Ever seen or heard a cheerleading squad do a routine where they spell out the name of their school, and then perform a cheer around it? Well, here at Epiphanies, Inc., my husband/biz partner likes to lovingly tease me by busting out in a cheer every time I propose doing something extra for a client or prospect: "V-A-L-U-E A-D-D-E-D! Value Added! Yeah! Lani's adding value!" Now, since this is an article about adding value for your business, the cheer's an obviously related topic. But why is creating added value so important that we created a cheer around it? Because if your product and service offerings don't evolve over time: 1. Your audience will get bored with you. 2. Your profits will stagnate at best, and shrink at worst. 3. Your competition will blow you out of the water. That's three good reasons! And by sheer coincidence, here are the three best ways to create added value in your own business: 1. Get people to buy more of the products or services you already offer. Three classic methods are with urgency, scarcity, and charity. Urgency is the limited-time offer "Sale ends at midnight!" Scarcity is the limited number "Only 3 left in stock order now!" And charity is the "For every dollar you spend, we'll give 20% to a worthy cause" method. Even better - these can be mixed and matched at will. 2. Enhance what you already offer in a way clients would highly value, but would cost you little or nothing to add. Maybe it's a CD-ROM tutorial you record once, and it costs you 40 cents per copy to include it in your offer. But suddenly the package is worth a lot more to your client! Or maybe it's a free half-hour consultation to the first 25 buyers of your product (introducing scarcity and urgency). Imagine how many other ideas you could come up with in a brief brainstorming session... 3. Brainstorm new products and services to complement your current repertoire. A bookkeeping and financial wizard friend of ours is expanding into other professional services, including organization and administrative contracting. Housekeeping services can naturally expand into gardening, handyman, even pet sitting add-ons. Whether they go hand-in-hand, or it's a "you got your chocolate in my peanut butter" kind of surprise, a little creative thought will produce a lot of options. Ultimately, there's one thing to remember: Focus on creating added value for your clients, not for yourself. Of course, whatever you do will have to be profitable. But if you don't focus on your clients' needs, and how you can be even more helpful to them, no amount of marketing cheerleading will help excite your market. So to borrow a last phrase from the cheer world, say "Ready? Okay!" to adding value today, so you can add more moulah to your business routine tomorrow.
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