Page 51 - Duct Tape Marketing

35Chapter 3: Seeing Your Product through Your Customers’ Eyes

What about your business?

ߜ What do you sell? How much? How many? What times of year or week or
day do your products sell best?

ߜ What does your product or service do for your customers? How do they
use it? How does it make them feel?

ߜ How is your offering different and better than your competitors’?
ߜ How is it better than it was even a year ago?
ߜ What does it cost?
ߜ What do customers do if they’re displeased or if something goes wrong?

The faster you can answer these questions, the better you understand your
business. And the better you understand your business, the more able you
are to steer its future.

Tallying your sales by product line

Make a list of every kind of product you offer to your customers, along with
the revenue generated by each offering. Concentrate only on the end products
you deliver. For example, a law office provides clerical services, but those
services are part of other products and are not the reason why a person does
business with the attorneys in the first place — so they shouldn’t show up on
the attorney’s product list.

To get you started, Table 3-1 shows products for a bookstore.

Table 3-1 Independent Bookstore Product Analysis

Product Product Revenue Percentage of Revenue

Books $250,000 44%

Magazines $95,000 16%

Coffee and pastries $95,000 16%

Greeting cards and gift items $55,000 9%

Audio books $45,000 8%

Audio book rentals $18,500 3%

Pens and writing supplies $18,000 3%