5 Reasons Your Sales are not Growing

Many small business owners focus on wrong actions to grow their sales. They have been led to believe by the marketing folks that you have to spend money (on advertising) to make money. What else would you expect to hear from marketing? After all, it is in the best interest of those marketing people to say that. While I don’t dispute the impact of marketing and advertising on sales, I do believe that it has been overhyped. In my opinion, you need to focus on the fundamentals and other low-cost actions before you spend money on marketing.
For any business sales is a function of three business drivers – target customer market, products and customer service. Pick the right target market, develop products they would die for and deliver them with excellent customer service. Viola!! You are guaranteed to see results in terms of higher sales and profits. I know this is easier said than done, but you can take baby steps towards that goal by first understanding what you are not doing right and making incremental corrections. Here are my observations in terms of 5 actions small business owners are taking that leads to sub-optimal sales.

1. You are not serving the “right” customer. Before you can even develop a product you have to have a good understanding of the customers you are will sell it to. You can develop successful business by serving those customers who are spending $10 on a sweater in the same way you can with those who will spend $1,000. You just have to decide which customers you want to serve and develop your business around their needs. Remember, the world needs Wal-Mart as well as Neiman Marcus and both have developed successful businesses by serving different customer base. Want more tips? Look at my past articles on why not all customers are created equal and how to find right ones.
2. You are focusing more on marketing and less on products. As I have explained in fundamental rules of marketing great marketing without great products leads to waste of money. Before you spend even a dime on marketing make sure you have the products that are craved by your target customer base. Learn from the world’s most valuable company – Apple – that has fundamentally changed several industries and made lot of money by doing just that.
3. You are not harnessing the marketing power your customers and employees. No amount of money can buy you as much marketing as word of mouth. Yet most small business owners fail to leverage this powerful marketing technique. By harnessing the power of your customer and employees to spread word about your business you can get more bang for your marketing buck. Of course, you have to give them reason in terms of must-have products and excellent customer service to spread the word about your business. These articles on how to get your customers to do marketing for you and how your employees can help with sales provide excellent tips on how to do it right.
4. You are not helping your customer make choices. In this world of abundant choices, the customers are confused more than ever when it comes to finding and selecting the product that will fit their needs. The businesses that help them navigate through these choices and give them the right product at the right price stand to benefit. I truly believe that you can improve sales by about 25% by helping customers with suggestions. I have explained best practices in customer suggestions in earlier article.
5. You are not up selling and cross selling. After you have gained customers’ trust by providing sincere advice and suggestions you can take it one step further and provide additional products and services that fit their needs. While you do need to handle this carefully, up selling and cross selling can improve your sales significantly while contributing more to the profit. Look at these tips on how to up sell and cross sell.

What other suggestions do you have to improve sales?