If you want to increase sales, there are two main customer groups: existing customers, and new customers. While it’s important to attract new customers through a high quality website and other marketing tools, don’t forget about working on getting repeat business. Here are six easy ways to do just that.
1. Upsell
Encourage your staff to upsell wherever possible. To do this successfully, you need to convince the customer that there’s a benefit for them. Once they can see the benefit of a better or augmented product/service, they’ll be much more likely to spend their money with you.
2. Offer free samples
Offer every client a free sample of a product related to whatever they’re buying (or have bought in the past) and there’s a good chance they’ll want more. If not, they could pass the sample on to someone else who could become a new customer. At the very least, the existing customer will appreciate the gesture and be more likely to continue to do business with you and refer you to their friends or colleagues.
3. Create a sales incentive program
Make sure your staff have a very good incentive to sell at every opportunity. It could be a simple cash incentive for each sale, or maybe a holiday or big-screen TV for every X number of sales. Make all incentives rewarding, simple and attainable. This can be done either in your office/store, or via your ecommerce website.
4. Set up a customer rewards program
Encourage your customers to buy from you again by offering a simple rewards program. It could be a discount on their birthday, 10% off when they spend over a particular dollar value in your store, or a more complex points system with rewards that increase over time and entitle them to redeem their points for products.
5. Show your regular customers you care
There should be a distinct difference between your regular customers and everyone else, and your regular customers should be able to see it. You might greet them by name, offer discounts or make an appointment to visit them every now and then to touch base. It will make all the difference.
6. Let them know about deals
It sounds silly, but this doesn’t just apply to running an advertising campaign; you can let your customers know about upcoming promotions before the general public find out, let them know that the product they’re interested in will be on special the following week, and so on. They’ll appreciate your honesty and come back for more.
Attracting new customers is great, but it’s only half of the story. Ensuring you also focus on enticing repeat business can make increasing your sales easier while building a strong loyalty with your customers.
