It's unavoidable for a retailer to see a drop in sales. Every retailer will experience a sales slump at some point either due to external circumstances such as the city tearing up the street, seasonal sales dips, or a decline in foot traffic. Here are ten easy methods you and your team can drive sales if you're in a slump or just having a sluggish day.
How to Increase Retail Sales?
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Let's get right to the point: if you're a store, your goal is to attract new consumers and retain existing ones, all in the name of increasing revenue. There is no business without sales. As a result, planning how to increase retail sales should be a key focus.
Regardless of whether things are going well or not, it's critical to constantly examine your existing company plan to ensure you're getting the most out of your retail sales. Whatever your current scenario, the suggestions below will assist you in attracting new consumers, retaining existing ones, and increase retail sales.
1. Teach Your Personnel to Be Flexible and Available
Instead of connecting with customers, retail becomes a career of chores. Salespeople are frequently so preoccupied with completing a task that they overlook customers who are seeking assistance.
If you want them to have good sales abilities, teach them that no task is more essential than helping customers, that customer purchases support their income, and that unless they're currently with a customer, they should always drop the task to help consumers.
2. Teaching Your Supervisors On How to Sell
How will managers be able to notice, assess, and provide assistance when an associate loses a sale if they aren't trained to begin with?
Managers can only dissect a missed sale and say something like, "You were terrified." if they understand how to make a sale. Pay closer attention and look for places of contact that lead to consumer engagement.” They will then be able to assist their employees to increase retail sales.
3. Teach Your Supervisors How to Coach their Subordinates
Employees are promoted to management positions based on how long they've worked at your store rather than on merit. It's all too common for the blind to lead the blind. They often believe they can coach individuals with atta-boys and the occasional pizza because they lack basic retail sales training. They can't lead by rolling their eyes and repeatedly saying, "Don't." Both tactics can result in a lot of havoc for your stranded personnel. Your managers must be taught how to tell employees to improve their conduct and when to do so. Employees, like the majority of individuals, are unable to perceive when they make a mistake. Or, if they do notice it, they will ignore it.
4. Retail Training Must Emphasize Establishing a Human Connection
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You must gradually improve staff skills. Change the terms you use in your retail space, the way you look at your consumers, and the way you look at your personnel as you do so. Employees will notice how training makes them more human, especially when it comes to high-priced products when managers can train and model listening over talking with shoppers. What they believe is that to increase retail sales is all about features until that happens when it's truly about being more human and building relationships.
5. When Asking Clients Questions, Only Ask One At a Time
The capacity to ask questions used to be the most critical customer service skill for sales personnel, but that has changed. Nobody likes being bombarded with 20 questions; shoppers are well aware that they are being set up and are looking for ideas to increase sales in retail.
Without playing 20 yes/no questions, you can acquire the same or better information from them. Asking numerous queries that start with "Can I?" or "Are you?" is a bad idea. Instead, ask everyone the same open-ended inquiry, such as "What's your project today?"
6. Understand How to Think Like a Consumer
"Don't start selling until they say no," advises a lot of terrible sales advice. But that's how a salesperson thinks, not how a potential buyer thinks. In general, salespeople know how to sell: they identify a problem, have a product that solves that problem, anticipate objections, and understand the buying process.
When we think like salespeople, we miss out on what customers are genuinely afraid of, what motivates them, and what can reassure them that you're the right partner to deliver them what they want.
7. Be Enamored With the Merchandise You Despise
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Many products are likely to be unappealing to you. However, you must devise methods to consider how other people, not you, might use those things to improve their lives. It's a lot better use of your time to keep asking yourself, "How can I find new ways to offer these things and increase retail sales?"
8. Make Use Of the Name of Your Consumer
The Ritz Carlton demands personnel to use a guest's name three times in a conversation, not two or four. When you meet with a customer, why is it crucial to use their name? It's because it's effective. Using their name more than once gives their visitors a sense of importance while also forcing the personnel to memorize their names. Use their name anywhere you can find it. Even if you make a mistake now and then, most people will appreciate the effort.
9. Take a Different Approach To Your Body Language
Standing immediately in front of a shopper can be scary. The best approach to sell to someone, according to sales psychology training, is to stand side by side like friends. If you improve your body language, you will no longer be a salesperson, but rather a trusted counselor.
10. Retail Checkout Counters Should Be Eliminated
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Employees frequently hide behind cash wrap counters. That's not good. It gives employees a false sense of privacy, allowing them to do whatever they want, such as check social media or eat a sandwich.
Customers are also given a visual barrier and a sense of them vs. me.
That's why so many newer stores are abandoning counters in favor of self-checkout or equipping their employees with tablets so they can complete sales swiftly from wherever. Increase the amount of money you make through retail sales. With these eye-catching characteristics, you'll be able to stand out from the crowd.
11. Make E-receipts Available
You may send your customers an electronic receipt via email after they check out. Not only will buyers avoid having a pocket full of paper that will undoubtedly end up in the garbage, but it will also be easier and more practical to store a receipt online. As a business owner, this allows you to collect your clients' email addresses to notify them about seasonal deals and offers. It's a chance to build a relationship with that consumer outside of your shop, bar, café, or restaurant. Requesting that the customer enter their email address into a tablet minimizes the possibility of misspelling substantially.
How to Increase Retail Sales With Strikingly?
There are numerous techniques to increase retail sales if you have a Strikingly website.
1. Discount Using a Coupon
As a PRO user, you can utilize our Simple Store Coupon function to offer your customers a variety of discounts. Promotions can be a fantastic strategy to increase retail sales! You can make the following:
- Discounts dependent on a percentage
- Free shipping reductions
- Flat discounts
How to Create a Discount Code
1. Select the Coupons tab in your Simple Store manager, then click the "CREATE COUPON" button.
2. To apply the discount at checkout, enter a "code" for your coupon in the coupon editor.
3. Finally, decide when your offer will expire. Please keep in mind that the coupon will expire at 11:59 p.m. in your local time zone.
4. You may now choose the type of discount you want to offer.
2. Newsletters
Using Strikingly in your newsletters is a great way to stand out from the crowd. Newsletters can be used to advertise your small company website and increase retail sales. To use the newsletter feature, you must have at least your customers' contact information, particularly their email addresses. You may send newsletters directly from your website using a personalized email address after you have your customer's contact information. With Strikingly's free plan, you can send a hundred newsletters per month.
3. Simple Store
Even with a free account, Strikingly's Simple Store allows you to construct a fully working online store. This is perfect if you're just starting with a single product. With numerous new features, Strikingly's Simple Store improves the user experience, including enhanced product browsing by allowing a product filter sidecar to remain open while your consumer is looking. Coupons, sale price displays, deal displays, and pop-ups are among the other fascinating features.
Conclusion
Getting customers to come inside your shop or restaurant for a closer look is a major concern for any business owner with a customer-facing location. Hopefully, you can implement some of the aforementioned strategies and tactics to increase retail sales. It all comes down to prioritizing your clients and remembering that you are in the business of serving them. Everything and everyone's responsibility, from your personnel to the processes you use to manage your store, should aim to create more "wow" moments and earn their trust; sales will automatically follow.