Doubling sales doesn't mean you need to double what you are currently doing. Photo / 123RF
If you would like to double your sales in 2017 here is a simple plan that may help...
Step 1: Focus on small improvements in three critical areas.
The good news about doubling your sales is that you don't necessarily have to double what you are currently doing in terms of marketing and advertising and effort.
Here's a good example...
Imagine you have a business with 1,000 customers who each buy from you once a year and spend $100 each time.
Your total sales in a year are $100,000. (1,000 times 1 times 100.)
Now if you increase these three figures by only 30 per cent look at what happens.
You now have 1,300 customers who spend $130 each and buy 1.3 times each year.
Your total sales are now $219,700 and have more than doubled.
Now a 30 per cent increase in the average sale price might be accomplished by offering a premium version of the products or services you sell.
A 30 per cent increase in the number of customers you have could be done by getting a 30 per cent increase in the number of potential customers who contact your business and make an enquiry about what you sell.
And a 30 per cent increase in the number of times a customer buys each year could be accomplished by regularly contacting your customers, adding value and inviting them to make further purchases.
Step 2: Pick one of the critical areas and start doing something to get an improvement in this area.
One way to get more potential buyers contacting your business if you have a website is to consider getting a good business to do SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) for your website.
When SEO is done well it can work very well.
One of my clients is a business called Avatar based in New Zealand. Avatar do two main things.
1: They build high quality websites
2: They do expert SEO
What I like about Avatar is they practice what they preach.
The owner of Avatar is Mark Rocket and he started a business a few years ago that was a tourism website for New Zealand.
Mark used his own SEO services to get this site highly ranked for over 150 common search terms used by tourists.
What will you do in the next 30 days to get a small improvement in a key marketing area?
As a result the web site became one of the most popular tourism sites in the country.
(And a few years after doing this Mark and his partner sold the website for nine million dollars!)
I also had the opportunity to speak with one of Avatars SEO clients a few weeks ago. They are in the rubbish removal business and were delighted to tell me that they had increased their online sales and bookings by 40% as a direct result of using the SEO services of Avatar.
In other words the SEO services offered by Avatar really work!
(If you want to get more details on whether Avatar and their SEO services might be helpful to get more qualified prospects to visit your website you might like to contact them and get some further details on how they work.)
Step 3: Keep testing things that will give you small improvements in the key areas.
A hardware shop increased the number of people coming into their store with a creative strategy.
They put up a big sign in their window that said: "We guarantee that if you come into our store one of our people will professionally greet and welcome you within 20 seconds. If they don't we will give you $50.00 of hardware of your choice completely free".
People would walk down the street and read this sign. They would then mentally say to themselves "That sounds interesting; I think I will check it out." So they would walk inside the hardware store. The store had a bell and buzzer on their door that sounded as soon as you went in.
One of their salespeople would excuse themselves if they were dealing with a customer by saying something like "Can you just excuse me for 10 seconds" and then walk over to the person and welcome them to the store. "Thank you for coming in today, I'm just with someone else so please free to look around. I'll be with you in a moment"
This way the customer was always greeted professionally within 20 seconds of walking in to the shop.
Now once the people were in the shop guess what many did?
That's right they said to themselves, "Well now that I'm here what can I buy that I might need?"
Sales increased dramatically.
There are a lot of simple things that you can do to make small improvements in key areas of your sales and marketing.
And just a few of these small improvements could be all your need to double your sales in 2017.
What will you do in the next 30 days to get a small improvement in a key marketing area?
"Excellent firms don't believe in excellence - only in constant improvement and constant change." - Tom Peters
Stats NZ has revealed its latest Retail Trade Survey for the September quarter.