Killer Sales Offerings Answer the Question: What's In It For Me?

I was driving today and I passed a business with a big, expensive banner that said, "We Appreciate Our Customers". How wonderful. Why didn't the sign just say, "We do the minimum to make a sale"? Or, it could have just as easily said, "We blow our money on the wrong advertisements". The main purpose of business is to create new customers. In order to do this, you must answer the question, "What's in it for me?"

A better message on that banner would have been, "20% Off" or "Buy 1 Get 1 Free" or "Bring a Friend and get $10 off". The key point here is that you need to create a compelling reason for customers to come in. Appreciating customers is a great idea, but it is really a minimum. It certainly isn't worth throwing money away on a huge banner to say so.

If you really want to show your appreciation towards customers, then reward them for doing business with you and for promoting your business to their friends and family. Tell them you're going to do this. Give them an expectation of a showing of appreciation. Killer sales offerings answer the question, "what's in it for me".

Here's what's in it for you: Spend $500 and get $50 off your next purchase. Bring us 5 new customers and get a $100 gift certificate. Bring a friend next time and you both get half off.

Let's compare killer sales offering #1 (Spend $500 and get $50 off your next purchase) to the cost of the appreciation banner. What if this banner cost $500 to produce? It gives no incentive for customers or potential customers to spend money with you. Instead, you can pay $50 and make $500 or more. If you "have" to spend $50 10 times, that means that customers spent $5,000 or more. Your killer sales offering would have netted you $4,500 compared to a loss of $500 on the banner. And, that's just for the first 10 customers.

Everyone can create a killer sales offering. Just remember to reward your customers for helping you to grow your business. Get more new customers. Get more sales per customer. Get more sales attempts per customer. Reward these things and you will be answering the question, "what's in it for me?".