A VALUE-ADDED reseller is one who sells products manufactured by others but extend it by adding features to increase the sales.
This trend is very common among Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) who wish to make a significant amount of profit from every sale. This initiative requires an innovative mindset that can think outside the box.
The article discusses reasons why entrepreneurs must stimulate their product and service sales to increase their revenue from a single source.
The whole essence is to allow entrepreneurs to grasp the idea of cracking the product/service into pieces to yield more revenue that can subsidize other costs of doing business. From the extra features, no matter how small the income may be, many business owners use it for various things such as payments for salaries, tax or rentals.
There are several ways of adding value to resell a product or service at a higher value.
An entrepreneur can order goods from a manufacturer, repackage and rebrand it attractively as well as offer delivery services at an extra fee to maximize profit. For example, an events company can stretch from just buying a marquee from a manufacturing company and offering space for events to catering and decorating at an additional cost.
This also applies to many restaurant owners that have awakened and acknowledge that business is not just a customer coming to your premises to buy food but to go an extra mile to offer delivery services from orders made online by their clients.
This is to mitigate the pressure that customers face by leveraging on this to gain competitive advantage but also beneficial to clients whose time, effort and resources are saved through the one stop shop rather than sourcing items individually.
I was intrigued by how chefs take advantage of opportunities when they are hired to cook for an event. Resilient ones engage busy families to cook weekly meals to ease the pressure of cooking daily at a fee. They ensure that when they are free, they contact their clients to provide this service at a fee which include transport costs.
The same applies to florists who take advantage of people that naturally love plants or flowers. They tap into this market by providing weekly flower arrangements for their client’s offices, homes or business premises.
These are the quick fix kind of small businesses that anybody can do to make money but very few think of optimising their sales from such vast opportunities. However, only the swift grab them to make significant profits.
One thing we must realise is that business dynamics have changed significantly such that even business lines that you least expect to add value when reselling have joined the band wagon. For instance, furniture stores have extended their services by offering cleaning products that go with the furniture such as leather cleaner for leather furniture, beds are being sold with matching linen as a supplement.
Notwithstanding, Poultry farmers also do extend their services from hatching, brooding and selling chicks along with selling medicines for vaccinations, feeders, drinkers and any other items relating to the same. This broad thinking brings out significant streams of income in a business. The idea behind this is to take advantage of the clients by cross selling products that the client may need after purchasing the principal product.
In the end, the value-added seller translates the service into an adaptive sale that is tailored to suit the need of the customer. Adding other components allows you to squeeze out maximum revenue from a single source. This requires creativity as well as innovative ideas that enable you to think outside the box.
Take a chance to look at the products you are buying from manufactures, analyse how you can add attractive features that can earn you leaps and bounds. See how you can expand your product line without worrying about extra costs. This initiative kills two birds with one stone, but you must be good at what you do to bring out the best. Enlighten yourself with creativity that will give you repeat sales. Once established, you will no longer follow customers, but money will follow you.
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The Author is a seasoned banker, has a Bachelor of Arts, honours degree in Business management/a Master of Business Administration from University of Sunderland (UK) and has a Doctorate in Business Administration from the Atlantic International University, United States of America (USA).