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How to increase your sales

Like most business you want to increase your sales or your turnover. By increasing your sales you can increase your profits.

The best way to increase your sales is to sell more products to potential and existing customers which you can do in a variety of ways.

Train your staff to upsell products - they can do this by offering products which are related to a product a customer has already agreed to purchase, but don't just show it - give them the benefit of the extra product, if this product is relatively cheap to add on then more often than not the customer will buy it.

If a product is nearly out of stock - tell the customer that, if they don't buy it now chances are it will be gone tomorrow. Similarly selling unique products can have the same effect - you are in effect making the customer feel special - they've bagged the last one in the store (there maybe another 1000 in the warehouse of course), or they've bagged the last one of it's kind - once it's gone it's gone!

Have special customers - let certain customers in to buy your products before the mass are allowed in to buy them.

Set up a rewards program for your customers - if a customer has a choice of buying from 2 stores and the products are identical then they are more likely to buy from the store that has the rewards program. Reward programs can come in different shapes and sizes - these can be points which build up that you can use to buy things with, money offer vouchers built up over the year, or a free product for every 5 bought.

Provide free samples or demonstrations to customers - if you send out a free sample with an order then people can try it or pass it onto another potential customer. Or the customer can sample products in store which they might not know about without having tried it.

Have a sale - tell all your existing customers in your newsletter that you are having a sale - everybody loves getting products they want for a lower price.

Tweet your products - Every time you add a new product you should be putting out there using your social media such as facebook, twitter and pinterest. Blog about it on your website - explain the benefits of this new product.

Go through your stock inventory - Have you got all your stock listed on your website, is it out on the shop floor so that customers can actually pick it up to buy? It's not going to sell gathering dust in the corner of your warehouse.

Of course if you are just starting out you'll want to increase your customers from zero - if you haven't already got a sales team in place then you should probably get one. If you do have a sales team then you need to incentivise them more. By offering them holidays abroad or unique gifts to reward your top sellers. By keeping your best sales staff sweet - they are more likely to stay with you.

If you have products to sell; either physical or digital then selling on Ebay is quite a cheap way to get yourself out there - you can sell more stuff and you can promote your website by adding a leaflet to your goods everytime you sell on there. This way you can advertise and potentially increase your sales and profits at the same time. You can also reduce your Ebay fees over time by getting people to know about your website.

Most likely you have a website - make sure you use split testing to improve it - don't think it's the best it can be - you need to test out ideas.

If you want to sell to new customers you need to know who your customers are - if your customers are generally over 50 then there is not much point in advertising in places where young people hang out. You need to do market research - question your existing customers - you can offer them a discount if they fill out your survey - another way of increasing your sales.

Don't pigeon-hole your customers. Only recently Toys are Us are going to avoid marketing all their toys "for boys" or "for girls". This makes great sense - why would you stop someone buying one of your products that any sex could use only for them to not buy it because they feel it was aimed at a particular sex.

Make sure you write out a proper business proposal which increase your chances of a sale. To assist you further we have provided over 6000 business proposals.

Once you have found out who your customer is you need to target them with something that will get them to go to your store or visit your website.

There are different techniques to approaching new customers:

  • Cold calling
  • Networking
  • Affiliate marketing
  • Website
  • Direct advertising

Of course these techniques are also used in promoting your products and services to existing customers as well.

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