Sell Your Value to Your Customers

Competition is fierce! And it’s endless. Too many companies low-ball the same items you offer just for the sale. How do you survive? Sell yourself. Sell your customers on you, your company and what sets you above the rest.

Flashback to the late 90’s. Remember the television commercials with the sock puppet? Pets.com spent millions of borrowed money to be a player in the pet market. They had an ad on the Super Bowl! They sold below cost to attract customers and add names to their list. At TheFerretStore.com we worried that these tactics would erode our customer base. So we changed.

While our prices remained the same, we concentrated on improving customer service and order turn around. We bragged that we had ferret owners on staff who could answer questions about litter training. We put more detail into our product descriptions and added features to our website to improve the customer’s shopping experience. We told our customers how we donate thousands of dollars in food and supplies each year to assist animal rescue groups nationwide.

A minority of customers buy based only on price. Most of us want service. Our hard earned money should buy us the product and help if we need it.

Selling Points for Your Company

• Provide contact information. I hate to see websites with an email address only. Include a phone number, fax number, physical address, email address and contact hours. Make the “Contact Us” link prominent.
• Become the expert in your field. People want to know they’re buying from people who know what they’re selling.
• Tout your turnaround. Do your orders ship same day? Tell people! Your fast order turnaround is a value added service to your customer – by ordering from you, they’re getting their order faster.
• Show your pride. If your customers are happy and come back repeatedly, make that a selling factor. Customers want to be happy. And happy customers….

Back to pets.com. We held our ground and our sales never suffered. Pets.com went belly up weeks before Christmas, in the height of the season! We actually bought up their remaining inventory for pennies on the dollar. They lost, we won. And you can win too.