3 Tried and Tested Strategies to Increase Sales

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When it comes to increasing your sales and income there are many strategies that you can employ. As a matter of fact if you do a search online for the term “increase sales” you will find hundreds and thousands of results filled with tips and advice to help you reach your sales goals. However, this can lead to overwhelm; you are not going to be able to implement all of those topics right away.  It is best to start with a few of the best, perfect them and then go on from there.  Which is why in this post we are going to focus on 3 tried and tested strategies to increase sales.  These are strategies that I like to use myself.

Even those these seem simple, they are extremely effective and when used properly they will definitely increase sales.

Strategy 1 – Your customers buying experience.

One of the first things we are going to talk about is making the consumers buying experience as easy as possible. While there is a lot of information that you may want to collect from your new customer it is important not to ask for too much information up front.

Instead, ask for the bare minimum from the customer, to enable them to complete their purchase as quickly as possible. If you want to gather more demographics from them later on, you can follow-up by sending a thank you note, asking them to fill out warranty information or take a quick customer survey.

I know this may not seem like a big deal to you, but you may be surprised to find out how many sales you are losing because your checkout process is either too complicated, or asks for too much information.

Don’t make your customer have to figure out how to buy your products or make them jump through any hoops. They will only get frustrated and if they don’t think about giving up immediately, they will ‘put it off until later’; the unfortunate fact for you is that later never comes and that ready to buy customer is now gone.

I have seen many companies focus on a process that makes it simpler for them and eliminates the need for them to ‘go back to the customer’ to get more information.  You need to focus instead on the customer.  While it might seem inconvenient or unprofessional in your eyes to ask for more information after the purchase, from your customers perspective it is not a bad thing.  Getting an email directly after purchase thanking them for the order and requesting further information creates an immediate contact and puts the customer at ease that things are happening.  Compare that to the customer getting all the information required, not being able to finish the payment process because they are missing one piece of info they over looked and then giving up.  Asking for extra information is not unprofessional, it shows you are actually working through the process and dealing with their order.

Take a moment to evaluate your purchase process.  Is it quick?  Is it simple for the customer?  If not, why not?  Is there anything you can eliminate to make the purchase phase quicker and easier.  If you require certain information, can you not get most of this information after the purchase?

Strategy 2 – Stress the benefits

When it comes to closing a sale it is important that you talk about the benefits of your product or service and save the features for later. Your customers do not want to know all the details on how your product or service works they just want to know how it will benefit them or solve a problem they have.

Benefits show the value of your product much better than features. Let your prospective customer know exactly what your product can do for them. Some questions you could ask yourself to determine how you help your customers are below:

• Does your product/service help your customers make more money?
• Does your product/service help your customers have more time?
• Does your product/service reduce stress for your customer?
• Does your product/service help give your customers more energy?

This is what your potential customers want to know – what will your product do for them.  By having your marketing focused on how you help your customer with fundamental problems you will sell more products and services.

Re-evaluate your marketing material to ensure it focuses on the benefits the customer will receive instead of the features.  Amend and improve where necessary.

Strategy 3 – Good, honest communication.

Communication is key to increasing sales. You must follow-up with potential leads in a timely manner. By keeping the lines of communication open you gain trust and credibility; this will result in more sales of your product or service.

You can achieve this by encouraging your customers to ask questions. Always try your best to put them at ease and let them know that they are not bothering you or wasting your time by asking you a question. Most customers do not use a product/service to it’s fullest as they do not feel comfortable asking questions.  This means that they could end up going to your competitor who they feel is ‘offering more’ when your product/service actually offers the same, if not more than the competitor. This also provides an avenue to make sales of other products; they might very well ask you if you know how they can do XYZ, if you have another product/service/add on that does XYZ, you make another sale you would not otherwise have made.  Ensure you answer each question honestly and promptly.  If you do not know the answer to a customer’s question, do not ignore them, rather tell them you will find an answer for them as soon as possible; then find an answer and go back to them.

Creating a feedback form for each product/service which you send a few days/months after purchase will help you get valuable feedback from your customers; it will also make them feel more comfortable to come to you with questions at a later time.  You can also utilize this form to point out extra benefits and features that might not be well known; simply add ‘have you tried XYZ, this cool feature can save you tons of time!’

Summary.

There are many ways to increase sales, but doing the following will help set a solid foundation to grow from:

• Re-evaluate your Purchase Phase with the customer in mind;
• Ensure all your marketing material stresses the benefits of your product/service – not the features;
• Create and implement a Feedback form to encourage customers to ask questions;

While these are only a few simple things you can do they are all tried, tested and guaranteed to be effective when it comes to increasing sales.