very best in your community, you are communicating what your brand is. Continue reading
As product champions begin to leverage social media to communicate their brands, they must first understand the entire community related to their product. Though this community does include the potential consumers of the product or service, the range of the community goes well beyond just the customer. It includes vendors, competitors, key stake holders, and a sea of people who live on the fringes of the discussion but still participate from time to time. Our goal as social media marketers should be to engage the entire community and not just potential customers. Because if we do, we can potentially create brand ambassadors who will represent our products for us.
So how exactly do we get these people to trust us once we find them?
It’s simple. You help them.That’s the big secret of social media marketing. Once you find a relevant group of potential customers and brand ambassadors, you figure out ways to help them and make a positive impact on them. In this article we are going to look at two ways to use social media to help the people in your community. Continue reading
At the start of this year I was a social media Grinch. My Facebook account had been shut down for over a year, I had never used Twitter, and my LinkedIn page was bare bones. What’s worse was that I was social media taker. I was actively consuming online content every day and not giving back.
A lot can change in three months. What changed for me was taking a personal branding class as part of my MBA program. My wife’s friend recommended the class. She had taken it a few years earlier and said it not only landed her a job, but changed her life. So I took the class and I am here to say that my entire perspective has shifted on how business can be done in the age of social media. Continue reading
