TRY YOUR BEST to capture more than your fair share of each customer’s spendable dollars. I promise you, they are going to spend it someplace.
Have you ever been in a Batteries Plus store? You can buy a battery for absolutely anything, including your car. They repair phones, sell light bulbs, etc. When you go to pay at the counter, it’s full of impulse items like high-beam flashlights, phone chargers, stuff you didn’t think you needed. I believe it was Steve Jobs of Apple who said as he was working on his iPhones, “People don’t know what they need until I show it to them.”
So, do you have anything you can “add on” to what they just bought from you?
People have money today. The savings rate in America is through the roof, and it’s time to get your share. Not by being a pushy salesperson, but by being an intriguing salesperson.
You can increase sales by:
- Increasing the dollar amount of what they are buying. Always show them something better. Statistics show that if you show a customer three items, they will buy the middle-priced item over 60 percent of the time. So, make what you want to sell the middle one.
- Increase the number of items sold on a customer’s receipt. Say, “Hey, I almost forgot, let me show you this, it just came in!” It doesn’t have to have anything to do with what you just sold them. Just keep showing until they say, “I think I got all that I need now, thanks.” Also, ask if they forgot someone on the Christmas list.
- Increase your closing ratio. Sell more people who walk in the door. If you’d typically sell four out of 10 people who walked in (that’s a 40 percent closing ratio) and could sell just one more person, that would by itself increase store sales by 25 percent!
Consider this example. If your average sale is $500, and …
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- You can get it to $600, and …
- You can now sell five people rather than four, and …
- You add on a $99 item to just half of all your sales.
Selling four out of 10 people a $500 item gives you total sales for the day of $2,000. But if you could sell five people out of 10 a $600 item, PLUS sell just three of the five an additional $99 add-on, total store sales would skyrocket to $3,297! That’s a 64 percent increase without spending a single additional advertising dollar or dealing with any higher store traffic!
When any of these occur, reward the staff for their diligence with money, gift cards or anything else that might entice them.
Here’s to a roaring great end to a pretty crappy year!