As a small business owner, learning how to elevate sales volume to old and new customers is crucial to stay afloat and achieve profitability. Most businesses aim to boost sales through two main approaches: selling more to existing customers or attracting new ones. Increasing sales to existing customers is often more cost-effective and strategic than finding new ones because once you’re good at maxing out sales to existing customers, each new customer is automatically worth more.
Increasing sales to existing customers
Anything you do to make it easy for your customers to spend money with you will help. For certain types of businesses, it also makes sense to build a deeper relationship with customers.
Reduce barriers to buying
The first step to increase sales is to reduce any barriers that prevent your customers from making a purchase. Analyze your ordering process to see if there are any opportunities left on the table. Can customers contact you with ease? Are quotes sent in a timely manner? Make ordering easier by looking into online ordering or convenient payment options. Secondly, could billing be more seamless? Customer-friendly billing methods, like flat fees or installment payments can encourage repeat business.
Sales promotions
Sales promotions are a go-to for boosting sales, but simply discounting goods or services cuts into your margin, which can threaten profitability. Promotions can be executed more strategically through “bundling” promotions or loyalty-based discounts. Bundling promotions can attract higher customer spend while reducing the overall loss in margin whereas loyalty-based discounts encourage repeat purchases, which will offset the cost of discounts with increased sales volume.
Cross-selling
Cross-selling is another method that can help increase sales by promoting related products or services to customers based on their current purchase. This can be done by either placing items together in a display or recommending complementary products during the sales process. Note that cross-selling is different to upselling, where you promote an upgraded or higher-end version of the product or service.
Expand your range of products or services
One way to sell more, is to offer more. When adding new products or services to your offering, start by researching. Ask customers what they need from you, ask businesses like yours what they’re selling that you’re not, and ask suppliers to suggest products that go together. You can also look at different ways of packaging your offer. Sometimes just reframing or renaming a service or product for different customers can have the same effect as expanding. Besides running a pop-up shop, a chocolate maker might pitch themselves as a supplier for restaurants and caterers, for example.
Relationship marketing
Moving from a transactional mindset to a relationship mindset can help some businesses improve sales. Creating these long-lasting customer connections encourages repeat business. This can be done by creating mailing lists for regular communication, scheduling newsletters on a regular basis to stay top-of-mind, loyalty clubs that give customers special privileges, and hosting engaging events.
Finding new customers
Once you’ve exhausted avenues for building on existing customers, exploring ways to find new customers will boost sales.
Expand your presence (physical or online)
Expanding to new locations can increase brand exposure and reach new markets, but it can also be expensive. Instead, you can start small by sharing resources or partnering with complementary businesses. Additionally, expanding online can be cost-effective and allow you to reach customers regardless of geographical constraints.
Broaden your marketing
You can increase sales by changing when, where, and how you speak to potential customers. Broaden your marketing by experimenting with digital marketing to create content that’s shared socially. You can also tap into word-of-mouth marketing which is highly effective and cost-effective. People trust recommendations from friends and family, making referrals a powerful tool for businesses. Offering incentives for referrals is an option, but try to simply ask for recommendations first.
To dive deeper into tips and tricks to increasing sales, visit the full guide here.
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