How to increase your sales without increasing customers.

In many cases sales can be increased by simply solving the right problems within your business. This begins by assessing your capability to fulfill current demand and making sure that your current customers are leaving your business feeling satisfied, and wanting to return.

While many businesses begin to look at growing their business by increasing customers through the door, often capability to serve those customers has not been adequately assessed before doing so. Therefore before taking the step to increase demand from new customers, consider first how you can increase the value of your sales from your current customers.

1.    Identify your bottle necks (Have product available to sell)

If your production line can’t keep up with demand, you have a bottleneck. It may be that one of your work areas can’t keep up with the pace of production, or one of your machines simply can’t produce enough to meet demand. Whatever is causing it, an improvement at the bottleneck can give your business a much-needed productivity boost and significantly reduce your delivery time.

Bottle necks are not always obvious or easily identified and vary widely between businesses. They might include things like:

•    a menu sign that is too small for customers to read making a line move too slowly
•    an employee goes on holiday with no one well equipped to cover their role
•    lack of inventory for one stage in a production line causing delays in the other stages
•    manual processes which could otherwise be fulfilled by automated ones

The result of eliminating bottle necks is increased production and customer satisfaction.

2.    Increasing conversion & retention (Make it easier for customers to buy)

It is important to make the customers prefer your business to others by maximising on quality, unique and innovative products that can outdo similar products in the market.

Make sure customers can quickly and easily understand what you are offering, your fast moving or popular products/services and your new products/services. Some things to consider include:

• where are the displays?  Are they in the right place to generate impulse buying or arranged around companion product groupings?
• How long does the queue usually look?  We want a store which looks well patronised but also shows attentive service and ease of transacting.
• Does the store look packed to the rafters or is it easy to find things?

Make sure you are attentive to your customers’ needs and that your staff are trained well to solve customers’ problems. You may want to greet people at the front of the store with someone who “just happens” to be folding and tidying up. Sometimes, a limited budget is the only thing keeping a customer from purchasing. If this is the case, consider being more flexible with how you accept payments. For example, you could provide layby or instalment options.

3.    Increasing your average sale value (Help customers to buy more)

Look at ways to increase your sales by increasing the value of each sale. This can be done by adding extra value to a product “upsell” or by offering them something that will compliment what they are buying “cross-sell”. To make things easier for your staff it may be worth identifying three sure-fire upsells that team members can use with any sale. It may also be worth reviewing and increasing your prices