It is our belief that your employees can help improve sales at your business by more than 20% if you help them help you. Most business owners don’t really think of their employees as ones who can help them improve sales; however the front line employees – the ones that interact with customers – can make a big difference in improving your business. These employees are talking to and interacting with your customers all the time. They are responsible for making your customers come back by providing great customer service. In short, they are representing your brand and your business.
So what are the specific ways in which your employees can help improve sales? In our experience of running business for 5 years we have come across multiple opportunities.
- They can make your existing customers come back by providing excellence customer service.
- They can also help bring new customers by word-of-mouth from existing ones.
- They can help you up-sell and cross-sell at the point of order taking and payment.
- They are aware of where opportunities exist for improvement in customer service and operations.
It is your responsibility as business owner to make this happen. You have to provide them with the necessary resources and incentives that will motivate them to give their best in front of customers. We have identified below several areas that you need to address.
- Hire best employees. It all starts with having the best employees to work in your business. No amount of motivation or tools will make ordinary employees give their best to their jobs. We provided suggestions on how to go about hiring best employees in an earlier post.
- Give incentives. It’s a human nature to look after the best for themselves; so it is natural that they would want a share of the improved sales if they make it work. You have to put bonus system in place such that any improvement in sales will lead to more money for them.
- Motivate them to give their best. In addition to monetary incentives there are other ways of motivating the employees to give their best. We identified several such techniques in earlier post.
- Provide resources. You cannot expect your employees to know everything about improving sales. It is your responsibility to teach them as well as provide tools that will enable to do their job. You need to look at all aspects of customer service including how to deal with customer complaints to how to improve sales with up selling and cross selling.
- Reinforce the concept periodically. It is not enough to tell your employees once and expect them take action. You have to continue to remind them that they are all in this business together and if the business does well everyone benefits.
Just like your customers can help with marketing your business your employees are another source you can utilize to improve sales. However, most small business owners don’t look at it that way and miss out on the opportunity to harness the power of employees.
Have you used any other methods to get your employees help with more sales?
