Back to NewsA rather large number of business owners and managers tend to sabotage their own bartering experience. As a result, they lose out on an amazing chance to make more money and get what they want. So here’s the Top 10 Ways to Ruin Your Barter Experience (and sabotage your own business.!):
If you want to ruin it for yourself….
10) Don’t communicate with your Barter Coach.
Good exchanges (like BarterPay) assign a Barter Coach to each member. Those coaches help connect the member with things that they need, which is amazing, because it enables you to go about your everyday business while having a real person go to work for you. Unfortunately, some members are terrible at returning their coach’s calls and emails. This makes it virtually impossible to help them. If the member is very busy, at the very least it helps to message your coach, even if it’s a short text OR, if you have a spouse or staff that can handle purchase and sales requests from the coach directly, that is probably the best way to get things done. After all, the coach is part of your sales team who could potentially save you thousands of dollars per year in your business! That’s worth a text or much more!
9) Don’t team up or work with your coach.
Some people ‘challenge’ the coach to make barter work and then sabotage it by not working with them. In order for a coach to work effectively you have to let them in on purchases you’re making both in the business and personally, and what is generally going on in the business. Help them help you! The way some business owners treat their coach would be akin to asking someone to do your taxes but refusing them access to any of your books and records. 🙂
8) Tell other members you can’t spend your Barter Credits even when you can. (yes, people actually do this!)
Some members will complain to others that they can’t spend their Barter Credits even though they have a loan outstanding from purchases they’ve already made! Their thought must be that “if I complain, this supplier will take pity on me and accept more barter in the deal” (or sell me more product than I initially requested on barter). In fact, this can sour a seller on doing barter at all (especially if they are new to barter and don’t have their own experience). It makes it hard to connect that member to other members to make purchases because of the possible negative impact the complainer will have on the other members.
7) Don’t make quick buying decisions.
Some opportunities are very short notice on something with finite availability. If a member cannot make a quick decision, they will miss out on these opportunities.
6) Don’t follow through on a purchase you plan to make.
Some members will give their coach a few requests, the broker will find what they want and the buyer will not even contact the seller. This is frustrating for the seller who is waiting for their call and the coach who went through the effort of setting it up. The coach may have even done the seller a special favour to get the buyer the opportunity. Failure to follow through discourages the coach from working as hard on future requests for obvious reasons! 🙂
5) Don’t follow up on sales we send your way.
Some selling members will be given contact information to go and quote work for another member, and they’ll procrastinate in following up or change the pricing or waffle on whether they’ll accept barter after confirming with the coach. Often times this means that they lose the business and create a negative referral from the other member. It also makes the coach reluctant to send them future barter opportunities.
4) Provide poor service.
Even in the ‘regular’ world, some businesses don’t provide good customer experience. We try to filter out people like this, but some of these businesses will sneak through the gate. Also, some businesses will only behave this way when they are in a cash crunch, and when they joined everything was going well. While some members will think “I got bad service because I was paying in barter”, most realize that the business would have provided poor service regardless of the form of payment.
3) Do not grasp the concept of ‘Two Worlds’.
Here is what Two Worlds Concept means: (this is the Rainbow Unicorn World that doesn’t exist but everyone wishes it did! ha ha)
i) THE CASH WORLD – is difficult (costly and takes time) to come up with brand new business from customers you’ve never done business with before, but very easy to spend the cash once you have it. I don’t know about you but I can spend it in minutes!
ii) THE BARTER WORLD – is easier for the business owner to get brand new business from customers they’ve never done business with before (because BarterPay does most of the work for you), but a little more work to spend the Barter Credits once you have them. They are easier to get, a bit hard to spend. If you wanted them to be extremely easy to spend, then you would be asking to live in the Rainbow Unicorn World….
iii) THE RAINBOW UNICORN WORLD – doesn’t exist. What?! No way! 🙂 I get it. How awesome would it be to live in a world where money is easy to get AND easy to spend? If barter was easy to get and easy to spend it would overtake the cash world and make it completely disappear. So this world doesn’t exist. It’s the world where fluffy cotton candy clouds exist and I believe it’s where the Care Bears live. Possibly My Little Pony.
Some clients also fixate on one purchase request, (‘I want a computer and nothing else!!’) and won’t move on with any other requests even if what they want is not available and there are a myriad of other products and services they could buy.
2) Refuse to accept Price vs Cost.
BarterPay polices the pricing of products and services in their systems to make sure pricing stays fair. Most exchanges operate at the retail to retail level, so pricing may not be the lowest discounted price, but it is also not price gouging. Smart members know what the cost in their Barter Credits is and are able to make purchasing decisions using that cost. For example, say a retailer’s cost of goods is $0.50 / T$1… and they have two quotes for painting, one all cash for $5000 and one all trade for T$7000. If the retailer is focused on price – they will go for the all cash option. But that is not good math. If they understand cost (and good math), they will proceed with the all trade option. Assuming they are otherwise happy with either painter and price/cost is the deciding factor, the retailer that bartered saved $1500 even though they spent T$2000 more. Why? Remember that $1 for them only costs them $0.50, so the T$7000 only costs them $3500 hard cash. I don’t know about you but I’d rather spend $3500 than $5000! Knowing the math is crucial for making smart decisions.
1) Don’t pay fees on time.
BarterPay only charges fees when they have actually provided service. Nobody likes not being paid for work done. How long would you expect your staff to work for you, if you stopped paying them? 😉
So, if you can avoid these 10 behaviours, you will not only be a great person to work with but you will have an amazing experience with BarterPay and most importantly you will make more money in your business. And who wants to sabotage their own business, right?
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