Editor’s note: This article was first published in August 2022. Its figure of a website for less than 60 euros a year is a 2022 price.
When it comes to increasing a business’s sales, whatever kind of business we have (a hair salon, a café or a large building-materials company), the principles are the same, and we need to tackle three fundamental areas.
Any increase in a company’s sales and profits has to be approached through the following steps, targeting only these goals:
- Get more customers
- Get more sales per customer
- Get bigger sales per customer
There’s no way to grow a business that doesn’t involve one of those three points. A self-employed person with a beauty or hair salon may not be able to take on more customers because they simply don’t have the time. In that case, they should go for more sales per customer and bigger sales per customer. Even so, never rule out more customers. Let’s look at each of these points.
Strategies to sell more in your business
1. Getting more customers for our business
These days there’s little mystery about getting more customers, although we’ll share a few less well-known techniques. The easiest thing would be for customers to come looking for us, which can be achieved by giving our business a facelift or being more active on social media (and also by making our product or service so incredibly good that word of mouth takes care of it). But in fact it’s even easier to go out and look for new customers.
This is where some strategies will work better than others depending on the type of business we have. And although many people think a local shop can’t use the internet to sell more, that isn’t true. Any business can make use of the internet.
Online advertising
This is the method shops use most. Above all, advertising on Facebook or Instagram, which we can target both by audience interests and by specific provinces or towns. To do this we need an eye-catching offer that attracts new people who didn’t know our business.
Good old-fashioned direct advertising
For certain kinds of business, the famous leaflet drop shouldn’t be ruled out. Even large retailers still use it to attract new customers, and it’s a technique that still works.
Collaborations
Pubs and nightclubs do this all the time. The pub gives its customers invitations or tickets to go to nightclub “X”, and vice versa. Why not do it in other sectors? If your business does home renovations and you have the chance to team up with another company that (to give an example) sells and installs floating floors, why not give customers the chance to get a bigger discount for hiring both services?
Estate agents and insurers are another example. The estate agent can arrange a rental or purchase contract for a property. It can lower its property-management fee for the client if the client takes out a policy with the insurance company.
Think about what your company does and I’m sure you’ll be able to work with another business that complements yours. This is a very common practice in the United States, and that’s why huge American corporations end up being formed: in the end, they formally join forces and acquire other small companies.
The problem for small businesses in Spain is that we see the entrepreneurs next door as some kind of competition, so we rarely look for collaborations of this kind.
An offline affiliate system
When we talk about affiliate systems on the internet, I think we all understand what they are. You put a link on your website, and when a customer buys through that link, you get a small commission. But this can be used in the real world in many ways.
I knew a driving school that offered some of its students the chance to earn extra money this way. For every new customer they brought to the driving school, they were paid a commission. Some of these students ended up getting their driving licence completely free. Remember that the moment you turn a customer into a kind of independent sales rep, they’ll be the first to want to bring you customers, because they earn money from it. In this kind of collaboration everyone wins. The driving school gets more customers and the student makes money.
Selling online
One of the best ways to increase your business’s sales is to make proper use of the internet. A website isn’t expensive to run. In fact, you can have your own website for less than €60 a year. That way you can advertise and sell online, asking people who sign up on the site for their details (email, phone and so on). With that you already have a customer database you can send your current offers to.
There are endless ways to get new customers for your business. It all comes down to letting your creativity run free and finding what best suits your particular business.
2. Getting more sales per customer
This part is even easier, because we already have customers. Now it’s all about selling more to each customer. Without a doubt, the best way to increase sales like this is to diversify our product range to some extent.
For example, if you have a hair salon and until now your only income came from haircuts, washes and perms, you could think about having your own product line and working with brands to sell their products at good prices.
See also: Sensory marketing: the science of selling more
You could even sell skin creams or all kinds of products that aren’t necessarily tied to hairdressing. It’s a matter of knowing your customers and knowing what else they could buy from you (because they’re buying it somewhere else).
And once again, we could turn to mergers or collaborations. It’s increasingly common for a different company to set up a space in a beauty salon to offer certain treatments. This second company will either pay rent for the space or pay a commission for each customer it serves. Either way, using the same resources, you’re earning more money without investing anything.
Think about what kinds of collaboration could work in your business. Working with other entrepreneurs is one of the best strategies there is, because both sides can create synergies by drawing on each other’s customers.
3. Getting bigger sales per customer
So far we’ve talked about getting more customers and more sales per customer. Now it’s about increasing the amount each customer spends.
Here I always give the example of a car repair shop that did things so well it got me to switch garages. I first met the owner because my usual garage was closed for the holidays, so I looked for another one.
This man was very clear about how he worked. To him I was a gift: someone who had landed in his garage by pure chance, and he designed his strategy to win me over. After servicing my car and fixing a few things, when I paid he gave me a 20% discount voucher for any other service I needed at his garage, plus a free oil change next time.
Whichever way I looked at it, going back to that garage made financial sense for me. On my next visit, using my discount voucher, he told me he had a good offer on new tyres. At that point, even with the discount, I had spent more money and he had earned more. I left with another discount for my next visit. And this man always found a way to recoup the discount and the freebie he gave me by offering me something else I was interested in.
When I was an executive at building-materials companies, we always designed strategies so that a customer who was only going to spend €5,000 on some materials ended up spending more than €10,000 or €20,000, simply by making them good offers on products they would otherwise have bought elsewhere. If you can meet your customers’ needs and let them get everything they need at a good price in one place, why would they waste time going to other places when they can get it all in one spot and also get bigger discounts?
In short, increasing a business’s sales comes down to thinking about and knowing your customers. Once you know what your customers want and think about how to meet their needs, it’s much easier to design the strategy that best suits your business. It’s really easy to increase your company’s sales if you hit on the right formula.
Summary of strategies to sell more in your business
Finally, there are other issues we can add or bring in, which need to be analysed very carefully depending on the type of business.
Higher prices, more profit
But if you want to justify high prices, you need to be a specialist in your product or service. Customers are always willing to pay more to an expert, rather than pay a little less to someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.
Offer something for free
Offer something free or a significant extra discount in exchange for details or referrals of new customers. You can give a customer a valuable gift in exchange for a list of 10 or 15 referrals who might be interested in your product or service. This is also an idea used by big companies so that your customer also becomes your sales scout for potential customers.
Devote time to the business
If you want to double your business’s sales, you need to temporarily double the time you spend on finding new customers and looking after existing ones, as well as on promoting new products and services.
Work with other companies
If you have a company and want to grow, you should know that other companies want to grow too. You can form strategic alliances with companies that have a customer base similar to yours or a different but compatible service. Exchanging customer details between both companies is a way for you both to benefit from the collaboration, and you’ll also move up the ranks against the competition.
Renegotiate with your suppliers
Sometimes one way to make more money is to save on costs. Money not spent is literally money earned, so depending on your position, it may be worth getting your current suppliers together to talk about lower prices or new discounts. And if they say no, don’t rule out looking for new suppliers, since they’ll be more open to discounts in order to win you as a new customer.
See also: The business lessons these entrepreneurs would give their younger selves
Featured image: Auto Tyre and Garage Services, Leeds Road, Outwood by Stephen Craven, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
