What If You Have the Worst Physical Location?

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They all say business success is all about the right location. Okay, if conditions are ideal, yeah why not? I'd always go for ideally and strategically located businesses. But it doesn't always happen that way. Often, you have no good options left for you.

Not all stalls in a mall are located near the entrance, escalators or stairs. The same thing with wet markets. I have done fresh meat business located far away from the regular traffic of buyers of a wet market. It was a real struggle, but later we found ways to offset our losses from being so adversely situated---we "invented" other ways of marketing our meat.

Anyway, if you find yourself with no choice but a bad location, you should learn how not to rely on locations anymore. Forget about how good locations can help you find customers. And the truth is, it's not the end of the world if you are situated so. You just have to have imagination. How else can you dispose of your merchandise without relying on location?

The usual option is to give up the bad location and look for a better one---if you can find a "better one." What if you can't? To me, the best option is to offer a service. If you're into a meat business, how about asking your neighbors if you can supply them with their weekly meat supply with FREE DELIVERY? Or, ask eateries and restaurants around to make you their meat supplier.

If you're into RTW, how about going to offices and selling your clothes to employees on installment basis?

Inventing new alternative markets can be very challenging and risky but it's better than to lose money just relying on what a bad location can offer you.

The ideal is to start with an invented alternative market first before you venture leasing a space to have your business location in. Don't rent anything yet---sell person-to-person first. When you have enough regular customers, then you may get a permanent location. This way, there will be sure buyers who would troop to your location while you try to make new customers of other people who pass by your place.

On that note, if you're a hustler in selling person-to-person, your home can be the ideal place for your business. No rent and no added overhead cost for electricity and water.

How to Make People Naturally Talk about You and Your Business

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Hard-selling or coercing people is old school. These are methods of desperate businesses that feel about to be thrown off from the competition. Because after years of doing the business, people still do not talk about them.

In fact, no one knows they exist.

Doubtless, the best way to do business is to have people talking about you. But how do you do this?There is a whole system behind the concept and a mere blog article won't suffice to discuss it all. But it's true. It exists. There is a way to become "trending," as it were---to make people talk about your business.

Some businesses spend a lot first on advertising before they become the talk of the town. And even after that, they have to maintain the trend. But some became the core of conversation merely by "chance" it seems, and maintains it in the same way---by seeming luck. They just sell their products and people talk about them.

Have you ever tried eating at Baliwag's restaurant along Visayas Avenue? It's a full-swing posh restaurant serving stylish native Filipino dishes. Yes, Baliwag had a couple of TV commercials before starred by comedian Joey de Leon, but it stopped. And anyway, nothing was mentioned about a Baliwag restaurant. The commercial merely touched on the roasted chicken (lechon manok) outlets.

But the restaurant is there and more and more people are talking about it. In fact, I learned about the place from a Unilab executive who also heard of the eatery from her friends. And now I'm talking about it to you, readers, and some of you would probably try it out, especially those who live nearby.

It's better doing business with people naturally talking about you (on their own) than coming out on TV urging people to take notice of you. Anytime in business, I'd rather that people pursue me than I pursue them. Besides being expensive, pursuing people all the time is a most uncertain way of doing business, besides very tiring.

Here's another example---Aling Charing's Longganisa. I don't know if you had the fortune to try their native sausage (longganisa) which in the 70s was a top hit at the Quinta Market in Quiapo. I was a kid when my mom brought me to this wet market to buy the sausages. They were superb! Nothing like them in those days and more so today. Longganisa types in Metro Manila today are often the pits, except if you chance upon authentic Vigan longganisa.

Now, Aling Charing's longganisa was never advertised, not even through package labeling, and yet it was doggedly sought for by its regular buyers. I mean, even if it transferred to another place, people sought it. Well, later it made use of package labeling. That went on for years.

Question is, what made these businesses sought after by their customers? Predictably, you may say its because of product quality. Well, yes and no. Yes, because product quality is very important. It's hard to get people running after you if you sell something rotten. No, because it's not really the product they were selling. It was the relationship they were offering their customers.

I've seen good product quality all wasted simply because of poor relationship with customers. And I've seen how excellent relationship made up for poor product quality.

So, what do we mean by "relationship"? Treating customers as kindred.

Aling Charing, when still alive, kept close relationship first with my grandmother, and then with my mother---as if they were real relatives. The relationship was transferred to customer family members. And I noticed how Aling Charing kept that up with her other customers that I saw there. Now, imagine if you have relationship like that with your first 30 regular customers. It's easy to see how your customer base can spread and expand even without you advertising your business.

Keep up the relationships and soon more people will be talking about your business. The same is true with how waiters treat customers at Baliwag Restaurant (Well, as of this writing, their waiters practice excellent customer relationship. I don't know 2 to 5 or 10 years from now).

Powerful sales is always relational. It's how you make people naturally talk about you and your business. It's applicable to both online and offline businesses, and especially network marketing businesses.