$2000.Image

For one more club. One more set of letters behind my name I have to pay for.  Like the opposite of Wheel of Fortune.

That’s what you’re seeing as one more membership offer is dragged across your screen, your desk, your growth plan (that’s when you schedule that you’ll learn and grow this year, so that it will happen. Zumba counts, bruh).

It’s all you see because the sales people on the other side aren’t doing a great job. Whatever their intention is, their communication is solely cost, not benefit.  Take an hour out of your life and watch this architecture of a great value building with Chase Jarvis and Ramit Sethi.

Story: about three years ago, I was being whiny about yearly dues. evaluating yearly dues.and personally don’t care for whiners so it stuck in my craw, or sub-craw area. Craw region. Moving on….

I grabbed my intern (read: got her attention and put to task, not lawsuit grabbed) and said: check this benefits website for the next 2 hours, look at our expenses and purchases in the last 12 months, and project what we might buy in the next 2 years.  See what you can amass as far as wealth goes.

  • Shipping costs cut by 20%
  • Phone bill cut by 17%
  • Subscriptions to magazines cut by 40%
  • Books at 25% discount
  • Tech, like laptops, digital cameras, printers….cut by at least 15$
  • Travel costs 10% and up…

She found $4000. We paid $550 that year. This was an awesome deal, I just wasn’t seeing it past the cost of entry. It would be like walking into Old Country Buffet, staring at the half filled or half empty jello tray and saying, “This place sucks.”  I mean, you’d be right, it’s no Sizzler, yet you wouldn’t be taking into account the entire landscape of food that sucked, and therefore would have an incomplete picture.

So what? How does this apply to business?  What’s this handbasket, and where are we going?

Do we depend on the salespeople in this day an age to tell us what the deals are, and where the best investments lie? Sometimes, if they’re good enough. If they can build value. Yet we gotta sell ourselves, too, or we’re half-assing our potential.

Do your own breakdown.

Get your own referrals.

Take a look at every page of every benefit and build your own best deal.

Best part?  Make these suggestions to the folks who own the product, club, or bar, let them know where they let you down yet you kept going— they may just reward you.  People pay incredible amounts of money to focus groups for this info you’re offering to them for free. Possibly a  free membership? Offer this as a benefit, and that you’ll give testimonial after a year?

Then turn on your own business and make sure you’re not throwing stones from your own glass porch.

I will take $4000 for investing $550 every time. You?

Dare you to prove me wrong 🙂