Take control of how money flows into, around and through your store
Growth, we all want that, but you need to take some serious steps before you successfully grow your business. Sarah shared with us her story and a lot of useful tips.
One of the most disastrous things that can happen to your business, is losing all of your data. No longer able to access your customer database, your sales records, your inventory, your images and files, could potentially ruin your retail store. In the least, it would set you back weeks, trying to recover all of the lost information, and the lost sales that would happen as a result. I know businesses that have lost thousands of dollars in lost sales, when their website has been hacked, others that have lost tens of thousands of dollars in lost time, and not to mention, the potential legal issues that can arise, when you don’t have access to your business files. We’re talking about your point of sale system, your website, client information, internal files, employee data, bookkeeping files, images and blog posts, all gone. What would that do to your business? And yet, the answer to fix all of this is relatively simple and inexpensive. It just takes a bit of time to set it all up, and then it will automatically run in the background. So what am I talking about? Backing up your data to the cloud. Having an offsite,
Trade fairs are a whirlwind of people, products and hopefully, sales. You’re high on excitement, surrounded by thousands of potential customers. You’re ready to sell anything and everything. But trade fairs are a funny thing. Customers are oftened hyped up and ready to spend, and the old fear of missing out, drives them to buy things that they may not normally have purchased. Now, the reason you do trade fairs, is mainly to attract new customers, right? But a new customer once, is not going to change your bottom line. In order to have a sustainable business model, you need to focus on repeat business. And, you can rock your customer’s world, if you offer a great customer experience. So what I’m going to tell you today, isn’t rocket science. They’re simple things that you can put in place, to make a one off customer into a repeat buyer, and hopefully, one that tells everyone about you, because word of mouth is the most positive form of advertising. So first off, skip the scanner. Those trade fair supplied systems that cost hundreds of dollars, really aren’t going to get you your perfect customer. What they’re going to do, is clog
How Stacey helps business to get fantastic results and where to find the biggest place where businesses leaving money on the table? Discover in this podcast episode
Are you using your B&M store, market stall, or pop up shop, to the best of it’s ability. Whilst a lot of retailers shy away from the overheads and the responsibility that comes with having a bricks and mortar store, the fact is, with the overheads, comes a distinct competitive advantage. But, are you using that, to the best of it’s ability. When you have a bricks and mortar store, not only do you need to exploit every piece of real estate in and around it, but you also need to fully utilise the people you hire, and their skills. Open a customer’s eyes to what else is out there. If a customer comes in for a specific product, you have the ability to show them products that they may not have ever come across. It’s your job, as the retailer, to make the shopping experience as fulfilling as possible. This means offering cross sells. If a customer comes in for new dinnerware, show them placemats, a fruit bowl or a gravy boat. When opened up to new possibilities, a customer is likely to enjoy the experience more. Trust me, if they’re not interested, they’ll tell you. Educate them a
When I went to New York recently, I was looking forward to some amazing shopping, but, not looking forward to those pesky currency conversion charges on my credit card, that can add up super quickly. So when I found that my airline Frequent Flyer card could also be used as a pre-paid credit card in local currency, I immediately transferred some cash into it, and watched the exchange rates daily. Exchange rate fluctuations can seriously affect the profitability of a product in your store. Not only is there the actual unit cost, but also the freight to get it to you, and both of those amounts will change, depending on the exchange rate for the day. I’ve seen many small businesses that order a small shipment of stock, for say, a thousand dollars, but by the time the payment comes due, the price may have changed by hundreds of dollars. Those dollars could mean the difference between a profitable product, and one that ends up costing you money. There are a few options that you can utilise, when it comes to hedging your currency. If you have the funds upfront, you can use a pre-paid card, like the one I
Should you sell stock before it arrives in your store? What are the pros and cons? Pre selling stock before it comes into your store can generate significant cash flow for you. Just look at any Apple product. People line up, sometimes for days, in order to purchase their products, and quite often, they don’t even get to walk away with a physical product . Sometimes it’s months, before they receive the goods they’re pre-purchasing. Apart from having an amazing brand, Apple creates demand by releasing snippets of information in the lead up to the event. They don’t just go hey, here’s a new product, you can have it in 3 months. They create hype and demand. They trade on FOMO, the fear of missing out. Apple use this as a status indicator. Another benefit of preselling, is that it creates scarcity. Similar to FOMO, creating scarcity increases a product’s desirability, and prompts customers buy, even if the product hasn’t arrived. Preselling an item can also validate the viability of a product. If lots of people are talking about it, and buying that product, it gives the product credibility. We call that social proof. Speaking of validation, when you presell
If you shop at Amazon or eBay, you’ve probably checked the seller’s reviews before you went ahead and purchased. Why, well, if you’re anything like me, it’s so that you can see the credibility of the seller, or the actual product, the have the security that you weren’t the first to buy, that others liked the product. When I say that reviews are important, I’m stating the obvious. You already know that, because you read them when you shop online, before you go to a restaurant or before you book a hotel. Word of mouth, and the power of the digital pen, make the need for reviews on your website, pretty much a given, if you want to increase your sales and traffic to your site. How do you feel about these statistics. 9 out of 10 people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations 7 out of 10 people say that reviews help them make the decision to purchase a product So apart from the fact that having reviews can mean the difference between a sale and not, what other benefits do reviews have for your retail business? They allow you to become an expert Reviews allow you
Back on BBTRtv3, I talked about affiliate income as an additional revenue stream into your business. Affiliate income is where you sell the products or services of a complimentary company, and you receive a referral fee for doing so. It’s a great way to bring in additional income to your store, without having to outlay money for stock. As a retailer, you should have several sources of income. No business should rely on one source of income, and your store only derives income from sales, then you are at the mercy of any external factor that affects consumer spending. Now, you could branch out into several different areas, such as providing complimentary services, creating your own product range and wholesaling, but the easiest revenue stream that you can add into your sales funnel, is affiliate income. Affiliate income is where you sell the products or services of a complimentary company, and you receive a referral fee for doing so. Why does it work? Well, people don’t buy what you sell, they buy why you sell it. That’s a Simon Sinek quote, and it’s true. So the key to effective affiliate marketing, is to pick products and services, that you believe in. When
You’ve just had a decent sized order come in through your website. You wrap it, package it and are just about to log it in for collection by the courier, when you get an email saying the customer wants to cancel. What you do next, is all dependent on the systems you have in place. Let’s be honest. Order cancellations suck. You had the money, then poof, it’s gone. And you never even had a chance to spend it! So how can you reduce your order cancellations and keep that money in your cash register? Before you can do anything, you need to have your terms and conditions in place. Make it super clear how the ordering process works. What is an acceptable reason for cancelling? Is simply finding it somewhere cheaper acceptable? I ask you, should YOU be responsible for someone not doing their due diligence? Price matching, now that’s a conversation for a whole new episode. You need to spell out, clearly, what happens through each step of the ordering process, so that your customer can be held accountable. If you find you have a high number of cancellations, then have a pop up at checkout that confirms
Phone companies do it, cable tv networks do it, even banks do it. But are you doing this simple product strategy to increase sales and benefit your customers in your retail store? Bundling is used by many companies. Quite simply, it’s when you put a group of products together to provide a product or service with greater value. You may already do this to an extent, when you put together gift baskets. But is it an overall product strategy in your store? Here are three ways that you could start bundling today and increasing your store revenue. Bundle a brand together If you have a popular brand that sells well, bundle the products together to provide a one-stop purchase for your customer. This allows a customer to try out different products in the range that they may not have purchased separately, because they didn’t know they existed, or didn’t know they even needed them Bundle complimentary products together Shampoo, conditioner, a hairbrush a volumising spray. You’ve seen those packs in the hair salon. It’s a easy choice – everything you need, bundled together. Item don’t have to be brand specific, they just need to work well together to solve the
Have you heard of the term dropshipping? Do you know how it works and is it actually a profitable way to run a business? Let’s start with what Dropshipping actually is. You may have heard other retailers talking about it, or even suppliers who offer to dropship products for you, but you’ve never been quite sure on what the process involves. Dropshipping is when you don’t actually hold the physical inventory in your store. Whether you trade online or have a bricks and mortar store, when you drop shop, you sell a product that you don’t physically keep in stock. A customer will purchase the product from you and pay upfront. You then send the order off to the supplier, who ships the product direct to your customer. Sounds perfect right, its like free inventory. Let’s look at the pros and cons of dropshipping. On the positive side, dropshipping is a great way to increase your inventory lines without having to outlay any money. Fake it til you make it It makes your online store look much bigger, with a wider range. Invest your cash flow elsewhere Dropshipping allows you to use the money that you would have potentially outlaid for a
