Sagging sales are frustrating. Life can be injected into them by simply following the Ten Sales Booster Strategic Plan as outlined below.
In a time like this, when the whole world is experiencing economic hardship, it is not surprising that you are losing your edge. Most of your products and services are attracting less attention from people. Fewer customers come in. What then can you do to boost sales? I have come up with the following to help ease out the trouble on your side and boost up your sales again.
1. Consider Making a Change. Change the way your place of business looks and feels. Display your products in a creative way. Repaint the walls. Move the shelves. Redesign your website and make it look better. Make small changes on a monthly basis, and other changes - for example, attractive displays - according to the season. Bigger changes such as remodeling your facilities can be done every few years because they cost more. The key is that changes, however small or big, will attract attention and possible new customers.
2. Check Your Stock. What kinds of titles do you have? Poor titles make poor sales. Build your business on good sellers that fit your mission and market, are well-crafted, well-designed, and priced right. They may sell slowly, but they bring in revenue year after year.
3. Know Your Customers. Who buys your products? Is it parents buying for their children? Is it pastors? The urban middle class? Youth? Market research can take many forms. Some are more elaborate but also more expensive. Others are simple, costing virtually nothing. You will serve your customers better if you know who they are and try to communicate with them. Online business executives can join forum online forums to know what people talk about. Give your website a new look, attach a form for your visitors to fill for onward contact.
4. Boost Your Staff. When things are not going well, check the work of your staff. Do they make customers feel welcome? Do they go out of their way to make customers happy? Do they love your products/services? Do they have selling skills and talent? Have they ever been to a short course or workshop on marketing strategies? Give your staff a boost.
5. Get Involved With The Community. Identify a concern that you are able to address. Perhaps you can team up with educators to promote your products/services in local areas or join some hosts of Internet communities. Whatever community activity you undertake, it should increase the exposure and appreciation of your company and its products.
6. Say "Yes" To Your Company Vision. Improve your social relations. Take a survey of the organizations and some key individuals in your area. Design a strategy. Plan some visits with the people in this group – especially their leaders. Show them samples of your stock. Invite them to your premises. Offer help. Look at these organizations and individuals as a key channel to potential customers. Getting into these organizations and winning over these individuals will give you a unique chance to show what you have to offer.
7. Go Mobile. If customers are not coming to you, go to them. A man I knew had more sales on crowded trains than many stationery sellers did on a regular basis. Sell your products/services at Churches, at conferences, on the streets. While this strategy will give a boost to your sales, it requires closer administration. There are many details: Getting the appropriate licenses, recruiting salespeople, and developing an accounting system. Online marketers can as well learn to drive more visitors to their sites - having more visitors means that 5 out of 20 visitors may become your customer.
8. Make the Headlines. Print and electronic media are often looking for new and unusual items that will attract their audience. Invite a celebrity or a political figure to say something about the value of your products. Get a popular marketer to speak on a theme of interest to the media. Newspaper, radio, and television personnel are generally willing to cooperate with people doing something good. Advertise your website by creating links to other popular sites.
9. Start a Newsletter. Improve communication with your customers. Announce new products/services. Publish comments from influential figures and from customers. Describe how you are improving your services. Include human interest stories. Keep your overall expenses to a minimum.
10. Give Choices To Your Customers. I remember two marketers who displayed a limited number of products. The first had a wide variety of books covering national politics, regional economics, Christian living and Computer Softwares, while the other displayed music and entertainment products. The latter was always crowded with enthusiastic customers while the former was virtually empty, and from what I gathered, the former was forced to close down. Declining sales indicate that something is running low in the life of your company. You need some boosters.
Saturday 4 July 2009
Crisis: A Time To Plan And Grow
What do you do, or plan to do when you hit the bottom line in business? A lot of people may back out, others may commit suicide, but the bottom line remains the best time of planning for the wise…
Economic recession is hitting the world hard. In the heat of this problem, a lot of decisions, planning and measures are being initiated and undertaken by various arms of government and individual groups. Almost everybody is working towards a constant and an unabridged progress and better living, yet a new idea comes into place with the belief that a coin will not properly answer its name without the two sides of it – front and back.
To say the least, everything in life has two sides - the good and the bad side. Picture yourself in the place of a car owner. You just discover that your being in this position is having a comfortable way to get around (good) and having some extra costs (bad). Having more than one car means a lot of pleasure (good) and as well many distractions (bad); yet not having a car means fewer expenses, but more time and energy are required to go from one place to another. Being a business owner is a thing of joy that brings honor, but it also has a great responsibility. An employee has less responsibility, but lacks the power to make things happen. Name anything - we can always find two sides, two different perspectives for it.
That does not mean that the good and the bad sides are always well-balanced. One is usually stronger than the other, and that helps us to make decisions and focus our energy and efforts. Our perceptions of which side is strongest may vary, depending on our values, knowledge, emotions, awareness of the environment, and more.
Like everything else, crises have their good and bad sides. Most often, the bad side is painfully obvious, and the good side is hard to find. When we face a crisis, we may fear the worst and even panic; we might complain, saying that it is not fair; or we might fight to learn from the situation and overcome it. But whichever side you may face, always remember that the two sides in life are what bring out our real stuff. You may be facing a situation as hard as a stone, yet the way you face it, brings out your real self. Let me explain, a stone is a stumbling block and the inattentive person trips over it and gets hurt, yet it is a projectile to the brute – a very good weapon.
An entrepreneur sees a stone as a useful material – he builds with it. It’s a playmate to the children – they jump over it and stone carvers fashion them into beautiful statutes. The two sides are there, but it’s left for the person, the individual to make a choice – either to stumble over the stone and get hurt, or benefit from the stone and grow thereafter.
It is common to hear - especially from those who are not experiencing our headaches - that a crisis is a time to search for opportunities to grow. But it is not easy to feel that way while you have bills to pay, a market to serve, a board to report to, and so many other responsibilities, which always multiply in difficult times.
I once heard that a crisis is diving into a pool - when you do not know how to swim. Maybe there is no one around who can toss a life preserver your way. You keep going down and down. You see the bottom of the pool coming towards you. If you do not panic, when you get to the deepest place, you can push with your feet against the floor and get out of the water to breathe again. From this, you will learn a lesson for the rest of your life. You will avoid diving into a pool before learning how to swim.
But, if for some reason you do fall into another pool, you will remember that you cannot panic to find your way out. When I am in the deepest part of a crisis, I am that much closer to the floor, where I can push to get out of that situation. Ever since I learned this tactics, when I face a crisis I begin to look for opportunities.
However, when you remember that God is faithful, and understand that a temptation is a crisis, then God will prove to you that He will not let you face any crisis beyond what you can bear. Maybe He will send you a life preserver - or remind you to push when you are at the bottom of the pool.
Believe it, every economic crisis on your way in life, though with its attendant global problems, has within it a sign of a good thing to come ahead, and also a reminder that you need to approach life with a new perspective. My prayer is that this economic storm will pass over us for good; and with you and me in this generation; the world has no bigger problems than we can put heads together and solve. With proper planning, we will overcome the crisis, improve the operation of world economy, and grow in the service of God and humanity.
Economic recession is hitting the world hard. In the heat of this problem, a lot of decisions, planning and measures are being initiated and undertaken by various arms of government and individual groups. Almost everybody is working towards a constant and an unabridged progress and better living, yet a new idea comes into place with the belief that a coin will not properly answer its name without the two sides of it – front and back.
To say the least, everything in life has two sides - the good and the bad side. Picture yourself in the place of a car owner. You just discover that your being in this position is having a comfortable way to get around (good) and having some extra costs (bad). Having more than one car means a lot of pleasure (good) and as well many distractions (bad); yet not having a car means fewer expenses, but more time and energy are required to go from one place to another. Being a business owner is a thing of joy that brings honor, but it also has a great responsibility. An employee has less responsibility, but lacks the power to make things happen. Name anything - we can always find two sides, two different perspectives for it.
That does not mean that the good and the bad sides are always well-balanced. One is usually stronger than the other, and that helps us to make decisions and focus our energy and efforts. Our perceptions of which side is strongest may vary, depending on our values, knowledge, emotions, awareness of the environment, and more.
Like everything else, crises have their good and bad sides. Most often, the bad side is painfully obvious, and the good side is hard to find. When we face a crisis, we may fear the worst and even panic; we might complain, saying that it is not fair; or we might fight to learn from the situation and overcome it. But whichever side you may face, always remember that the two sides in life are what bring out our real stuff. You may be facing a situation as hard as a stone, yet the way you face it, brings out your real self. Let me explain, a stone is a stumbling block and the inattentive person trips over it and gets hurt, yet it is a projectile to the brute – a very good weapon.
An entrepreneur sees a stone as a useful material – he builds with it. It’s a playmate to the children – they jump over it and stone carvers fashion them into beautiful statutes. The two sides are there, but it’s left for the person, the individual to make a choice – either to stumble over the stone and get hurt, or benefit from the stone and grow thereafter.
It is common to hear - especially from those who are not experiencing our headaches - that a crisis is a time to search for opportunities to grow. But it is not easy to feel that way while you have bills to pay, a market to serve, a board to report to, and so many other responsibilities, which always multiply in difficult times.
I once heard that a crisis is diving into a pool - when you do not know how to swim. Maybe there is no one around who can toss a life preserver your way. You keep going down and down. You see the bottom of the pool coming towards you. If you do not panic, when you get to the deepest place, you can push with your feet against the floor and get out of the water to breathe again. From this, you will learn a lesson for the rest of your life. You will avoid diving into a pool before learning how to swim.
But, if for some reason you do fall into another pool, you will remember that you cannot panic to find your way out. When I am in the deepest part of a crisis, I am that much closer to the floor, where I can push to get out of that situation. Ever since I learned this tactics, when I face a crisis I begin to look for opportunities.
However, when you remember that God is faithful, and understand that a temptation is a crisis, then God will prove to you that He will not let you face any crisis beyond what you can bear. Maybe He will send you a life preserver - or remind you to push when you are at the bottom of the pool.
Believe it, every economic crisis on your way in life, though with its attendant global problems, has within it a sign of a good thing to come ahead, and also a reminder that you need to approach life with a new perspective. My prayer is that this economic storm will pass over us for good; and with you and me in this generation; the world has no bigger problems than we can put heads together and solve. With proper planning, we will overcome the crisis, improve the operation of world economy, and grow in the service of God and humanity.
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