The Only 3 Ways To Increase Sales

You want to increase your sales? There are only three ways to do it:

Sell to more customers
Sell more to each customer (higher average transaction)
Sell more often to each customer (higher frequency)

So when you’re trying to figure out how to sell more, focus on these three things. If you can’t see clearly how some new idea will help one (or more) of those three things, toss it. It’s a waste of time.

Let’s look at each in a little more detail:

1. Selling to more customers is all about increasing traffic. Adding new customers is probably the first thing people think of when they put on their ‘marketing’ cap. It’s great to have more customers. But it’s not the only way to increase your sales, and it’s not always the best way.

Crazy? Not really. We talk a lot here about customer service. Paying proper attention to every facet of your interaction with your customers really sets you apart. But the more customers you have to deal with, the harder and more expensive this is to do well.

Acquiring new customers is pretty expensive, too. Estimates range from 2x to 7x the cost for acquiring a new customer versus retaining an old one. Don’t forget your existing customers are a valuable asset to you.

2. Selling more to each customer will allow you to sell more without increasing your customer service load from the higher number of relationships. Your existing customers buy from you because they’ve already decided that they like or trust you, or what you sell. They’ve already chosen you over your competition, so why not take advantage of that and offer them some more things they can buy from you?

Now, a little caution is in order: you have to stay focused on what you do well. Just because someone likes your ladies’ hat store, that doesn’t mean you should also open up an auto parts section inside. But within the “what you do well” arena, is there more you could do without significantly altering your business or your processes? Zappo’s started out selling shoes, then added handbags. Shoes and handbags don’t look much alike, but they share a lot of characteristics important to Zappo’s business: easy to ship, good margins, and huge overlap among the customer bases.

Your job is to think about who already buys from you, find out what they want (which you can do by asking them), and see if you can sell them some of that, too.

3. Selling more often to each customer is about frequency. Even with people that like you and what you do or sell, it’s easy to forget you’re there. One of the most important things you can do to keep a past customer a future customer is to find ways to remind them you’re there (without annoying them).

Lots of retail stores have sales for just this reason. They’re not really eager to get less for what they sell (that sort of violates #2 above), but they’ve learned that people are almost always happy to be contacted about a chance to save some money.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with running sales (there’s a lot that is wrong with how it’s normally done, but that’s another post some day). But you don’t want to sell less in return for more often. What you need to be thinking about is how to bring your customer into your store more often without bribing them to come there.

That’s it: only three things. Find ways to increase each of them without sacrificing either of the others. Increase all three together and Good Things will happen.