Sales and Marketing - 9 lies you need to be aware of:

Lie #9:

"You can't charge premium prices for a commodity product."

If you've been fooled into thinking this is true, you'll live by cheapest price and die by cheapest price all day long. People who believe this have thin profit margins and low morale. But they don't have to.

Case in point: Starbucks, AOL, and Microsoft are ALL in commodity markets but have managed to re-define the rules such that they are relatively immune from price competition. Perry Marshall talk about this in Principle #9 in 'Guerilla Marketing for Hi-Tech Sales People.' Perry Marshall/Guerilla-Marketing

And I can assure you that there are THOUSANDS of small businesses as well, who use the same shrewd tactics to sidestep the whole issue of 'commoditization.'

Being a 'commodity' is the pits. The worst situation you can be in is to sell something that's readily available from dozens of other people.

But you can change that. I have a very specific terminology and strategy for re-inventing your business and making it clearly stand out from your rivals, even if you ARE in a commodity market.

It's the same thinking process that AOL, Microsoft, McDonalds and Starbucks all use - seemingly invincible companies that dominate fiercely competitive commodity markets.

Let's take AOL as a brief example. In the early Internet days you could become an Internet Service Provider with a few thousand dollars of cash and some phone lines. Some ISP's even gave away their services for free. But AOL maintained a price of $23/month - just for dial-up.

Now the landscape has changed greatly for ISP's and AOL has had a harder time competing. However... the reasons for their initial success are still worth studying.

How did they do it? Because AOL was fundamentally different than all other ISP's. They have FORCED themselves to come up with unique ways of making themselves non-interchangeable with others. They have AOL instant messenger, all kinds of online communities, and proprietary software. And once you're on AOL, it's hard to get off.

You can lift ideas right out of AOL and Microsoft and cleverly apply them to your business, so that apples-to-apples comparisons to your competitors are difficult or impossible.

If you are in a commodity business - then you MUST do this. *It's not an option.* When you do, it makes everything you do vastly easier and more effective. 'If you want to educate customers about new ideas, you have to buy 'em all doughnuts, lunch or dinner, and do a big dog & pony show.'

Well, I hope you've found these 9 installments on Sales and Marketing helpful to your business efforts. I plan on putting together similar packages on different aspects of doing business in the very near future. So be on the lookout.

Until then,

May you find success in all you undertake.

Comments? Ideas? Feedback? I'd love to hear from you. Just reply to this ezine and tell me what you think.

I'll be in touch very soon,

Luis

www.internet-home-business-builder.com

P.S.