Is your business currently at full capacity? Do you have any free time in your week? Do you have any holes in your schedule to fill 
up? What about inventory; do you have any excess inventory to move? Do you have any seats to fill at your next event?
I’d like to share with you how you can solve all of these problems and more. For the past 25+ years, I have run one of the largest barter exchanges in the Phoenix area. Through our network, we have helped businesses of all sizes fill their calendars, pack out events, move excess inventory, and stay busy, all while helping grow the businesses bottom line.
If you aren’t aware of how barter networks operate, let me share some insights with you.
A barter network is a network of business owners who have agreed to accept community currency known as barter currency. This is money that can be spent within the network for goods and services that one would normally pay cash for. Let me show you how it would work in a few scenarios.
The Not-So-Busy IT Guy. In this case, we will look at Bob’s business. Bob is a computer and networking genius. He helps people configure networks and keeps their computer systems running and virus free. The problem is that Bob only has enough business to keep him busy 3 days a week. Playing videos games is fun, but his wife is working hard to help them make ends meet, so she isn’t too happy about Bob’s “part time business”. One day, Bob is on LinkedIn looking for customers and he runs across a blog post about how barter can help his business. He contacts us and we discuss how we have a network of over 1,000 local businesses and how we can help get him exposure to that market. Bob decides to join Tradesource and then we start to send Bob clients. Bob now has another day worth of work and he is now earning barter money, which he can use to get his accounting done, since he could not afford it prior. Even better, Bob does great work and gets referrals from a few of his barter customers and now his 5th day is full. Do you see how this worked for Bob? It could work the same for you.
John and His Full Warehouse. John’s company sells consumable goods. Business is decent but he overbought inventory for the holiday season and now he has a warehouse full of product that may go bad if he doesn’t sell it. If it goes bad, he will lose all of the money invested in that inventory, roughly $2,000. John contacts Tradesource and we go to work promoting his products and we help him move $2,000 worth of product. His Tradesource customers refer him additional customers and he is able to sell $1,500 more worth of product and as he sees the momentum, he starts to see the rest of the inventory sell (bringing in an additional $1,500). In the end, he earns $2,000 in barter currency and another $3,000 in cash business, so not only did he not lose his money he made a profit in both cash and barter. If you have an inventory based business, could this be a help to you?
Sally the Stressed Event Promoter. Sally has one job; fill the room with warm bodies. The challenge is that it can be hard to fill rooms, especially in the Phoenix market. This event has been long planned, so it must go on. Sally is worried that if there aren’t enough people in the room, the sponsors won’t be happy and she is in jeopardy of losing her job. Thankfully, Sally found out about Tradesource and how we can help sell out events by offering tickets to our network. She quickly joins and we promote her event to our members via email and social media. Now she has more interest than she can handle. In fact, she asks her venue to open up some more seats to accommodate the new influx of customers; both from our network and from those they are referring now that they are all talking about the event on social media. Are you seeking to fill an event? Be like Sally… call Tradesource today!
While the names and stories have been changed, they are real scenarios of how our network works. If you have time in your schedule, excess inventory, a room to fill, or just want to learn more about how Tradesource can help your business, please contact us via email (socialmedia-at-tradesource.net) or by phone at 602-996-1557.