The 1st step to growing the sales in people’s mind is often to go and advertise.  While advertising might be the answer you shouldn’t blindly just dive in with that as the solution.  

There are actually 4 levers that make up your sales:

So the 1step is actually to figure out which lever(s) you should pull and focus in on how to do that rather than just launching into an ad campaign.

Here is what each lever means and some ideas for what you can do for each:

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1)     Leads Generated

This is the number of customers who ask about using your product.  I.e. they come into the store or they ask fora quote.  Here are some ideas for how toimprove this:

·        Advertise

·        Do a promotion or gimmick to create awareness for your brand or a product

·        Look at where your product is offered – do you add a new location, go online, offer delivery

2)     Conversion Rate

This is how many of those leads you actually turn into a sale of some sort.  Here are some ideas for how to improve this:

·        Follow up your quotes – you would be amazed how much just doing this helps

·        Get sales training for you and/or the team

·        Why you? – have and know your point of difference and express that to the customers so they know why they should choose you

3)     Frequency of Purchase

This is how many times the customer then purchases from you in the period you are marking your sales on.  If you are working out the yearly sales the period here is times per year.  Here are some ideas for how to improve this:

·        BAMFAM – book a meeting from a meeting – lock them in for when they should come back so you aren’t leaving it to chance as to if/when they come back

·        Loyalty/frequent purchase offers to keep them coming back

·        After sales follow-up, reminders and/or offers

4)      Average Customer Spend

This is how much the customer spends on average during the period on each of those times they purchase from you in #3.  Here are some ideas for how to improve this:

·        Do you want fries with that? – up sell or cross-sell other complimentary products

·        Increase prices

·        Impulse purchases - have small/consumable add-on/complimentary products that are offered at point of sale

As you can see advertising might not even be the answer and instead you might need to fix other areas first.  A great example of this is if your conversion rate is terrible but you advertise to generate more leads.  The end result will just be more people who are disappointed by the experience and not converting to a sale.  Do you really want to spend money just to burn through more potential leads?

We love drilling down on these levers and helping clients work out how to improve these so reach out if you want help.

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