Raising sales without having a sale ...
... 3 other ways of increasing sales AND profit
Business owners are continually looking for new ways to kill their businesses. One of the favourite ways is the shot-gun system – the get-lots-of-new-customers-in-right-now system, coupled with the everyone’s-a-customer system. This usually involves a sale and a whole lot of expensive advertising ... when the idea is actually to make MORE profit. More insanity?
Rather than the scatter-gun approach, why not try to get inside your customers’ heads and see what their needs are. Three ideas are:
1. Provide outrageous guarantees
A wedding photographer in Adelaide guarantees that, if your wedding photos are not to your satisfaction for any reason, he will arrange and pay for the wedding again. He will hire the bridal party costumes, hire the limo, buy the identical cake, hire the same venue, hire the same church and anything else you had at your wedding, and he will photograph it all again at no extra cost.
Why did he choose that particular guarantee? Because he looked at the biggest risk in his business and it is that weddings are one-off affairs and you don’t get another chance if it flops. He takes that risk away for his clients and they love it. He has had his guarantee in place for over ten years, has not yet been asked to honour it and he’s always booked up for over a year ahead.
2. Reduce customer stress and add comfort
A book store in Melbourne, just off Collins Street (I can’t remember its name but I recall that it had a dark green frontage), is a long shop. The back quarter of it was turned into a reading room with lounge chairs, coffee tables and a self-serve, coin-operated coffee machine. The owner told me the coffee machine income paid for the rent in the reading area and the area took away his customers’ greatest risk – that of buying a book they didn’t like. Most book stores discourage reading, but not here – people can sit and read for as long as they like in this oasis of peace and quiet amid the noisy city. The perfect place for readers.
Though there was no obligation to buy, most people did. Those who had intended to buy, did and knew they had the right book. Others, who had been given free access to a relaxing read, through guilt or gratitude, usually bought a book or two anyway.
3. Reduce stress and honour your customers
There’s a women’s clothing store in Sydney with a large area for children to play in while Mum is shopping for clothes. Sometimes, when Mum is about to leave, there’s an unpleasant scene when she has to pry her child from a new, treasured toy and her darling then screams the rest of the way round town.
This shop does it a little differently – they insist the child hang on to the toy, to the (usually) astonished and thankful look of the mother. Why do they do that? Three reasons:
- They reduce stress for their customers who are forever thankful, forever customers and who tell all their friends about that amazing shop.
- The shop owner is saying, in effect, “I trust you,” to the customer. That can have a profound and lasting effect on people and they come back because of it.
- The customers usually find a discrete way to extricate child from toy, some time later, and they invariably return the toy to the store, full of effusive thanks. So what? They. Are. Back. In. The. Shop. And gratitude or guilt usually has them buying “a little something” or a big something else while they’re there!
Generosity of spirit has helped double sales!
So, rather than trying to get everyone in town into your premises, focus on the customers you have and find out (you can ask them!) what is the most risky or stressful thing in dealing with your firm.
Then do something outrageous or simple to reduce that risk/stress. After all, don’t most of your customers come from word-of-mouth rather than from advertising programs? Be different, be generous and let the local grapevine do your advertising for you – cheaper than media campaigns ... and everyone wins!
NB: Next week we’ll look at how you can calculate the life-value of a customer – some accounting stuff!
Philip Bradbury
