Reducing Cost of Sale | Front Office Box

Turn Prospects Into Customers and Opportunities Into Sales.

Cutting Cost of Sale to Zero

Some businesses are so special a high price actually makes it more likely customers will buy – e.g. elite fashion brands.

But for most, price is always a factor, and price depends upon costs. Any business ultimately competes with others on the basis of its costs. A cost advantage equals a price advantage equals a competitive advantage. This is more true in today’s many to many, anywhere to anywhere markets in which companies failing to compete on costs won’t last very long. Most businesses spend around 30% of their revenues on selling – cost of sale. Finding ways of cutting cost of sale therefore is driving competitive advantage, every bit as much as driving down a suppliers price.

So how do we cut cost of sale?

For our business, we decided the traditional revenue generation process of Market, Promote, Sell, Price wouldn’t work. Persuading customers to buy wouldn’t be enough. We have to persuade them to use (exploit) the software, and then tell their friends. That way we’d have buyers coming to us at zero cost of sale.

In order to get them to use the software we needed to create an aspiration for ways users would benefit, and in order to create that aspiration we needed to get their attention, and create attraction.

Our process is now Attention, Attraction, Aspiration, Adoption and Exploitation.

This different perspective on the business process forces us to look at each stage and find ways to improve it. Apart from our time it’s all free, and everything we’re doing targets users exploitation of the service we provide.

We think this is the new paradigm, not just for software but for everything.

Have you looked at your business to find ways of cutting your cost of sale to zero?

How are you doing it?