All entrepreneurs, regardless of the size of their business all dream of making more sales in their business. A lot of businesses have been shut down because of decline in sales.

Your business life span is determined by how well your customers are coming back to your business as well as your ability to gain new customers. If you want to increase your business sales and beat your competitors, read down this post.

See also: 10 Mistakes Business owners Make & how to avoid them

Read also: How to Start Digital Marketing Agency in Nigeria – 7 steps

Why should your bother about increasing your sales?

If you are new to business, you may not understand in full term the position of your potential customers until you start making sales. The old timers will understand that the breath of their business comes down to sales. You will always remain in business as far as you are making sales

Your customers are humans. They have emotions and are looking for those that will care for them as much as they care for themselves. This is just being human, there is really nothing wrong wanting more to yourself.

10 Ways to Increase Business Sales and beat your competitors

To Increase Business Sales and beat your competitors, follow these 10 ways:

Offer good Customer Service

Every customer will always watch out for how you treat them. There is even the sad side of this that I must tell you. Customers get more attention to your poor customer’s service than even the good ones. But, this does not mean they don’t notice you when you have a great customer services.

Give them exactly what they want. If you can, go extra mile. This will always put you on the good book of your customers and they will gladly refer others to you even when you didn’t tell them to do so.

One example of a good customer service is in how fast your response is to request from your customers. It could be complaints or they just want to know something about your business. It is very important to give prompt response to them.

If you are reading this post, how will you feel when you get prompt response to any request you make on this site? I bet you will feel free to contact us again. This is how your customers will feel when you give them a sound customer service.

Do Free Give Away

Sometimes, you may have some occasion when you need to take it further from just having a sound customer service.

Giving something for free alongside with the products or services that the customers are coming to get from you is a strategy that has worked for so many business.

For an online business, you can easily find free trial period, free limited version of premium software/application. For offline business, some have gone to the level of adding pen, pencil or anything that may entice the customers to remembering how caring you are to them.

Before you do this, make sure you have the money to do it. It is not compulsory and you must not do it for all customers. This is because the first few that will benefit from it will always leave the remaining customers wishing they were part of it.

How it works? Spend some time brainstorming on something that your customers may be experiencing that you can help them without collecting money. Let say you have a boutique, you can buy handkerchief and add it as a giveaway to your customers.

It is normal for customer to feel good when you surprise them with such give away.

Celebrate with them

Every customer have days that they celebrate. On this occasion, you can easily celebrate with them and wish them well. You will be surprised how good they will feel for this kind gesture of yours.

This is common with online businesses because you can easily get your customers emails, phone numbers and other ways that you can reach them. One typical example of this method is found with how banks and the telecom companies have utilize this method to retain more customers and also gain new ones. They usually send emails and messages of birthdays, religious festivals and other celebrations.

For offline businesses, you can get the numbers of your customers through the receipt copy and send text to them, especially on general celebration that is well known to all.

They will be surprise when they see your text, this will lead them to share their experience with friends and colleagues which will bring in more sales.

But remember that you need a sound customer service for this second point to work effectively.

Request Feedback

Let me tell you a secret. Do you know that all the survey websites that are currently running just want one thing from the public – feedback? Yes, they want to know what customer think about their products and services.

Feedback are rare from customers. They would rather go and tell other customers about their experience with your business. This is why you need to kindly request feedback from your customers.

First, it will show them that you care about the way your business treats them. Secondly, it will show them that you are open to make changes. Lastly, it will give them the idea that their relationship with your business is been appreciated.

For example, if a customer gives a recommendation through the feedback he gives to your business, and later on sees that you have implemented that recommendation. How do you think he is going to feel? Great I guess.

For online business, it is easier to ask for reviews and testimonial from your customers. This has been recorded to boost more sales as new customers tend to make their judgment through the lens of other customers testimonial and reviews.

For offline business, you can get feedback by preparing a short and quick Q and A form that they can feel within minutes. You need to plead with them to do this for you. Kindly go through this and make adjustment in areas that you need to make changes.

Understand Your Value

Understanding the value of what you are offering will give you an edge over your competitors. What makes your product different from the ones on the shelf in the shopping mall?

What makes your information product different from the ones that your potential customers may have seen?

Understanding why you are different from other business will greatly influence your buyers mind when they are comparing your product/services to others that they may have used.

Moderate Your Price

Price has a great influence on customers because many buyers are price conscious. When your price becomes higher than that of your competitor, it may lead to low turnout for your business because they will move away from your business to that of your competitor.

Again, if your price is too low, some buyers may feel it is an inferior product or service. This may push them away from your business.

What should you do? If this is the case with you, adjust your price to balance or make it a little less than your competitors. This little change will go a long way to pull many customers to your business.

Brand Your Business

Branding your business is one outstanding way that you can make more sales in your business. Branding is all about ensuring that you are always connected with your existing customers while you are making more effort to gain new customers.

This is where you can leverage the use of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn etc. Blogging is another way to brand your business because customers will get to know a lot about your business even before coming in contact with your business.

If you have an offline business, create pages and join like-minded groups on the social media. Another way for offline business to brand themselves is to give business cards, wear branded T-shirts and run a registered business.

The more visible your business is, the more sales you will make.

Request Referral

While I said earlier that you can request feedback from your customers. You can also request referral from your existing pool of customers. This is why it is necessary to find a way to get their phone numbers.

Use Referral Programs

Use affiliate programs. This is most suitable for online business than for offline business. A lot of companies are making more sales through a revenue sharing formula known as affiliate marketing program. When you go through some website and blogs, you will find affiliate links to products and service.

What do you do if you are not running offline business? Network marketing is another version of affiliate marketing but is most suitable for businesses that have physical product to sell to clients. Though networking marketing is on the expensive side to start than affiliate marketing.

If you can, it will greatly help your business to make more sales when properly done.

Bonus

Learn to Sell

Selling is an ongoing thing to keep learning about as far as you want to remain in business. You can devote time to learn from others who have better experience than you. You can also attend seminar or webinar.  If you can, get a mentor. It is all about learning more ways of making sales in your business.

There is one secret I will love to leave with you. Your ability to make more sales and beat your competitors will always be a direct result of what you know and you are putting into use. If you know better than your competitor, I am sure you will always beat them.

This is why I am advocating a continual learning process for you as the owner of the business.

Never Stop Networking

Networking with others both within and outside your market space is another essential area that you need to engage in. It will add to the bonus point mentioned above.

Conclusion

Now you have come to know some of those simple tips that most businesses are easily throwing away. It is very common today to find that when a business becomes successful, they seem to forget what took them to that success.

Putting the tips in this post to practice will help you to increase business sales and beat your competitors who may not be willing to do what is in this post.

Are you a seasoned business owners or just starting off. Share your experiences of how you increased your sales with us. Other readers will greatly learn from you.