Top 10 Ways a Salesperson Can Increase Sales

This month while the boss is away at The JCK Show ~ Las Vegas 2005 buying new merchandise, I thought I would detail my top 10 ways that a salesperson can increase personal sales. Each is based on three underlying goals: (1) Get more people to come into the store, (2) sell to more of the people that are already coming into the store—increasing your closing ratio, and (3) sell more to the people that you are already selling.

1. Make a telephone call to your existing customers with a customer-benefited reason for the call, for example, new merchandise arrivals, special events, anniversaries, birthdays, graduations, etc.
2. Ask every customer for a referral. …Who else do you know who may be getting engaged or graduating? Would you mind giving them one of my business cards?
3. Carry and pass out business cards to people you come in contact with in your personal life—bank tellers, waiters and waitresses, post-office employees, etc.
4. Network within your community. Join the Chamber of Commerce, United Way, civic clubs and organizations, religious groups, etc.
5. Contact your friends and relatives about special events going on in their lives.
6. Ask every customer at least two add-on questions, for example, What other special events do you have coming up? (See Strategies for Selling, "Top 10 Add-On Questions," JCK, April 2005, p. 123.)
7. Attempt to sell every customer higher-quality merchandise through increasing his or her perception of value.
8. Ask every repair customer questions to get him or her involved in looking at jewelry.
9. Sell based on the emotional reason that customers buy, not just the technical. In this way you are developing personal trade customers that feel that you are their friend in the jewelry business.
10. Turn over sales that you cannot complete to another salesperson, giving him or her a chance to complete the sale. The reasons that people don't buy are as numerous as the reasons that people do buy!