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How to Change Slow Sales

04/08/2008 09:41

"It is always a great pleasure to place an order on your website, because we know that we are getting great quality and affordable products that meet our needs as well as our very own customers. We do appreciate your business and always look forward to more from you soon.”

Charles from Chicago, Il

When you think about why customers buy from you, you can know what to do to get more sales fastest. There are four basic things that you need to do for customers to start buying from you.

Here is why most people buy from you.

1. You have what they want.
2. You have it at a price that they want to buy it for.
3. The customer knows that you have what they want for the price that they want it for.
4. It is easy for them to buy from you.

You don't need to be a great salesperson or spend a lot of money on advertising. You can make this happen in other ways. Here's what has worked for us in our business.

One time Africa Imports sales were slow, and were getting slower. I couldn't figure out what was causing it or what to do. I ended up calling an expensive consultant to ask for help figuring out what to do next. In 10 minutes he gave me the answer.

This consultant asked me how many pieces of mail we had sent out to customers during each of the last several months. He said that when his clients looked at this number, they would normally see that the slow sales came from sending out too few catalogs or other pieces of mail the months before. The fastest way to increase sales was normally to mail more catalogs or other information to our customers now.

We are primarily a catalog company. Your business is probably different; but the same formula can still work for you. Here's how.

Let's assume that you have what a customer wants, and your price is good. You still need to make sure that they know about it; and you need to make it easy for them to buy. In our business this is done by mailing the right information to people. In your business, you may not mail things to people, but you let customers know about what you have and make it easy for them to buy from you some other way.

You can see your customers more; you can phone people; you can mail or email to them. The main thing is that you make sure people remember you; and that you make it easy for them to have what they want when they want it.



If your sales are slower than you want them to be, the first thing to check is how many times you have contacted your customers; and what you have told them about when you did. If you have been "too busy" to let people know what you have available for them, you are probably having slow sales.

One of the worst things that you can do though, is to call people without anything important to tell them about. People will want to hear from you when you have something to say that they want to hear. But almost no one wants to hear from someone who is "just checking in", or asking if there is something that they want to buy.

If you start contacting your customers more, you will almost always see your sales get better. If you make and keep to a goal of contacting at least a minimum number of people each week, your sales will get much better.

It will probably not happen immediately however. There is almost always a little time lag. If you contact a lot of customers this week, your sales during the next few weeks will go up. Your sales this week may not change at all though. So don't get discouraged if you don't get immediate results. Make your contacts now, but don't plan on your sales going up right away. Focus on having a better business in a few weeks (or even a month or two from now). You will have a much better business (and more money) a few weeks from now this way, than you will if you just wait.

This article is free. You can publish or circulate this article on other websites as long as you give credit to Africa Imports; and include a link back to africaimports.com at the end of the article.