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UC Sets New First-Quarter Trading Record

Universal Currency (UC) finished the first quarter of 2012 with total gross trading of $1,457,708, which represents a 33% increase over the same period for 2011. For the month of February, UC trading was $465,289 and March finished at $652,896, both of which are all-time trading records for the specific month.

A special thanks goes to UC's International Broker Patty Weston, for both pro-actively brokering the system and laboriously pushing to make sure quality listings were regularly posted on their web site.

Acknowledgment additionally goes out to the entire UC family for helping make it the most robust inter-exchange trading platform in the organized barter industry.

For questions or more info on UC, you may either contact Patty at 321-397-2050 (patty@irta.com) or Ron Whitney at 757-393-2292 (ron@irta.com).

Is Your Trade Exchange Missing Out On Valuable New Business?

If your barter company�s listing on BarterNews.com isn�t current, you are definitely missing out on new business. The web site BarterNews.com receives heavy traffic � with over 150,000 page-views every month. Entrepreneurs and corporate executives check the thousands of articles, the weekly �Tuesday Report,� and the �Contacts Section� of our site. They use the latter to find barter companies with which to do business.

Is your barter company�s listing up-to-date?

To keep your listing current is very easy. See the links below to (A) update any changes to your company�s listing, such as new location, phone number, web site or other information, and (B) if your company has not been listed.

Here�s how to get on board:

To make changes to your listing click here.

For new listings click here.

Eleven States With $4 Gas

As of April 2, the national average price for a gallon of gas was $3.92, according to the Automobile Association of America. In eleven states, the price for regular gas was more than $4 per gallon. Those states are as follows:

• Alaska

• California

• Connecticut

• District of Columbia

• Hawaii

•  Illinois

• Indiana

• Michigan

•  New York

• Oregon

• Washington

Focus ALL Your Marketing Efforts � Both Cash and Trade �

Where They�ll Be Most Effective

It�s not unusual for 70% to 80% of a firm�s cash business to come from 10% to 20% of its customers � often referred to as �A-customers.� Yet don�t confuse these customers as being only cash customers.

What is an A-customer for your firm? Each business needs to develop a specific profile of its best and most profitable customer. High volume is a major ranking criterion. But be prepared to downgrade the slow-paying big spender who consistently demands extra discounts and services.

Take another look at your customer base. How many ��A�s can you identify? Where are your potential ��A�s? What strategies can be developed to keep them coming to you? And what can you be doing to secure additional candidates? This is more than a time-management exercise. It involves rethinking your overall strategic plan. Each company must keep asking itself which client category is most important for both short-term and long-term survival.

An ideal A-customer is one who makes the most significant contributions to your bottom line. This is where your barter customers contribute heavily because their trade business is incremental business ... extra business that can be especially profitable. It�s often the frosting-on-the-cake, so to speak. Sometimes this customer receives a lower level of service because he or she is not demanding, and the business is considered �only trade.�

Yet, when properly analyzed, their business often places them up there in the top category, because they contribute heavily to your profits.

So bring your employees (or team members) together and see how close they can come to designing the perfect A-customer. Write down all the criteria � it is important to your company�s future.

Use your imagination to develop this mythical entity, and you will make some interesting discoveries. Plus you will develop a benchmark that allows you to see your customers, whether cash or trade, in a new way.

Then you can focus your marketing efforts where they will do the most good ... stabilizing and increasing your customer base by adding more A-customers.