How can V8 Boost Your Sales?

Sep 28 2009

Posted by: Cheryl Clausen in marketing, tags: boost sales, increase sales, sales marketing

So you’ve got this service business where you provide services just like hundreds of other service businesses in your industry. What makes someone who needs your services choose you over any other service provider?

Probably nothing. It really doesn’t matter what business you’re in the challenge is the same. In fact, Jonathan Morrow recently addressed this same issue among blogs.

Do you just accept this as the way things are, or do you take steps to make your business the business of choice?

If you want a successful business you take steps to make your business the business of choice. There is always a way to do it. It just takes some creative thinking and listening.

Let’s see how this worked for a product you’re probably familiar with. What would you do if you made tomato juice to get people to buy your juice? How would you get people to buy your juice to the point that your juice is the juice of choice among tomato juice drinkers?

photo credit: strangelv

There’s a lot of competition among tomato juice. You have the big names in canned vegetables along with the low cost house brands. Plus it’s not exactly an exciting product. I mean how many times have you woke up in a sweat in the middle of the night thinking, “The first thing I have to do in the morning is get some tomato juice”? Can’t say I have ever had that experience.

Earlier I mentioned anyone can do this it just takes some creative “listening”. Did you catch that? Here’s why I say listening.

You are too close to your business and what you sell to know how the people most likely to buy your stuff actually talk about it. So you have to interact with, engage, and seek out resources where you can capture your ideal prospects engaged in real conversation about what you sell. The internet has made this eazy-peazy.

Back to our tomato juice company. Well, they did there homework and here’s what they found:

credible sources proclaimed people do not eat enough vegetables to maintain a healthy diet
many people don’t like vegetables and don’t buy them
a good number of people are already looking for ways to get more vegetables in their diet without eating bowls full of vegetables

Because there is a market of people who already believe they don’t eat enough vegetables there is a market for a vegetable juice. Tomato juice is a vegetable juice but there are already lots of competitors in the tomato juice market.

So, why not re-position tomato juice as “vegetable” juice? Why not add other vegetables to your tomato juice so it’s not just tomato juice? Why not create a new category for tomato juice and call it vegetable juice (V8)?

And that, of course, is exactly how V8 boosted their sales and set themselves apart as the vegetable juice of choice. Okay, go ahead… slap the heel of your hand against your forehead and say, “I could have had a V8″.

Obviously the creative thinking was used to develop a position for their product that set it apart as it’s own category.

So how do you use this concept in your business?

Start listening to discover the exact language your potential buyers use
Start listening for what your best potential buyers are already looking for
Start listening for what they already believe
Tie that belief to your service
Position your service in it’s own category

Now get to work your V8 moment is waiting…

Do it Yourself

Do it with a Little Help

Do it with Guidance

This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.