Cross-selling is the art of offering a complementary product or service to a customer who is in the process of purchasing a different product or service.  The idea of a cross sell is to provide in additional product that complements the product they have already decided to purchase.many times the product or service that is offered any cross sell is actually very beneficial to be purchasing customer.

A convenience item is a product or service that is available at the right place and right time for a customer. These are items that are often sold at a premium price compared to what a customer could purchase the item for if they bought it in advance, at another location, or in a larger quantity.  The end result is that customers are willing to pay more for an item when a business offers the item at a time and/or location that is convenient for them – meaning the value proposition is convenience rather than price.

When I first started working in the financial industry over a decade ago, the  bank that I worked for talked about making their products “sticky” for their customers.  They explained that the more products we sold, the stickier our company would be for them and the harder it would be for them to leave.  Stickiness was their main customer retention strategy.

I now fully understand what they mean and why they focused on "stickiness."  In fact, I still bank with that organization even though I haven’t worked there in nearly a decade.

But why?  Because the services I have with them truly are sticky - it would be a major headache to switch banks.

I love small businesses - I advise them and have started a couple of them - but I have to admit, owning a business today is harder than ever before.  

A successful business recipe used to consist of the following:

     hard work + a fair price + good customer service = successful business

Now, that recipe is no longer enough.  Today, we need...

Pricing is something that every business must consider.  Quickly pricing products without much research or consideration can help to get a product to market in a short period of time.  But pricing is one of the most important elements of a successful business.  And for that reason, pricing should not be a quick, haphazard process - it should be an intentional strategy.

While there are many pricing variations, there are three pricing strategies that provide the foundation for the majority of the others.  As a business owner, you can easily hack your product pricing by following one or more of these three pricing strategies:

Why do prices end in 99?  It would seem logical to just round them up to the next dollar.  Yet so many businesses forego rounding and price their products to end in 99.  So why is this done?  The answer is not what you think - at least, not only what you think.  

The reason why prices end in 99 is often attributed to

The hotel industry is one that I would probably never want to be in.  With the intense competition today, just one upset person on Yelp can deter potential guests.  This means that if a hotel is doing something differently than other hotels, it can be perceived as being a problem.  For this reason, it seems that most hotels operate in a very similar manner.  Best practices and customer services are often safer than hotel innovation.  

Great customer service and certain industry best practices are expected by guests, so these best practices often become the norm for most hotels: free wifi, a continental breakfast, flat screen TV’s, loyalty rewards, and consistent housekeeping.  But every now and then a hotel is able to hack this model - they provide a hotel innovation that stands out.  I recently spoke in Whitefish, Montana and stayed at the Grouse Mountain Lodge.  To my surprise, they hacked a standard hotel best practice that really made my day.  

Several years ago I worked for an employer who was struggling with rising health care costs.  Just like every other business in the United States, they were looking for ways to manage the year after year price increases.  The health insurance innovation they came up with was one that was based on the health of the employee - healthy employees would pay less and unhealthy employees would pay more.  

But employees naturally disliked this program.  It wasn’t that they thought everyone should pay the same for health insurance - they seemed to understand that unhealthy people cost the company more in premiums.  They even thought this was a great health insurance innovation.  Their problem with the program was with how the program was framed.

My wife has found a dentist she loves.  She doesn’t appreciate him because he makes her teeth whiter or takes away her pain when she has neglected her teeth.  She loves her dentist because he has given her $150 in gift certificates.

When she first walked into Dr. Painter’s dental office, she was told about a dental referral program offered by the practice.  For every person she referred to the dental office, she would receive a $25 gift card to the merchant of her choice.  Having a family of 5, she quickly got her first $100 in gift certificates.  Add in her parents, and she was up to $150 with very little work.

I love Thai food.  Specifically, tofu curry is my food of choice.  And I always prefer to eat it with chopsticks.  

Chopsticks have been around for years.  In fact, they were probably invented before the wheel.  For this reason, I was surprised to find that the Thai restaurant I ate at today has done it; they have hacked the chopstick.

Change is never easy.  But change is essential to keeping up with the competition.  Especially for small businesses who must compete against the economies of scale of large corporations.  Change doesn't have to be a major production or significant undertaking with months of planning and the use of major resources - change can be accomplished through business hacking.

Business hacks are the micro-elements of innovation and strategy.  When added together piece by piece, business hacks can provide for a large, substantial change.  Just like a marathon is run one step at a time.  The following are three ways to quickly hack your business today:

Business plans can be overwhelming.  They take a great amount of diligence and work to create.  They require all kinds of information that isn't always available and many people think they need help writing a business plan.  I am here to tell you that you don't.

Developing a sales strategy is one of the most important things you can do to increase your profits and strengthen the health of your business.  A sales strategy is a pro-active means of identifying prospects.  It is a carefully designed group of products that meet the needs of customers.  It is an intentional effort to usher prospective customers into paying sales.  In a day of increased competition, reduced barriers of entry, and overwhelming regulatory burdens, small businesses can no longer sit back and wait for customers to come to them.  They must pro-actively see out sales by developing a sales strategy.

As I have been recently writing on the topic of developing an effective sales process, I thought I would show a few examples of how successful sales funnels have been applied.  In my post on How to Design a Service Industry Sales Workflow, I broke down the process of how to design a sales funnel for a business in the service industry.  Businesses that offer a service, rather than a product, have some unique challenges over businesses that sell physical products.  Martial arts marketing can be challenging on a number of levels.  Therefore, I think it is worthwhile to take a close look at a business that has done a good job refining their sales funnel.  This business is my son's taekwondo academy.

The retail industry in the United States has long been criticized for paying wages that no one can realistically live off of.  Many retail workers must work multiple jobs and struggle to get ahead in their careers.  One of the greatest challenges that retail workers face is that those who want to get ahead by attending college to earn an advanced degree really can't afford it. With rising tuition costs and increases in living expenses, earning a college degree while working in the retail industry has become a very, very challenging task.  For this reason, one company has decided to offer an innovative solution to this problem; the Starbucks college tuition reimbursement program provides up to two years of paid college tuition.

Employees can make or break a business.  Finding and retaining superstars who excel can be extremely challenging; like finding a lost diamond on a beach without the use of a metal detector.  This is a difficult task for any business, but especially for small businesses and entrepreneurs who have so much at stake with any one of their few employees who make up their limited workforce.  Therefore, many small businesses end up turning down an eccentric applicant who may seem to otherwise fit the bill, but doesn’t look the part of the job they are hiring for.  But should these applicants be passed up merely because they may not fully conform to the boring culture we have established in our businesses?  What if there was a way to leverage eccentric employees for a competitive advantage?

Every employer can create a competitive advantage with eccentric employees by taking one of three approaches.

Every business should have a sales process.  A sales process is a formalized plan to evolve a prospect client into an ideal customer; it is an intentional strategy designed to systemize sales so that each potential client is given an equal opportunity to become an ideal customer.  Without a clearly defined process of how a customer will evolve over time, the lifetime value of a customer will not be as effective as it could be.  In my recent post on How to Design a Sales Process in 3 Steps, I discussed general methods on what should be done to develop such a process.  In this post, however, I am going to specifically focus on designing a sales funnel for a service-based business. 

A sales process is one of the greatest assets of any organization.  It can increase the lifetime value of a customer, help the customer make a decision, ensure you offer the sale every time, help you reach goals, and allow you to perfect the process.  The reasons to implement a systematized sales funnel are compelling.  But actually executing a sales process can be challenging. Therefore, I would like to share with you three steps that you can take to design a formalized sales funnel for your business.