Monthly Archives: November 2021

When the economy slows and consumers start to hold on to their cash a little tighter, many small businesses make a big mistake. When a sales person, either in retail or direct sales, is faced with sales resistance, many of them have an initial response to ask “would you buy if the price was lower?” This is a big mistake, and one you may never recover from.

Price cutting is a bad idea. Many industries have created a very difficult situation for them selves by always having sales and price cutting. Most of the people that don’t buy because they say your price is too high, are really not buying because you haven’t sufficiently demonstrated value. Cutting price almost never leads to new sales. Unless someone was already planning on buying in the first place, price cutting doesn’t work. Not only doesn’t it work, it’s also very destructive to your profits.

Example

Product is priced at $100.

Your cost is $70 (this is a 30% margin).

Because sales are slow you put the product on sale for 20% off so you now sell the product for $80. Your profit is now $10.

So a 20% price reduction = a 66% cut in profits.

Now that’s bad enough, but here’s the really bad part, once you lower the price, you’ll find that you need to keep it priced lower to maintain future sales. So your $100 sale is now $80. Cut the price again for the next sale and guess what, your profit is zero. Believe it or not it gets worse.

The next step is that your competitors now decide to lower their prices. Can you survive a price war? Unless you are the lowest price in a price war, you’re helping your competitor sell more.

So here is the scenario you’re facing:

1. The economy slows, so customers become more price sensitive and are slower to make buying decisions

2. As you start to feel the sales crunch you decide to offer a price discount

3. Customers that were already going to buy take advantage of the price discount

4. Your profit margins begin to sink, and now you have less money to invest in marketing or in training your people or in improving your products and your overall business

5. Your competitors also lower their price and you have to continue cutting your price until your profits are at zero

6. Unless you are the lowest price you’re actually helping your competitor sell more

Not the greatest situation is it? Price cutting has always been seen as the lazy way out. Management Guru Michael Porter says “cutting prices is usually insane if the competition can go as low as you can.”

So what do you do? Here are three suggestions:

1. Better explain the value of your offering – find out exactly what your customers want and then work to deliver on that.

2. Bundle or package products and services to maintain higher prices

3. Do something special – go to your best customers and create an added value offering to solidify their loyalty

The bottom line is if your business exists strictly as a me-too, you have no choice but to compete on price. Price is only an issue in the absence of value. If you haven’t taken the time to truly understand the wants and needs of your customers and to properly demonstrate that you can deliver, then price cutting may be your only option.

It’s a lot of work to compete on value, but especially in times of economic uncertainty, it’s more important than ever. Remember it’s not the product or service and the associated features people are buying; it is the solution to their problem or the satisfaction of a need or want. Focus on that before cutting your price.

America is getting heavier and heavier. XX size businesses are booming. Children are more obese than ever, with no hope in sight, it seems.

The 30 billion a year diet industry keeps doing well, though dieters are not. The owners of diet businesses know they will see people continue to return and spend more money than ever. Studies show that 93% of people who diet gain the weight back within three years, usually two.

Why? Because people have not changed the subconscious program created over time by their own thoughts. They still think of themselves as fat. They are literally programming the subconscious, which controls all the major glands and functions, to add the weight back on!

Scientific Proof:

Larry King has even showcased the newest research via experts who have explained how the brain’s reticular activating system (RAS) is activated by the subconscious mind’s “program.” Yes, we have a computer-like system in the body. Thinking Thin reprograms the computer, which, by the way, controls all of our body’s functions, such as metabolism, digestion, glandular functions and even desires (for food, exercise, etc.)

Hypnotherapy experts tell us that it takes around 28 days to form a new habit because we are actually forming new brain tissue, new neurological pathways, with our thoughts in that amount of time. Thinking Thin every day for thirty days will create new habits. Motivation then comes from within, eliminating the need for will-power after this point of using will-power simply to think differently.

Laboratory Studies Showing Mind Over Body Matter:

1. A University of Arizona study published in Runner’s World Magazine in 1993 showed that people who visualized added muscle strength increase 12%. The control group – non-visualizers- increased zero.
2. The BBC recently revealed a Wake Forest University study showing how positive thinking works to relieve pain in almost every case.
3. Cleveland Clinic researchers and biomedical engineer Guang Yue presented results of a three-year study at annual Society for Neuroscience meeting. After twelve weeks of “mental contractions” of paralyzed muscles regained 13 to 30 percent muscle control and strength! The brain is fooled into sending more neurons from the spinal cord to control the muscle according to Dr. Vinod Sahgal, a fellow researcher in the study.
4. Many readers of Think Yourself Thin have had success with weight loss from just using Thinking Thin “focused imagination” techniques.

Have you been trying to get him to fall in love with you? Has he shown a certain degree of interest in you, but he’s not all the way there yet? Do you sometimes get the feeling he’s trying to back out and you don’t know why? Guys can have huge fluctuations with the emotions they feel. They’re attracted to a woman, start to feel a degree of emotion, fear that emotion, fear losing her, fear losing themselves.

To calm his fears you have to avoid any and all pressure. He needs to know that being with you isn’t going to become a chore. If you begin to put pressure on him now, he can only imagine what you’ll be like later.

Keep your focus on having fun with him and showing him that he’s better off with you than without. However you have to be wary of going too far and appearing desperate. Ideally you want to be yourself and just take it easy. Having fun with him shouldn’t be work and you shouldn’t have to be forcing it or faking to have a good time with him.

When you guys feel a natural sense of comfort just being together, even if you’re not doing anything in particular, the sense of well being that will envelope him will bring him to consider committing to you.

Also hang onto your life and don’t be too eager to give up your activities in order to be with him more. Being at his side all the time can become tiresome for him, but you’re also not ever giving him a chance to miss you.

Leave him to himself for few nights and let him have a breather while you reconnect with the friends or re-enroll in the class you’d cancelled. If he knows that you won’t be always latched to his side, he’ll feel better about the thought of falling in love with you.