Finance Coach - Vol. 24

Finance tip: Income

Show-house sitting. There’s a great opportunity to make some extra money by offering your services as a show-house sitter. These are basically people who sit in a show-house on show days, and hand out information flyers to the potential buyers that come to have a look. You don’t have to be an estate agent, and you get paid for doing extremely little! With agents and realtors battling to sell houses at the moment, they’ve got too much stock on their hands – this means that they generally don’t have enough in-house staff to sit at each and every house in their portfolio on show days. Approach a few agencies in your area, and ask if they’re looking for standby sitters. It works out to be only a few hours at a time, generally over the weekend (when you can spare it), and if you do it reasonably regularly, you can pocket some nice extra cash!

Business tip: Marketing

Always remember the spouse/partner. When you’re looking at selling your product or service to a potential customer, and it involves a little more thought or decision-making, always remember to include their partner or spouse in your approach. For many purchases, people would generally discuss it with their other half before committing to buying, so find a way to get to them as well. If, for example, your target customer is a man, and he needs to think about it, pitch it in a way that would appeal to a woman as well. He can then take this message back home, and bring it into the discussion he’d have with his wife or partner. Include an incentive or gift to win over the other half, get them on your side, and you could find it a lot easier to close the sale…