Real World Advice for Retailers - How To Increase Sales Even When Sales Are Slow
Real World Advice for Retailers - How To Increase Sales Even When Sales Are Slow
When business slows, most retailers just throw money at the problem. They buy more advertising space in the local newspaper or more commercial time on the TV and radio stations. While this may have an impact, it is a very expensive way to get people to visit your store and maybe not the best use of your cash reserves considering that you may not have as much cash coming in as you are used to having. So what do you do? How do you get people to come to your store without spending a lot of money on advertising?
The answer is simple: get to know your customers when business is good. I can hear many of you saying, but Mike, I do know my customers. I know many of my customers by their first name and even some personal things about some of my long-standing customers. For example, you say, I know that Mr. Smith, likes to buy his wife something from my store for their anniversary each year. Well, you might know enough about your customers to have meaningful conversations with them when they are in your store, or to help them find the perfect item, but do you know what it takes to entice them to come back into your store when business is slow? Do you even know how to contact your customers?
To illustrate my point let me tell you why I buy a lot of my clothes from a specific retailer in my area. Actually, he isn’t all that close to me; in fact, I have to drive 30 minutes across town to get to him, while there are a number of men’s clothing stores only blocks away from me. You might think I am a bargain hunter but, actually, he is one of the more expensive clothiers in the area. Not the most expensive by any means, but well above department store prices. So you must be thinking that I am either really tall or really overweight and I need custom suits and shirts made to measure, but actually I am lucky in that I can wear most things right off the rack. So why do I drive across town and pay good money to buy clothes that don’t need to be custom fitted? Because I like the way the owner makes me feel when I go to his store. Well, you say, my customers like the way I make them feel too – how does this help me get them back into my store when sales are slow? Well, not only does the owner know how I like my pants to fall on my shoes and what colors look best on me, but he also reaches out to me when he hasn’t seen me for a while. Let me repeat that in case you missed it – he reaches out to me when he hasn’t seen me for a while! He keeps track of when I was in his store last and calls me when he hasn’t seen me for a while or when he buys new inventory that he thinks I will like. He doesn’t send an impersonal email or a direct mail piece that may end up in my garbage before I get to see it. He picks up the phone and calls me in my office and chats with me for 30 seconds and then invites me to come and see the latest merchandise he just bought. It may take me a couple of weeks to find the time to visit him but every day, at one point in the day, I will find myself thinking about when I will be able to squeeze in a quick visit to my favorite clothier. Eventually I will make it over to see him and he will make me feel like I am his only customer and I will buy something from him – often, I will buy a lot from him.
So don’t wait until business is slow, start getting your customers’ contact information right now. If you have a computerized POS system, start collecting your customers’ phone numbers and tracking their visits as well as their purchases. If you don’t have a computer, use recipe cards and write down the date each time they come into your store (whether they purchased something or not) and how much they spent.
Collecting customer information is a skill that you and your staff need to develop. Don’t ask for everything all at the same time; do it in stages. Nobody likes standing at the checkout counter for five minutes after they have paid for their merchandise so that you can enter all their contact information into your computer. The first time a customer comes in and purchases from you, just get their name and phone number. Tell them that you sometimes call your customers to let them know when new stock arrives. During that visit, try to find out something meaningful about the customer, like product preferences or what they do for a living. The second time, ask them for their email address so that you can send them notices of special unadvertised sales that only your preferred customers are invited to. This time find out something new about the customer, the name of their spouse, if you sell to both genders; or children, if you own a toy store; or pet, if you own a pet shop (you get the idea.) Add this information to their customer file/card. By the time your customer visits you three times, you will know more about them than most of their co-workers and, more importantly, you will know multiple ways to reach out to your customers and draw them back into your store.
Use the following list of ideas to help you fuel a new, proactive direct marketing initiative for your store.
1. Use a computer or recipe cards; it doesn’t matter how you maintain your customer list. In the words of that famous running shoe company – just do it! A customer database is the single most important asset you can own, next to your inventory. With a customer database you can reach out and touch people that are already familiar with your store and your employees and have a good impression of their last buying experience with you.
2. Track the amounts purchased by your customers then make sure you contact your top 100 customers every quarter.
3. Conduct a direct mail campaign inviting your customers to join your “preferred Customers Club” then give them a coupon for 10% off their next purchase if they sign up.
4. Start a monthly e-magazine that keeps your customers informed of new developments in your marketplace as well as new products coming in the future, special events, and sales. Use this platform to highlight your employees so that your customers will feel more comfortable with them the next time they come into your store.
5. Hold a special, invitation-only sale for customers that have already bought from you, or have purchased a certain amount within the last year. Send out formal, hand written invitation cards three weeks before the event and follow-up with phone calls the week before.
6. Make sure you train all your staff to collect customer information. Before you know it, you will have hundreds of customers that you can call to drive up sales whenever business is slow.
7. If you have staff members that are really good at developing relationships with your customers, encourage them to reach out to a segment of your customer base that they can call their own. If a customer always deals with a certain employee, he/she will likely respond better to a phone call from someone they know.
So what are you doing with your down time? Are you reading the paper, trying to figure out which ones to put ads into or are you calling your best customers and giving them a reason to come and spend more money in your store?
Real World Advice for Retailers How To Increase Sales Even When Sales Are Slow - To learn more about this author, visit Michael Steg's Website.
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So you have a successful retail business; or you are on your way to building a successful retail business. You have a good group of employees that are well trained and knowledgeable about your merchandise. You have excellent relationships with your suppliers so you always get stock when you need it. Sales are increasing quarter over quarter, year over year. Business is great right now. But what about when sales slow down because of forces beyond your control, like a slowing economy or greater competition moving into your marketplace? How will you attract customers to your store then? Perhaps you have already seen better days and are experiencing a slowdown in sales right now.
When business slows, most retailers just throw money at the problem. They buy more advertising space in the local newspaper or more commercial time on the TV and radio stations. While this may have an impact, it is a very expensive way to get people to visit your store and maybe not the best use of your cash reserves considering that you may not have as much cash coming in as you are used to having. So what do you do? How do you get people to come to your store without spending a lot of money on advertising?
The answer is simple: get to know your customers when business is good. I can hear many of you saying, but Mike, I do know my customers. I know many of my customers by their first name and even some personal things about some of my long-standing customers. For example, you say, I know that Mr. Smith, likes to buy his wife something from my store for their anniversary each year. Well, you might know enough about your customers to have meaningful conversations with them when they are in your store, or to help them find the perfect item, but do you know what it takes to entice them to come back into your store when business is slow? Do you even know how to contact your customers?
To illustrate my point let me tell you why I buy a lot of my clothes from a specific retailer in my area. Actually, he isn’t all that close to me; in fact, I have to drive 30 minutes across town to get to him, while there are a number of men’s clothing stores only blocks away from me. You might think I am a bargain hunter but, actually, he is one of the more expensive clothiers in the area. Not the most expensive by any means, but well above department store prices. So you must be thinking that I am either really tall or really overweight and I need custom suits and shirts made to measure, but actually I am lucky in that I can wear most things right off the rack. So why do I drive across town and pay good money to buy clothes that don’t need to be custom fitted? Because I like the way the owner makes me feel when I go to his store. Well, you say, my customers like the way I make them feel too – how does this help me get them back into my store when sales are slow? Well, not only does the owner know how I like my pants to fall on my shoes and what colors look best on me, but he also reaches out to me when he hasn’t seen me for a while. Let me repeat that in case you missed it – he reaches out to me when he hasn’t seen me for a while! He keeps track of when I was in his store last and calls me when he hasn’t seen me for a while or when he buys new inventory that he thinks I will like. He doesn’t send an impersonal email or a direct mail piece that may end up in my garbage before I get to see it. He picks up the phone and calls me in my office and chats with me for 30 seconds and then invites me to come and see the latest merchandise he just bought. It may take me a couple of weeks to find the time to visit him but every day, at one point in the day, I will find myself thinking about when I will be able to squeeze in a quick visit to my favorite clothier. Eventually I will make it over to see him and he will make me feel like I am his only customer and I will buy something from him – often, I will buy a lot from him.
So don’t wait until business is slow, start getting your customers’ contact information right now. If you have a computerized POS system, start collecting your customers’ phone numbers and tracking their visits as well as their purchases. If you don’t have a computer, use recipe cards and write down the date each time they come into your store (whether they purchased something or not) and how much they spent.
Collecting customer information is a skill that you and your staff need to develop. Don’t ask for everything all at the same time; do it in stages. Nobody likes standing at the checkout counter for five minutes after they have paid for their merchandise so that you can enter all their contact information into your computer. The first time a customer comes in and purchases from you, just get their name and phone number. Tell them that you sometimes call your customers to let them know when new stock arrives. During that visit, try to find out something meaningful about the customer, like product preferences or what they do for a living. The second time, ask them for their email address so that you can send them notices of special unadvertised sales that only your preferred customers are invited to. This time find out something new about the customer, the name of their spouse, if you sell to both genders; or children, if you own a toy store; or pet, if you own a pet shop (you get the idea.) Add this information to their customer file/card. By the time your customer visits you three times, you will know more about them than most of their co-workers and, more importantly, you will know multiple ways to reach out to your customers and draw them back into your store.
Use the following list of ideas to help you fuel a new, proactive direct marketing initiative for your store.
1. Use a computer or recipe cards; it doesn’t matter how you maintain your customer list. In the words of that famous running shoe company – just do it! A customer database is the single most important asset you can own, next to your inventory. With a customer database you can reach out and touch people that are already familiar with your store and your employees and have a good impression of their last buying experience with you.
2. Track the amounts purchased by your customers then make sure you contact your top 100 customers every quarter.
3. Conduct a direct mail campaign inviting your customers to join your “preferred Customers Club” then give them a coupon for 10% off their next purchase if they sign up.
4. Start a monthly e-magazine that keeps your customers informed of new developments in your marketplace as well as new products coming in the future, special events, and sales. Use this platform to highlight your employees so that your customers will feel more comfortable with them the next time they come into your store.
5. Hold a special, invitation-only sale for customers that have already bought from you, or have purchased a certain amount within the last year. Send out formal, hand written invitation cards three weeks before the event and follow-up with phone calls the week before.
6. Make sure you train all your staff to collect customer information. Before you know it, you will have hundreds of customers that you can call to drive up sales whenever business is slow.
7. If you have staff members that are really good at developing relationships with your customers, encourage them to reach out to a segment of your customer base that they can call their own. If a customer always deals with a certain employee, he/she will likely respond better to a phone call from someone they know.
So what are you doing with your down time? Are you reading the paper, trying to figure out which ones to put ads into or are you calling your best customers and giving them a reason to come and spend more money in your store?
Real World Advice for Retailers How To Increase Sales Even When Sales Are Slow - To learn more about this author, visit Michael Steg's Website.
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
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Anne BarrAnne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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