Business Success Center

Proven programs that grow great businesses for great people who care.

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4 Parts to a Platinum Customer Profile System™

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There are 7 potential customer types you could have — Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, Lead, Concrete, and RAW (Radio Active Waste). But you should have only the best, the Platinum Customer. They give you money and a lot more.

If you aren’t satisfied with the value of your current customers, make better choices by setting up a Platinum Customer Profile™ identification system. This is more than just “target” or “niche” marketing. The four parts of a Platinum Customer Profile™ are demographics, psychographics, behaviors, and geography. [Read more…]

Customer Loyalty: Who Do Your Customers Really Belong To?

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Silly sign — don't look too closely. Does this apply to customers? Photo by quinn.anya from flickr.com

Silly sign — don’t look too closely. Does this apply to customers? Photo by quinn.anya from flickr.com

In business, we talk about the importance of customer loyalty. But we consider customers as assets, something tangible. We think of them in the same way as our equipment or property: something that can be counted, weighed and measured, and given a value.

As property, an owner understandably feels, that they belong to the company. [Read more…]

How Legacy Pricing™ Works

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Price right. Image by TW Collins

Price right. Image by TW Collins.

There’s nothing wrong with Cost-plus or Value-based pricing when they are done right. Both are good strategies but incomplete in my opinion.

In the case of Cost-based pricing, basically you look at the costs and then add a percentage for profit on top of that number to arrive at a price.

In my experience, those who set the prices don’t know, forget, or leave out costs that they shouldn’t. Sometimes it is the cost of the salary of the principals or putting in enough for contingencies. Just as often they don’t include all the costs involved in being able to provide this product or service before and after getting customer #1. Then there are the true total costs to support and maintain this customer with this product or service. [Read more…]

7 Golden Sales Rules for Small Business

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GoLocal, a great rewards program, based in Austin, Texas, to encourage people to buy locally.

GoLocal, a great rewards program, based in Austin, Texas, to encourage people to buy locally.

I have just finished a five-hour sales training session for Go Local an Austin, Texas company that is licensing its program nationwide to encourage people to support their locally owned businesses and buy locally. This is a great marketing tool for businesses and reward system for new and existing customers. Even though some of the licensees had sales experience, their questions and concerns prompted me to put together this list of sales concepts that I consider critical to success.

It starts with agreeing with the first “golden rule”. [Read more…]

Selective Marketing

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Below is a presentation I gave at a local Austin meetup. It deals with how to use sales and marketing strategies and processes to save money and increase sales.