6 Failproof Ways to Boost Sales for Your Small Business.

In recent times businesses no longer solely focus on their launch and growth strategy. They have now made a quick shift towards paying more attention to their plan for sustainability. Profit-making is an exciting part of any business operation. But what happens when a global pandemic occurs and your small business experiences a decline in patronage? Does that spell doom for the business? The world is experiencing rapid changes and businesses will only thrive in this new market environment when they focus less on profit-making and be more intentional about existing in a sustainable manner. Without lavishing words, businesses must keep making more and more sales to remain operational. Any business owner can apply these six ways to boost sales for your small business; it’s effective regardless of what products or services you offer. Read through them mindfully.

Figure Out Your Customers

Without customers, your business is done for. You’ll simply have products without anyone investing in them. To avoid such a situation, before you even launch your business you must explore this strategy. Here you are trying to find out who your ideal customers are, their peculiar needs or pain points, product features or add-on services that are likely to attract them, brand elements (name, colours, logo, slogan, etc) they’ll find irresistible, the price range they’ll be willing to pay for your offerings, brands they interact with more often, marketing channels and messages they are more responsive to, and a host of other essential information.

If you already have a product or service, you still need to make efforts to figure out if your customers are truly satisfied with your brand. At this point, you are trying to learn their patterns, behaviours, and the component of your business they respond to a lot more. Some of the most effective ways to go about this exercise are to research using surveys, interviews, group discussions, studying the industry and competitors’ reports. You can also speak with your sales or customer service team since they relate closely with your customers and are likely to know about their complaints and suggestions. 

Summing up all the information you have gotten will surely help you review and improve your product. You must be aware that this is a continuous step and it should be done frequently. However, if you do not have enough time to dedicate to doing this, you can get an in-house research team or hire a freelancer who can do so flawlessly.

Be Valuable and Unique

Sometime back I heard of a small business owner who simply made chin-chin for a living. And when I tried placing an order, she told me she can’t take any more orders as she was fully booked. It immediately dawned on me that if you want to boost sales for your small business and remain sustainable you must have something valuable to offer and be able to present it in a unique manner. And this works even if you only make chin-chin. 

Figuring out your customers is the first step towards creating valuable and unique products. If you get that step right, you are very likely to make progress here. Remember, customers do not simply buy products because they are well packaged or affordable. They buy to enjoy the benefits (value) associated with such products/services. Do not feel defeated if you operate in a niche with numerous competitors, a valuable and unique product helps you stand out tall.

Customer Relations is Vital

How well do you relate with your customers? Humans are emotional beings and this characteristic makes them hold on to certain brands that don’t necessarily offer them as much value as they pay for, but treat them like they matter. Brands that call their customers when they haven’t heard from them in a while, or send lovely emails to them on special days are more likely to have more returning clients than those who don’t relate with them at all. You cannot boost sales for your small business if you fail to resolve complaints quickly or do not try to be a part of their daily life. Customer relations involves a number of factors put together. If you get this strategy right, you’ll have customers still rooting for you even when things aren’t going so well for your brand.

Follow Up Prospects

It doesn’t end after marketing and gathering customers’ data. The act of following up prospects yields more results than you can envisage. When prospects call or send an email to your brand to make an enquiry, you must take them seriously. Note that they might also be sending such enquiry message to several other brands who might appeal to them based on their response time, price, customer relation skills, and other minute factors. 

You can follow up email enquiries by adding their emails to a segmented list for sending out similar campaigns. Also, as soon as you resume work, don’t tarry before responding to phone calls that come in at the close of work the previous day or on weekends. Customers always want to feel important and little things like getting back to them or staying in touch matters a lot.  

Employ the Best Hands 

Just like you won’t pick up a stranger from the street to babysit your child, you mustn’t hire just anyone to join your business. Regardless of how ‘small’ your small business is, you still need people to help out with some aspects of your business you aren’t an expert at. You will find yourself growing from just you to a group of people expected to work together to achieve a common set out goal. Whoever you bring on your team must have the expertise required, a great attitude, and the interest of your company at heart else you might be attracting trouble.

Resist the pressure to hire people who accept little salaries and deliver less than what is acceptable by your clients, business, and the industry as a whole. One of the easiest ways to boost sales for your small business is by working with a group of people who provide value for your customers just the way they like it. Do you know that some customers retain brands because of how impressive their employees are? Well, now you know. Do not compromise when it comes to hiring the best hands to join your team.

Reserve a Budget for Marketing

This is very important and now is not the time to table the excuse of not being able to afford paid advertising because you are a small business. Using word-of-mouth marketing, social media, email marketing, and other similar strategies have their part to play in your business. However, paid platforms like billboards, social media ads, Google ads, and other forms of PPC advertising helps to reach a wider audience and brings in more leads for your brand.

You should embrace the act of using paid platforms to market your business as an investment rather than a burden. Paid advertising is only a waste when you don’t implement it properly or at the right time when it is likely to be more effective. For example, you can deduct a certain percentage on all sales over a period of time and reserve it for the purpose of running paid ads. This is a lot easier than having to put out a large chunk of money when you are ready to start a campaign.

Do you use any other failproof ways to boost sales for your small business? Share with us in the comment section and don’t hesitate to drop us a five-star rating if you found our article enlightening.