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How To Grow Your Business By Following Microsoft's Lead
by: Craig Garber
One of the problems my consulting clients consistently ask me about especially
if they are in the information marketing business (most of them are) has
to do with "What should you be selling your customers?"
Here's what Microsoft did in a similar situation:
Back in June, Microsoft announced they were planning to come up with some
kind of music subscription service, to compete with Yahoo... Apple's iTunes
Store... and Napster.
Microsoft and all these other companies realize the future of home computing
is going to focus more and more around digital entertainment and consumer
electronics.
According to market analyst Matt Rosoff, Microsoft wants "to get as much
use as possible for the PC as a home entertainment device, and one way to
do that is to ensure there is a lot of readily available content."
That makes good sense, right?
You see, Microsoft's already the provider of the media player (Microsoft
Media Player) used by a lot of the other content providers, and they know,
all they need to do is run some display advertising on your Microsoft Media
player when you're using it, and after a while, you'll click on the ads enough
times and look at enough offers, that eventually... enough people will subscribe
to the monthly music service!
I'll challenge you here: Ask yourself what kind of help are you giving your
customers and clients, that will allow you to "expand" and get ALL of their
business in this area.
For instance, let's say you're a broker of joint ventures. Meaning, you find
two people who aren't competitors, but whose customers are likely to be buyers
of one another's services, and so you bring them together...set up an
"arrangement" so the two of them can start making money from each other's
list, and then you take a piece of each deal.
Couldn't you also start offering to do all the administrative and accouinting
work that comes with each of these arrangements?
Or maybe you can offer to take over the adminitrative and accounting work
for ALL of their business in general?
Meaning, the extra profits that come in as a result of your brokering deals,
now have NO additional cost (or time, which is even more important) because
now you're also handling all the selling... billing... and fulfillment...
for them.
You're taking care of all the other daily minutia your customers HATE, but
usually get caught up with because it's a part of business -- albeit an
unproductive part.
What I'm saying is, think about all the related services you're not involved
with, as it relates to servicing your clients, and ask yourself, "What else
could you be doing, without too much extra effort on your part, but that
will be a HUGE added extra value for your clients".
And then... just... start doing it!
Or even better yet, ask your clients what else you could be doing for them.
Now go sell something,
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