Are you considering becoming a barter trader? Well, you’re not alone. Scores of intelligent people are turning to the kind of barter-based living employed by millions of Earth’s inhabitants before in the distant past. They were able to survive and advance humanity through a lifetime of barter trading.
There are all kinds of advantages to trading goods and services by barter. Here’s just a small selection of three advantages to consider, as you get started down a path of bartering for the products and services you need.
1. Barter makes you a better negotiator in life
What parts of your life can benefit from understanding how to be a better negotiator? Every single aspect can be improved by that!
Perhaps you have a job where you feel you’re underpaid. Learning how to barter has its advantages there. In barter, you learn to listen to what the other person needs and wants, and find a way to provide it, while at the same time getting what you are after. So in the example of being underpaid at work, you might ask your boss what it is that he or she needs that would justify paying someone to do it.
In listening to the list of things that the boss says are needed or desired, you can immediately figure out what you can do, what you can’t do, and how you could explain that some of the things you’re doing now may in fact answer your boss’s needs.
When you show the value is there, and get an agreement beforehand that it’s worth money, then it will become easier to ask for that money when the value has been demonstrated. And that’s a successful negotiation!
2. Barter makes you a better listener
In the above example, do you see how the process calls for good listening skills? When you’re trading items, and creating value for the other person, it’s vital to listen.
It’s nearly impossible to barter anything without the ability to listen well; and listening is the key to great sales and great interactions with people.
3. You save money
Bartering saves you money, and reduces your need to earn paper money. When you’re able to acquire products and services in exchange for other bartered products and services, you’ve learned to bypass the system of paper money. And that, of course, saves you money!
