3 Tips to Shake up
Sales
Give your
business a boost in a slow market
A
slow market can be especially tough on small businesses, as they are often
run on a shoestring budget which leaves very little room
for the cost cutting and expense reductions that
corporations implement in times like these. Whether it's
real estate or certain sectors within the retail
industry, there are always ups and downs
in various industries.
Since
you don’t have a lot of room to cut costs for your
business, the only other way to boost bottom line
profits is to increase revenue. With that in mind, here
are three things you can do today to shake up your
business and stir up some sales if you find yourself in
a slowing market.
Offer
a Deal –
Discounting is not a long term strategy for success,
unless you’re the size of Wal-Mart and can afford to
make small margins by moving huge volumes of product.
However, when you need to shake things up, a temporary
discount to the price of your product may be the ticket.
It should help to convince those people who are sitting
on the fence to pull out their wallets and make the
purchase. Consumers are more price sensitive these days,
as evidenced by the continuing success of Wal-Mart and
other big box retail stores offering low prices. A
modest discount that you can live with could be a great
tonic to help you grow your sales numbers. Also,
remember that plenty of good things come from sales,
including testimonials, positive word of mouth, and
more. As the old small business saying goes, “activity
breeds activity”.
Get
Feedback from Non-Buyers:
The people who don’t buy from you can sometimes be
more important than those who do. Understanding the
reasons why a potential customer did NOT pull out their
wallet might open your eyes to problems with your
website or your in-store merchandise selection that you
hadn’t noticed before. In sales theory, they call
these things “barriers to purchase”. Take a moment
to contact some recent prospects who didn’t buy your
product. Ask them what the barriers to purchase were for
them. Was your price just a bit to high? Did they not
believe your testimonials? Did they misunderstand your
guarantee? If you can find out what some key barriers to
purchase are for your business, you can get to work on
fixing them. As a thank you for their feedback, you
should offer them a free gift of a nominal value. The
feedback will be well worth the modest expense.
Do
Something Different:
If ever there was a time to try something different,
it’s now. If your newspaper ads aren’t working, try
putting that money towards a news release instead.
Perhaps you can generate some publicity for your
business, which is just as valuable as advertising. Or
perhaps you can pull back on your online advertising
this month and put that money towards a targeted e-mail
campaign. If your business is more traditional, maybe
you can go door to door in your area and meet face to
face with potential customers. By taking a different
approach to promoting your business you may learn
something you didn’t know before that can be used to
your advantage in the future. Your news release may be a
great success. Your e-mail campaign might uncover a new
target demographic that you hadn’t considered. Your
door-to-door sales efforts might teach you more about
the composition of your community.
If you’re not seeing results from your current
marketing efforts, a change in tactics may produce a
more positive result for you. At the very least, you
will usually learn something new about promoting your
business through different marketing tactics.
Boosting
bottom line profits means shaking
up some sales. Short-term discounts, non-buyer feedback,
and a little experimentation when it comes to your
marketing tactics may be helpful in stimulating your
sales in a market that might be somewhat sluggish.
Article
contents © 2007 by marketingyoursmallbusiness.com
Will
Dylan is the Author of “Small Business Big
Marketing” a powerful e-book for small businesses
available through his website www.marketingyoursmallbusiness.com
. You can contact Will at askwill@marketingyoursmallbusiness.com
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