By: Frayed Passport
If you run any kind of retail business—whether online or in person—you’ll want to make sure you’ve got enough savings to cover unexpected or increased expenses. Whether you’ve been through a quiet period, taken on some debt, or if product manufacturing and other prices have bumped up, the best way to make sure you have a buffer is of course to boost your sales.
Easier said than done, right?
Well, there are a lot of options here—read on to see just a few of them!
Focus On Delivering Excellent Customer Service
You won’t make many—or any—sales in your retail business if you’re not taking care of your customers. It’s first on this list because it should be your north star.
Yes, you can do plenty of other things to boost sales—like focusing more on outreach—but ensuring that your current customers (as well as customers close to making a purchasing decision) are content is of utmost importance.
By really focusing on giving your customers exactly what they need and being as helpful and generous as your budget will allow—which could include offering safe and secure retail payments, for example—you’ll soon be able to build up a loyal following that will come back to you, over and above your competition, and who will tell their friends and family about you.
And remember: word of mouth is the best advertising because it’s free and it comes directly from people who have experience with your company and your products!
Provide Great Training for Your Team
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels
You can just let your customers wander about the store and buy what they need and then leave again—that will bring you some income.
But you can improve their experience and increase your revenue by investing in a good team who can sell, ensuring that your customer is kept happy, buys what they need, buys more than they need, and feels good about their purchases.
Hiring the right people is just the first step to building a fantastic team. The next is to teach them to sell in the way that suits your business; you may find that customers are put off by the “hard sell” method and instead react more positively to a more subtle approach, with your team members finding cues within their customer conversation that can help make that sale.
This isn’t always easy, which is why hiring the right people to start with and continually training them is vital—it’s hard work, but the results will speak for themselves.
Promote Yourself Locally
If you have a locally-based store, then you’ll need your local community to know about it—they’re your core demographic, after all. You can certainly promote yourself online, and that’s an excellent idea, but remember that if you are based in one location, people might not want to travel to you. This is why your own community is so important and why promoting yourself locally will increase your retail sales.
Ideally, you’ll want to make yourself part of the community by helping out where you can, sponsoring events, and generally being out and about, among other people who could become your customers. The more involved you can be, the more you’ll be not only noticed, but admired—and that’s going to bring you a lot more sales.
Featured image by Jennifer Bonauer on Unsplash