There are 3 ways to grow any business: - Get more customers - Get more from each sale - Sell to each customer more frequently. That's it - everything else boils down to some variation of these 3 activities. Most owners and most managers want to grow their business. Most of them concentrate exclusively on getting more new customers. Odd really. There is lots of marketing research that is pretty consistent in pointing out that it costs somewhere between six and twelve times as much to get a new customer as it does to sell to an existing customer. And once you have a customer it is generally pretty straightforward to get them to spend more each time they buy from you. What's that? Your business is different. There's no way to get customers to spend more. Maybe so. But I don't think so. Here are 29 ideas for you to stick in your brainstorming pot, stir for a while, and then see what comes out at the other end. Price 1. Raise Your Prices 2. Sell Value, Not Price Sales techniques 3. Up Sell 4. Down-Sell 5. Cross Sell Add value 6. Back-End Sale 7. Extended Warranties 8. Service Contracts 9. Consult For Your Own Product Make the sale easy 10. Terms And Financing 11. Set Up An Account 12. Try Before You Buy 13. Work With Pre-Payments Give more 14. Develop an exclusive product or service 15. Expand Your Product Range 16. First Time Buyer Incentives 17. Concentrate On High Quality Prospects 18. Use Package Deals 19. Sell Bulk 20. Incentive Builders For Big Purchases 21. Offer Greater Variety Sales force 22. Sales commission structures 23. Set Solid Sales Goals 24. NLP Techniques 25. Sales Scripts 26. Keep In Touch With Customers Educate your customers 27. Demonstrations 28. Educate your customers - make sure they know your full product range 29. Audio And Visual Demonstrations Still don't think you can get more from each transaction with your customers? Contact us. We like a challenge. Keith Longmire is the owner of JKL Business Growth Solutions. JKL specialises in bringing main stream business improvement and marketing solutions into the reach of smaller businesses. The Business Growth Solutions web site is designed as a source of information for all matters to do with Small Business Development |