Increasing sales using your price

In my last blog I spoke about increasing sales and all the elements that make this up. One of them is pricing and for most of us pricing is difficult. Do you use the following method to price? – more expensive than the cheapest competitor and less expensive than the dearest competitor.

Is that the way to do it? I don’t think so…. we rarely make buying decisions based just on price. If that's the case we wouldn’t buy pre-packaged lettuce (300% more expensive that washing it yourself!), we wouldn’t buy Coca Cola (Pepsi was the preferred option in taste tests!), we wouldn’t buy new cars (we all know 2^nd hand cars offer better value for money!).

So if you don’t buy on price why do you assume your customers buy only on price? I’m afraid it’s all in our mind, so we really need to expand our thinking on this one. After all if you put your prices up by 10% how much more profit would you have in your business? If your sales are £100,000 then that’s another £10,000 in profit. Now you may lose some customers but how many would you need to lose before you made no extra profit?

You would still be less busy for the same profit. What changes could that allow you to make in your business? What other opportunities could you take?

I’m not suggesting you just put your prices up, there are lots of different ways of doing this successfully and this blog is just too short to go into them. I do have free webinar you can listen to that takes you through how to do this. To register go to pricing webinar

Next blog I’ll reveal how getting your existing customers to do one thing could solve your sales problems for ever.

The Secrets to Selling More

We recently carried out a survey and got some real insights into how people are coping with the current business climate. Many thanks if you’re one of the business owners who've completed it.

What you told us is that business growth is a challenge and over 79% of you were looking for more customers. Getting new customers is one key piece of the puzzle that makes up your sales - but it might not be the most important piece.

The way to think about your sales or turnover is to break it down to its different elements. These are:
- Customers
- Price
- How often your customers buy from you
- How much they buy at one time
- Defection rate ( ie how many of your customers return time after time?)

If you’re always chasing new customers then you might just be pissing off your loyal customer base. Have you ever been annoyed by the great deals new customers get from, say, your telephone provider? Or bank? Or insurance company?  You might just be doing the same thing to your valuable customers because you don’t give them enough attention and you don’t do enough to develop customer loyalty.

Why do your customers leave?
The reason they leave and go to your competitor is down to the perception they have of how you treat them. And - that is you don’t care enough about them - 68% of the time that’s why your customers leave.

So just maybe you’re looking at the wrong thing! Do you have a loyalty scheme or offer them something that new customers don’t get? Do you thank them for being customers? Do you even like them? I hope you do and let them know.

It may be costing you a lot of money if you’re losing customers – and you might not even know you’re losing them. Do you measure this?

If you kept 95% of the customers you have and turn some of them into raving fans how much easier would it be to attract more sales?

What ideas could you come up with that would keep your customers loyal and help them spread the word to their friends, family and contacts? Take some time out and come out with some ideas. Let your imagination run riot!

Next blog I'll take you through how to price your product or service and how this can make a huge impact on your profit- in no time at all.