Tues Tip: Try these first if you want to sell more

How to sell more of your product or service? This could be quite a large topic but here are some tips to consider BEFORE you ramp up your spending time and money on marketing and sales calls.

Do you want more sales or more profit? Careful here. Sales is for vanity, profit is for sanity, as the saying goes.

I've seen many businesses do a knee jerk reaction and ramp up marketing of a product that is unprofitable or even costing them money. If you want to sell more, I recommend the first step is to make sure its a profitable product/service.

One company I was BDM for had a popular product that was losing them $37 each once I'd worked out its true cost and this was a major contributor to their $100K/mo losses.

Now an unprofitable product/service is fine if it is a door opener and leads to sales of a bigger ticket item or contract that adequately offsets the loss, but if it isn't, be careful. My recommendation here is to know your true profit margins on your products before you go spending time and money on more marketing or sales calls. Make sure you are considering all labour and costs that go into the product right through to after-sales service and warranties.

Once you have analysed if you want more sales or more profit, you might find all you need to do is tweak your pricing and get the result you want without having to sell more. There are strategies to increase your prices but I'll cover those in another article or get in touch if interested.

And its not just about increasing pricing. You might benefit from dropping an unprofitable item that is consuming labour and expenses that could be better utilised to increase sales of a more profitable item.

Always...always...always first aim to sell more to your past or existing customers.

I rarely come across a business that is doing all they can to gain more sales from past or existing customers. Are you focusing the majority of your time and money on gaining new customers? Should this be adjusted?

A common stat out there is that it is 6x cheaper to sell to a past or existing customer. The beauty is they have already overcome the uncertainty hurdle of trusting you and your product/service.

Ways to sell more to past or existing customers? Firstly keep in regular contact with them. This may be weekly, monthly, quarterly, or longer depending upon your industry. Dan Murphy's a liquor store here in Australia emails me every week with offers and I find it too much. Not sure if this frequency is based on my buying behaviour! Generally I think reconnecting with customers every quarter is a good average and at least every 6 months.

What to say when you contact them? A few things you might try.

1. Let them know what other products/services you provide. Never assume they know all you can do. Never. They are in their busy world and most likely not thinking about all you can do. They can also pigeon-hole you into a niche and over look you when they need a different product/service. Let them know what else you can provide and this includes things such as how it can be packaged, delivered or paid for. Or even what else it can be used for.
2. Let them know about other projects and applications of your product/service. Name drop. Mention interesting data or lessons learned or positive outcomes. This might trigger ideas with them and boost confidence in using you again. One of the six core needs we have as humans is certainty. As a customer we want to be certain the product/service is going to deliver and is not going break and is value for money.
3. Alert them to a new product/service about to launch. This is great marketing and a way to test the demand for this product/service. You might offer a special price or package deal if they are one of the early ones to purchase it and use this to test it, fine tune it and provide certainty to others that it is worth purchasing.
4. Offer to do a webinar or lunch box session for them. Is there something you can deliver that would add value? Something that would help them gain more from your product/service? I recommend these be short and sweet - we are all time poor. Thirty mins is enough.

So there you go. My tips to consider BEFORE you spend time and money on more marketing and sales calls etc. As always, I'm here if you want to bounce some ideas off me or discuss some strategies specific to your situation and product/service.