Business and Money Tips

It's very obvious: in the heart of busy Chinatown's New Bridge Road, 2 famous bak kwa shops lie side by side: they sell almost the same seasoned barbecued pork that is popular in Asia.  One thing stands them apart: the shop on the left is packed with shoppers with queues while the shop on the right has zero customers.  This is despite the fact that the right side shop sells at half price than his neighbour, yet he has no sales.  Fact 1: If you sell on price, you may not have more business Fact 2: If you cannot differentiate what you sell, you have to sell on price Fact 3: It is not your competitors that cut your price, it is you that cut your price Fact 4: People follow the crowd.  When you sell well, you sell even better Fact 5: If you don't know how to sell differently, cutting price may be the most silly thing to do Fact 6: Product differentiation is not easy to do.  Most would rather cut price first Fact 7: Improve your product to be better than your co

Yes, the  lack of sales  is not caused by the market, your competitors or even your boss.  Salespeople are the problems, and the big problem is that they don't even realize this.  By far the biggest problem is salespeople not realizing that they are the problem and justify their situation as 'everyone is also like that, right' thinking.   There are 8 ways that salespeople make themselves the biggest problem. Know them, eradicate them, and you'll be on the path to greatness in sales... Lack of Selling Skills , especially in doing  sales  follow-up  and overcoming of tough objections ; Never Leverage on the Team , especially the customer's team and your company's support team; No Follow-Through and Follow-up on Leads , leading to no leads and thus no sales; Lack of Lead Generating Activities , resulting in no  prospects  to follow-up on and thus no prospects in sales; Never Listen to the Real Needs of customers ,  thus missing on the big picture and cann

Tom Peters said, "The surplus economy has too many similar companies employing similar people, coming up with similar ideas, and producing similar products and services at similar quality and similar prices".  Just look at the smartphone market now and you'll know what Peters is talking about.  In fact, knowing this will explain why Samsung's Galaxy phones are not selling well this year (more at here ). If that is the case, how do we differentiate successfully?  From Jack Trout's best-selling book " Differentiate or Die ", there are 7 ways to differentiate unsuccessfully: Creative Advertising is never a differentiating idea . This is because customers want information, not news Quality is rarely a differentiating idea .  These days quality is a given, not a difference. Even if your quality is good, how long can you sustain it in the face of onslaught from hungry competitors who come up with better and more advance features?  A good example is S