Wonder Twins - Unite!

You have an expertise in blah, blah. You have a friend, relative, colleague who has a different expertise in blah, blah and blah. Join your super powers together and unite!

As you start marketing your service or product, tell your future investors or customers of the other services or products that may interest them. No, you don’t provide them yourself, but this is a chance to:

a) Get your foot in the door because you offer more than one product or service.
b) Help someone else get a foot in the door.
c) Market to a wider audience.
d) Use one another’s resources and contacts (Hook a brother up!).

You can still be an independent consultant or business. You just enlist other’s to provide additional products or services to your bottom line.

You own a small business, like a hair salon or grocery store. It’s time to work with your competitor, not against them. Purchasing supplies can be a large expense for the one small business. As there is power in numbers, all the small businesses (in your industry or out your industry) that purchase similar products, learn to buy in bulk!

I know, I know, you’re thinking, if we work together, how are we going to out price one another? Well, this is where your individual store’s creativity comes in. Don’t use price as your only means of drawing customers.

There are several office supply stores in my area, OfficeMax, Office Depot and Staples. The stores try to stay competitive in pricing. However, I predominately shop at Office Depot. I like the set up better. Even though my stepson works at OfficeMax, where I could use his discount, I’d still rather go to Office Depot. The set up is also a reason why more people like Costco better than they like Sam’s Club.

Differentiate yourself by the unique qualities of your store. How can you appeal to customers, while selling the same products with the same price as your competitors? Is your staff friendly, more knowledgeable? Do you offer coupons? Are you involved with the community?

Make them love you, not necessarily the product or services you offer. Because if they like doing business with you, they’ll come back, forgetting your competitors. And the same is true with your competitor’s customers – everyone isn’t going to like you.

Your main concern shouldn’t be about undercutting your competitor’s price. Rather, it should be about going out of business because you cannot survive in this recession alone. Moreover, if worse comes to worse, you may want to, even possibly, just throwing it out there, unite as one company that has two or more locations.

Times are hard and the appearance is that they may get even harder before they get better. Nevertheless, if you can find a way to get through the hard times, you will have even more confidence that you can weather it through until the good times to come. However, we are all going to have to work together. Wonder Twins – Unite!