Have you ever wondered why you are not selling more or what can you do to sell more?
Do not worry, if you recognize yourself in any of these situations, let us tell you that you are on the right track. There is no businessperson who at some point has not had doubts about the sales of their business.
Sales are a central point in any business and it is logical that every day you want to sell more or reach more customers. However, the sales trick is not just about selling more, but about selling better.
Surely you are wondering, what does it mean to sell better? Is there a better sale than another? at the end of the day selling is selling.
Although at first glance all sales are essentially the same, the sales we are talking about in this article are those that aim to retain customers and make them come back to you again and again.
Someone once told us: “I don’t want just customers, I want loyal customers, people in love of my business, who talk about it day and night” and we couldn’t agree more with this statement; but how to make customers fall in love with your business?
First of all, we want you to know that when we talk about customers, we are talking about those people who buy frequently, recommend your products or services without hesitation and who prefer your business over the competition, all the rest are simply buyers.
The objective is that you learn to get more and more customers through 3 sales strategies designed and tested to transform buyers into customers.
Every sales strategy has 3 phases:
- Customer acquisition.
- Closing sale.
- Loyalty
Regardless of the type of strategy you use, it will always go through these phases, the idea is that you learn to use each of them to your advantage and that is precisely what you will learn here.
The sale itself is a perfect trio between:
- Product or service.
- Customer need.
- Market value or price.
Each of these elements is aimed to understand the buyer’s desires or needs. We can talk about a perfect sale when the sales strategy combines each of these axes.
So, we will present each of them separately along with three strategies that you can apply to attract new customers, close sales, and build loyalty.
The acquisition of new customers:
Identifying the moment of purchase of your customer will help you to know the type of product that you must create to obtain their attention. This phase is closely linked to kitchen, inventory and marketing management, the objective here is that to have a product or service that satisfies the needs and wants of consumers at the time of purchase.
An example of this phase can be:
- Create individual versions of your star products.
- Create products to share.
- Business or special lunch menu.
- Products for quick consumption or weekend style.
Sales strategy No. 1: attract customers through the creation of products/services that satisfy their moment of purchase
We present you a real example of a pastry shop in Chile: in order to increase sales, they used as a sales strategy to identify the moment of purchase of the customer.
The pastry shop sells boxes of sweets of 16 and 30 units through its own website and physical store. The 30-unit boxes have good sales numbers and are sold for meetings and parties, but the 16-unit boxes have a very slow output and affect the inventory of exclusive boxes for this size.
Analyzing the moment of purchase of the customer, it was observed that they needed a product for quick consumption, that they could give away, something simple and not excessively expensive.
The boxes were transformed from 16 to 8 units and as a result a satisfied customer was reached by having a fast, more economical and practical product for consumption. Sales of the new 8-unit product presentation increased by 80% in 2 months compared to sales of the 16-unit box in the last 6 months, just by identifying the moment of purchase of the customer.
Closing of sale:
We present you a real example of a pastry shop in Chile: in order to increase sales, they used as a sales strategy to identify the moment of purchase of the customer.
The pastry shop sells boxes of sweets of 16 and 30 units through its own website and physical store. The 30-unit boxes have good sales numbers and are sold for meetings and parties, but the 16-unit boxes have a very slow output and affect the inventory of exclusive boxes for this size.
Analyzing the moment of purchase of the customer, it was observed that they needed a product for quick consumption, that they could give away, something simple and not excessively expensive.
The boxes were transformed from 16 to 8 units and as a result a satisfied customer was reached by having a fast, more economical and practical product for consumption. Sales of the new 8-unit product presentation increased by 80% in 2 months compared to sales of the 16-unit box in the last 6 months, just by identifying the moment of purchase of the customer.
Closing of sale:
Unfortunately, even today there is still a lot of taboo regarding the subject of money and prices. Even if it doesn’t seem so, the success of a sale is closely linked to the confidence you have in yourself as an entrepreneur and the confidence you have in the product or service in general.
For this reason, we have created a strategy that can help you not to abandon the sale and that you can apply with peace of mind even if you are one of those who panic every time you have to talk about sales, prices and payments.
In this strategy, the buyer knows everything about your product or service but has not taken action yet, in other words, they have not made the payment. The objective is to get a response from the buyer, either affirmative when they make the payment or refusal when they do not need the product or service.
The idea is to track the sale through the following 3 messages:
- A summary of the order within the first 24 hours (including the price, methods of payment and date of reservation)
- A reminder of the pending order within the following 72 hours (including the price, methods of payment and date of reservation)
- Last reminder of the pending order after 5 days (including the price, methods of payment and date of reservation)
Important: the times and the number of messages will vary depending on the business model, in this example, it is a business that performs a food service under reservation, for this reason the times between each message may be longer.
This is not to pressure the buyer. It is getting an answer, either a close-won deal or getting a negative answer and drop the buyer.
Loyalty:
Making a sale is not equivalent to having a loyal customer. We already told you that a buyer and a customer are not the same. The mission of your business is not to reach millions of buyers, but to win millions of loyal customers who return to your business over and over again.
Selling to a loyal customer is 70% more profitable than selling to a buyer who just knows you for the first time. Therefore, your business should have more customers and fewer buyers.
Loyalty is achieved with the maintenance and improvement of the quality standards of the product or service, the satisfaction of the need and the fulfillment of the sales promise. In a nutshell, loyalty is a cycle of mutual trust.
Sales strategy No. 3: gratitude is the key
In the purchase process you must know who your customers are and let them know how much you appreciate their presence. In this way, make them feel part of your company’s community, recognize their investment and let them know that their contribution is valuable.
One of the most effective strategies are Thank You Letters. Send them digital or physical with some type of discount or promotion and only to the people who really reward you with their loyalty, those frequent customers who are always supporting your business.
Use this strategy on dates when you know that sales are low as an incentive so that your loyal customers, apart from receiving recognition for their loyalty, can help increase sales rates.
We co- created this content with Diana&Luismi Gastronomy Group – Gastronomic Advisors, to help your business grow.