So now is the first step in looking at business strategy, your product line strategy. What is your product line strategy or business line strategy? How are you going to expand your product line over time? Now this doesn&#39;t matter whether you&#39;re just starting out, whether you&#39;re about to start, or you&#39;ve been going for a little while. Even at the very beginning as you&#39;re planning your business, you say you only have one product or one service. It doesn&#39;t matter. You have to think of expansion in the future and start it from the beginning, and I&#39;ll explain why right now.

There&#39;s an old adage in business; grow or die. I heard that for the first time from my accountant many, many years ago, 25 or so years ago. It really is true. But, let&#39;s take a look at how you might grow. If you&#39;re going to grow, most likely you&#39;re going to have to either expand your products and that could be to related products, or it could be variations of versions of the current product you have.

Now why do I say related products? A lot of products are complimentary in that you buy one, and you will probably have a large percentage of people who buy another. It reminds me of two different scenarios. One was when we studied early about complimentary products if you ever noticed in the ads in supermarket magazines, you&#39;ll see things like a sale on bacon or there might be a sale on eggs. Why is there a sale on one and not the other? Because the one draws you in but then you will buy the other more than likely. The same thing with peanut butter and jelly.

A lot of different things go together, i.e. complementary. I saw a commercial oh probably about 10 years ago that really made a point that I had been trying to make so many times and had made, but it was a lengthy thing. Now I could just point to the commercial. You might remember it but if not, I&#39;ll replay the idea.

There was a guy who worked in the store. This is a supermarket. He&#39;s over in the vegetable area, and he picks up a bag of those little bitty carrots and he says loudly, &quot;Why are we selling these carrots?&quot; Now all of a sudden a voice from overhead comes loudly and says, &quot;Because the same people who buy those carrots are the ones who buy those expensive cheeses that we have in the cheese section.&quot;

Now another story was I went to a supermarket and they had ... it was a relatively small supermarket, but it was the one that was close ... nearby to us. They stopped selling whole milk. Now I went up to them and said, &quot;What are you doing this for? How come you seem to have run out?&quot; They said, &quot;No, no we don&#39;t sell that anymore. There&#39;s not enough people buying it.&quot; I had to teach them a little bit of economics. You guessed it. I said, &quot;Well, the problem is if you don&#39;t have whole milk and I want it, it is considered a staple, not just in my house but in many other homes. Even those few people who want to buy w

101 – Product Line Strategy, Service Strategy

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