Posts Tagged ‘Barter Dollars’
Earn Cash While Selling on Trade

Many businesses can also generate cash as a by-product of earning Trade Dollars. Hotels and resorts are a good example of this process.

The mortgage, insurance and utilities on a hotel are fixed, whether the hotel is fully occupied or nearly empty. The incremental cost of filling an unused room is minimal. To pay for the extra house cleaning, laundry, and complimentary items such as soaps and shampoos, it costs about $20 per room night.

But just think about how much cash revenue that twenty dollars can generate. The people staying in that room order room service, buy sodas from the machine, magazines and gifts from the gift shop and eat in the restaurant. It’s even more lucrative if it is a resort. When a destination resort offers sports, tours and entertainment, visitors spend a lot of money on peripherals.

The hotel has generated cash it would not have had while producing full value for the room in Trade Dollars. In addition to the new cash flow, the hotel can use the Trade Dollars it earned from selling excess unsold inventory to offset cash expenses.

There are many other types of companies that can also generate new cash sales from participating in a barter exchange. These include, auto repair facilities that also sell vehicles, computer repair companies that sell computers and HVAC service companies that sell equipment. The companies can offer their repair and maintenance services on trade and also market vehicles, computers and equipment to these new customers to generate new cash sales.

 
Why Barter?

Bartering should accomplish one of three things:

Filling downtime with customers that might not normally spend cash on your service.  Or selling stock at regular retail for barter instead of marking it down for a sale for cash.

Conserve cash by buying things you need (or want) with barter dollars instead of cash.  Use the cash to reinvest in your business.  You can also give employees bonuses in barter dollars.  That can start a new incentive program or even give you the ability to give some sort of bonus in a year that might not have seen any bonus otherwise.

Improve your lifestyle.  Often when a business is new or in a down time, owners cut back on personal indulgences to put money into the company.  Barter dollars can be used to dine out, for vacations, for gift giving, anything that would be considered an indulgence if you paid cash.