When You Need to Generate Sales Fast

February 25, 2010 by Gary Hennerberg

multipage

The first quarter of the year can be a challenging time to generate sales. So if you're looking for a reliable way to bring in revenue, the best place to start is by contacting your best customers. Here are a few ideas and approaches.

1. Segment your customer file
Not all customers are equal, and when you need sales fast, your best customers are the most likely to come through for you. So it's vital that you stratify your customers by a key metric. Usually, it's most effective to segment by sales or average order size. Rather than roughly categorize customers in one group or another, an analysis of your customers will better pinpoint a strategic breaking point between groups.

For a food marketer, for example, we looked at the average price point paid, and then fine-tuned our segments so we would know the sales values within each stratified segment. By doing this, we could identify offers for each segment to encourage them to buy, and stretch them to the next higher customer segment with an offer that could yield a higher purchase.

When you sort your customer's sales activity, from highest to lowest and cumulate sales and calculate percentage of total sales, your eyes will be opened. You may see, for example, that your top 10 percent or 20 percent of customers do indeed produce a disproportionately higher volume of sales. It's those top customers who will reliably respond to your offers, even outside your prime selling season.

2. Clear out unsold product
Chances are that you have unsold non-perishable products just waiting to be moved. You probably offer them on your website since it's easy to offer close-out items there. But sometimes a simple, yet well-crafted direct mail letter is all it takes to get the sales flowing.

For a business-to-business client, we created an inexpensive personalized direct mail package to clear out blemished inventory that couldn't be sold in the retail sales channel. It was mailed to about 500 of their best original equipment manufacturers, and produced $65,000 in sales in a few days.

3. Get future sales commitments early
Everyone knows the economy is rough, so rather than wait until the sales season has arrived, get out there now with a rock-bottom offer for future commitments and lock-in the sale now, before your competitors are in the mix. Depending upon your business, you might even be able to ask and receive a deposit for the future sale now in exchange for a not-to-be-repeated offer when the normal sales season cycle returns.

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