Generating new sales through existing customers can often be the most available sales tool and just makes good business sense. A very promising approach to finding new sales is to expand the number of categories that each customer purchases. For example, some men may have purchased jewelry for Valentine’s Day, but never purchased wedding or anniversary jewelry from your store. Keeping an up-to-date and detailed customer profile that includes historic sales by product category is something that point of sale customer contact management systems are designed to do.
Here are some tips to keep in mind:
- Customers “vote with their wallets” when it comes to jewelry purchases. Consider how you can expand your share of sales by offering new product category options to customers. Seldom does any single jewelry store ever gain 100 percent of a customer’s jewelry sales. What percent of “share of wallet” of jewelry sales would you like to be earning from your most valued customers? How might enticing customers to try new types of jewelry from new product categories help create new sales for your store? Break the mindset with customers that they only consider your store for certain categories of jewelry products.
- Some of the most available sales may be from loyal customers who become enticed to purchase jewelry in a new category. Do you know why specific customers are not purchasing jewelry in other product categories offered by your store? Consider using special occasions like birthdays to promote categories of past purchases and new category purchases. Why not entice a customer with an extra discount to make a purchase in a new product category? What about a wish list based on new jewelry from new categories?
- Do analysis of crossover from one category to another by individual customer. For example, review a customer’s wedding ring and anniversary ring sales. What about the husband who purchased jewelry for Valentine’s Day and never has purchased an anniversary ring from your store? Plan now to train employees to identify these additional selling opportunities. What about the men who purchased a high-end watch to complement their power suits? Why not approach these customers with a proposal for them to consider a more casual watch to better match their business casual attire?
- Selling into new categories is more than just selling sets of jewelry. Of course jewelers should be tracking and re-approaching customers with special offers to complete a customer’s set of jewelry. Consider the woman who purchased only the necklace or earrings or bracelet from a set of jewelry. Do you have a program—e.g., content marketing, customer discount, sales associate incentive—to encourage her to complete the set? There are other promising approaches to developing more new category sales than just relying on selling a set of jewelry.
- Gain more “share of wallet” with customers by helping them better understand the value and rewards of owning, gifting, self-gifting, and wearing jewelry from new categories of jewelry they have not purchased from your store. Increase sales by enticing existing customers to consider new jewelry in new categories of jewelry offered by your store. Develop sales programs to target new category sales with loyal customers.
Dr. Tim Malone served on the faculty of GIA for several years. Well known for his presentations at industry conferences and events, he now consults jewelry companies on how to offer sustainable competitive advantages, more effective differentiation, and sales, marketing, and merchandising management performance improvement. He can be reached at 760-305-7977 or at netvalue@cox.net.
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