A Dozen Ways to Boost Sales

Monday, October 15, 2007

Alex Hiam, Insights for Marketing, http://www.insightsformarketing.com

Hi, this is your virtual sales and marketing consultant, here to help you think of something easy to do right now that will bring you increased sales. If you are a Marketing for Dummies reader, you already know that I like to include occasional lists of simple techniques and tips, to balance the more weighty how-to processes and technical advice.

Marketing shouldn’t have to be complicated or difficult.
There are often simple things you can do to improve sales, such as one of the following:

• Include a (nicely designed and informative) business card in every piece of correspondence you send out.

• Put your telephone extension and your cell phone on your card to help people navigate to you by phone.

• Answer every inquiry immediately. On average, marketers don’t follow up about a third of all sales leads properly? Don’t fall into this trap.

• Send a personal letter to your customers, updating them on new offerings or thanking them for their business.

• Introduce your customers to each other. Helping them network helps build your network and brings you referrals and sales.

• Send cards on customers’ birthdays. (Do it. Do it now. If you don’t know when their birthdays are, I have a radical suggestion: Ask them!)

• Give your best customers a subscription. Magazines come every month, giving your customer a regular reminder of your gift. It gives you a lot of impact for a small cost, and a nice New Year’s gift to show your customers that you appreciate their business. (But give them a serious, even technical, publication about your industry, not a common magazine.)

• Spread your brochures generously around conventions, conferences, and meetings where your prospective customers may be. Always bring a bundle and leave without it. (This tip applies to business-to-business marketers, especially.)

• Celebrate your firm’s birthday with a party, announcements, a special price roll-back, and so forth — and make sure that you publicize the event to your customers and the media in advance!

• Order some nice polo shirts with your brand name or company logo on them and give or sell them to customers and anyone who wants one or may look good in it. Make sure that you get a good-quality shirt, please — something people want to wear. Then let them go out and provide free visibility for you.

• Improve your logo if it’s not memorable and cool. My company worked with a top graphic designer to come up with a new, improved logo last year, and we’ve received tremendous response. People like the design and color scheme. They remember the logo and recognize it when it appears in a new place or on a new product. Most logos are dull or confusing, so make yours stand out.

Have you done or seen something simple and effective that builds sales? If so, maybe you’d be willing to share it with other readers. Please use the email option at www.insightsformarketing.com to let me know, and I can add it to the postings that support this chapter on that site.

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