Residual Income Business- Giving to Get
April 21, 2009 by E. M. Parks
Filed under Home Based Business
When I was a teenager I worked at a local mall in the food court area at a popular fast food restaurant. The restaurant offered the usual burgers and fries and even ice cream. My usual schedule had me working during both the lunch and dinner hours which made the time really go by faster.
I remember one day at work when my boss’ boss came for a visit and after he left the entire store was called in for a quick store meeting. We were told that we had been having declining sales and that we needed to do something about it. Apparently the restaurant next door to us was kicking our butt in sales and it was time to take action.
Every one of the hourly employees knew why the restaurant next door us was slaughtering us in the sales department. It was the fact the they had employees out in front of their restaurant passing out free samples to any person that walked by. I incorporate this strategy into my residual income business today but back then my restaurant wasn’t meeting the call of the customers.
My boss watched what our neighbors did to lure customers for a week before he finally figured it out. He decided that we would basically copy their methods and start giving out free samples to every person that wanted one too. I ended up drawing the short straw and had to be one of the people passing out samples. Doing that all day and having to smile too was a challenge but it taught me a business lesson. It taught me problem solving as a selling method because we were solving the problem of hunger for our customers and reaping the rewards too.
I realized how giving away free samples helped our customers make a more informed decision when it came to solving their problem of hunger and that they were more likely to come see my when they wanted to order food in the future.
This shift in strategy as a teenager helped me in adulthood because now my sales approach in my residual income business is based around giving away something of value for free in order to help a customer solve a problem.
And when it comes to giving a little something to get a bigger something, either you want your business to grow or not.
