The results of selling features and functionality is your customer often commodities your offering, reduces your value to a spec sheet, and compares your features and functionality to other vendors in an eventual "price war" to win their business.

When I talk about a business "orange", I am speaking about difference you offer as compared to your competition. Note, I am not talking about your product or service features and functionality...I'm talking about uniqueness you offer your customer. This could be expertise behind your solution, your customer support willingness or availability, your terms of business, your guarantee, your price model, your unique perspective on benefits your customer values, etc. The objective here is to position yourself in sales opportunity in such a way as to never allow your competition to draw a true apples-to-apples comparison of your offering. You always remain an "orange" to a competitor's "apple"...regardless of opportunity.

It is amazing how often I've encountered companies that let their customer and competitor draw apple-to-apple comparisons of their product or service when they easily could have raised stakes by making their heritage, pedigree, past success or creativeness in their market change their customer's buying criteria. By selling your "orange" you insulate yourself from direct comparisons to other vendors and in turn, make it more difficult for your customer to commoditize your offering. This means you are more protected from having to discount your offering. A premium price can often be justified.

Get More Repeat Business An important question to ask yourself is if your business or offering disappeared tomorrow, what would your customers really loose? Do you offer anything beyond your products that create loyalty in your install-base of customers?

You want to look for opportunities to add value well beyond your basic offering. The objective is to have your customer value something about your relationship with them beyond your basic offering. This value could be information, insight or consultation, possibly supported by a position of preeminence. Value in this context can be delivered via newsletters, whitepapers or periodic presentations on subjects such as market updates, industry trends, topics of interest, etc.

Do you communicate with your customers regularly? While not appropriate for every business, do you have a 90 or 120 day business review with your new customers? Can you become a source of information that your customer can't live without?

Look for Opportunities to Align Your Price Model for Recurring Revenue Look for recurring revenue within your current offering. When your customers purchase from you, do they pay once or are there opportunities for them to purchase time and again?

For service offerings, recurring revenue may be obvious; customers likely buy from you each time they consume your service. However, there may be additional means to recurring revenue by packaging your services differently that they are now or adding new services that are natural additions to your core offering.

For product offerings, there may be these same natural reasons to purchase again and again. If you have more than one product or service offering, are they linked? Do your customer's see more than one product or service when they look at what you have to offer? Does your pricing model and product "packaging" lend itself to recurring or one time purchases?

Look for a service offering for each product you have in marketplace. Support and maintenance offerings are often thought of, but look beyond obvious. Are there customer needs for consulting or informational solutions in support of your products and services? Don't overlook opportunities to partner in providing add-on products and services

Getting more repeat business is about customers buying routinely...and it starts well before first purchase. The easiest sale you ever make should be to an existing customer.

Corporate executives, business owners, investors, and senior management rarely have time for sales people; they always have time for businesspeople. The reason is businesspeople address issues of their primary concern – enabling business. Salespeople generally want to just talk about their products and services.

As a business owner or executive, which meeting would you welcome most: a conversation with a businessperson regarding growth and opportunity in your business or a features and functionality presentation about a product or service?