How to Increase Sales in Your Retail Shop

If you run a retail shop you will know there are periods when sales are not where you want them. That can depend on the time of day, the weather, traffic or any number of other factors you probably cannot influence. There are plenty of things you can influence, though, that will lift sales in your shop — and you can read about them below:

#1. Go through the calendar and find unusual holidays or dates you could mark

Most shops mark only a handful of days in the year, such as International Women's Day or Valentine's Day. On those days they run promotions and try to lift sales that way. With a little effort, though, you can find plenty of dates through the year that could be interesting, that you could mark in your shop, and that could lift sales. A month ago, for instance, there was a palindrome day: 02.02.2020. The date read the same from the left and from the right. You could have marked it in your shop by running promotions on certain products and setting prices that read the same both ways.

#2. Get yourself noticed through activities that give customers value

The idea is to use various activities to get as many people as possible through your door, because the more people come in, the more you will sell. We do not mean promotions and discounts here, but other activities that will bring in more sales over the long term. If your shop has a website, start writing a regular blog about everything your customers are interested in. Organise events at other venues that will get you talked about. If you sell water purification units, you could set up a stand in a shopping centre and hand out drinks made with purified water from your units. Leave leaflets in nearby businesses where your customers are likely to turn up. You could leave a leaflet at the local hairdresser about how to exercise when you are short of time, and draw new members into your gym that way.

#3. Manage your prices continuously

Setting product prices is not simple, but you should always keep in mind that you want to be profitable. So you need to keep checking whether the prices you have set are right, and whether there is room to raise them or a need to lower them. Sometimes you have no idea that a product would sell just as well at a higher price, and that is certainly worth testing. The same goes for price cuts, where reducing a price by a certain percentage can lift sales of a product considerably — again, bearing your profitability in mind at all times.

#4. Improve your shop's design and product layout

Catch your customers' attention while they are in the shop by using displays and arranging products in a way that encourages impulse purchases. You need to give customers a reason to buy. Tell them with a sign that a product is on promotion and how much they will save. In the same way, you can place a particular product beside the till and offer it to everyone who is already paying.

#5. Improve your staff's product knowledge

Your sales staff need to listen to the customer and make the right suggestion, and that is only possible if they know your products inside out. Train them continuously so that they find it easier to connect with customers and build a relationship and trust, which over the long term will lift sales.

#6. Be present on social media

Everyone knows today that you have to be on social media. Even so, not everyone is there, and some may not fully appreciate what it is worth. You need to be present on social media whatever kind of shop you run, and posting regularly matters a great deal. Think of social media as a long-term investment in your business and focus on giving value rather than only on selling. You will of course want to run promotions and offers from time to time, but not only that — do only that and people will stop following you.

#7. Manage your money and your stock with great care

This may look obvious, but it is easy to get caught up in the daily running of the shop and pay less attention to how the business is doing as a whole.

You need to know:

• How much revenue you need each month for your shop to work. That is, what your fixed costs are for running the premises, staff wages, producing your social media presence and so on.
• Which items bring in the most revenue, and which are causing problems or not selling well
• What your cash flow looks like through the month
• What your stock position is and how you should react to it

Everything listed under point 7 can be done very easily using our software TiramisuERP, which has a powerful module for retail as well as POS.