Techniques/Strategies for Improving Your Business Sales Level

TECHNIQUES FOR IMPROVING YOUR BUSINESS SALES LEVEL

     In Line with my commitment to adding value to lives and businesses, I am posting in the next few days techniques that will take your businesses from where it is now to where you want it to be in the nearest future.

1.     REPLACE DEFICIENT/ UNDERPERFORMING SALES STRATEGIES AND PEOPLE

Every business has a strategy that sells it well in a particular place at any particular time. You may have been carried away with a strategy that was highly effective at the time when you started that business. You are suddenly noticing that sales is on decline gradually and you have truly altered nothing about your process. That exactly may be what you should have checked. You should check which strategy is not seasonal for you, so that you can build your sales around it.

There are strategies you should identify that work best for you at all seasons, such strategies, keep improving on them at every opportune time. For example, as a writer, you may notice that people hardly buy your books on the shelf in the bookshop but whenever you have the privilege to address people, or you train, people fall head over each other to buy the few copies you have. This strategy is what you should strengthen. Seek more platforms and hone your speaking skills to take advantage of those platforms when they come. De-emphasize sales on shelves and replace with speaking platforms.

In most cases, it is not just strategies that are deficient or defective, it is the people that are supposed to implement it. When faced with the dilemma of people who don’t know or don’t want to implement tasks as given to them, what are you supposed to do? For a full download on this, I will refer you to my book: MANAGING YOUR BUSINESS SUCCESSFULLY, in that book I talked about how you can get the best people to work for your business and keep them on it forever, but for now, first identify what the problem is, and when you do, identify what the need is. If you do this two, for a start, you will be able to determine, whether the people suffer relationship need, training need, welfare or increased salary/wages or outright sack.

2.     LET ANY INCREASE IN EXPENSES BE MET BY AN EXPONENTIAL INCREASE IN SALES

One of the best approaches to an ever-increasing expenditure base that a small business will find, is to respond to a slight increase in expenditure by driving the sales upward. How do you do this? Determine that, should a need arise for increased expenditure, then sales have to increase to meet that need. Aggressive selling becomes the in-thing. If you have to spend N1,000 more than you’ve been spending before, then you have to sell N10,000 more than you’ve been selling before, so that your increased profit can answer to increased expenses.

3.     BE ON TIME: TAKE ADVANTAGE OF OPPORTUNITIES PROMPTLY

Be the first to know and the first to act. Like I explained in STARTING YOUR OWN SMALL BUSINESS IN NIGERIA, business growths are opportunistic. It is the smartest that gains the most. Immediately you discover a market opportunity for the sale of your goods or service, it is not time to become reluctant, you have to do what you have to do, write the proposal, follow-up, venture into the venue with your product and take advantage of that opening.

4.     EXUDE EXUBERANT CONFIDENCE

First, I’ll like to say that confidence comes with knowledge. If your answer to as low as 30% on your product information is “I don’t know”, then forget it, you can’t be confident about it. You must be so confident that you can promote that product or defend it before the angels (should you have a cause to face them). You need abundant, overflowing confidence in your product, its efficiency, comparative price, dimensions,  etc. talk to potential buyers looking them in the eye, let them know that you know what you are talking about, let them be assured they have their money-back guarantee should the product fail, you will become irresistible.