When you notice that your sales lower then you are feel they
should be, you will need to take action quickly. However, the common reaction is
that your company may not be getting enough traffic to your location or to your
website.
While that may be true, there are other things to observe
prior to spending more financial resources on traffic. In fact, you'll benefit
most from looking at some fundamentals before you consider attracting new
customers to your business. One of the
most commonly overlooked fundamentals is the location’s conversion rate.
The conversion rate is important because it tells you
exactly how many of the prospects and visitors that are converted into paying
customers. If you don't know what this number is then your first action point
is to implement a suitable tracking system. Without tracking your results, you
won't know what to do when you see indicators such as falling sales, decreasing
profits or steep declines in prospect levels.
If you notice that the conversion rate is falling in concert
with the decline in sales, then you have found your culprit. However, the
action that you need to take, will have nothing to do with attaining more
traffic. You will need to work on your sales process.
You want to find out what is happening on an everyday basis,
to cause your company to have less sales than in the past. Do you have an
employee that is less productive than they have been in the past? Is there
something happening at a particular time of day that causes your buying
customers not to come to your location? Is there something happening on your
website, that is driving people away?
All of these are possible scenarios that
would cause your conversion rate to fall. Your job as a business owner, is to
act as a detective and find out what the cause of the declining conversion rate
is.
Once you’ve narrowed down the problem, it will be time for
re-training in basic sales principles. You want your store employees, not only
to avoid the mistakes that caused the decline in sales revenue, but you'll also
want them to be on the lookout for opportunities to generate more income.
This may mean that you’ll need to consider some kind of
incentive for your employees to go above and beyond their normal
responsibilities. If your sales are flat or declining, make sure to ask your
employees what the company can do to generate more sales?
Typically if you're having a motivation problem, your
employees will take the opportunity to let you know at that time. Upon asking
them the question; they choose not to answer you probably have a different
problem. It’s likely that your current staff may be indifferent about looking
for sales opportunities.
This will definitely require you to be creative in putting
the right systems in place to give them motivation to sell more. Consider using a system
that allows for front line employees to benefit when the store experiences
increased sales activity.
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