One of the problems my consulting clients consistently ask me about especially if they are in the information marketing business (most of them are) has to do with "What should you be selling your customers?"

Here's what Microsoft did in a similar situation:

Back in June, Microsoft announced they were planning to come up with some kind of music subscription service, to compete with Yahoo... Apple's iTunes Store... and Napster.

Microsoft and all these other companies realize the future of home computing is going to focus more and more around digital entertainment and consumer electronics.

According to market analyst Matt Rosoff, Microsoft wants "to get as much use as possible for the PC as a home entertainment device, and one way to do that is to ensure there is a lot of readily available content."

That makes good sense, right?

You see, Microsoft's already the provider of the media player (Microsoft Media Player) used by a lot of the other content providers, and they know, all they need to do is run some display advertising on your Microsoft Media player when you're using it, and after a while, you'll click on the ads enough times and look at enough offers, that eventually... enough people will subscribe to the monthly music service!

I'll challenge you here: Ask yourself what kind of help are you giving your customers and clients, that will allow you to "expand" and get ALL of their business in this area.

For instance, let's say you're a broker of joint ventures. Meaning, you find two people who aren't competitors, but whose customers are likely to be buyers of one another's services, and so you bring them together... set up an "arrangement" so the two of them can start making money from each other's list, and then you take a piece of each deal.

Couldn't you al

so start offering to do all the administrative and accouinting work that comes with each of these arrangements?

Or maybe you can offer to take over the adminitrative and accounting work for ALL of their business in general?

Meaning, the extra profits that come in as a result of your brokering deals, now have NO additional cost (or time, which is even more important) because now you're also handling all the selling... billing... and fulfillment... for them.

You're taking care of all the other daily minutia your customers HATE, but usually get caught up with because it's a part of business -- albeit an unproductive part.

What I'm saying is, think about all the related services you're not involved with, as it relates to servicing your clients, and ask yourself, "What else could you be doing, without too much extra effort on your part, but that will be a HUGE added extra value for your clients".

And then... just... start doing it!

Or even better yet, ask your clients what else you could be doing for them.

Now go sell something.

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