
Sales are the lifeline for any successful business, and even the biggest companies need to constantly find ways to attract new customers. Whether your business sales are through the roof or not, it’s always worth reading up to discover new ways to sell. Here’s 5 ways to increase sales:
Reduce payment terms
It’s easy for businesses starting out to agree on lengthy payment terms to keep their customers happy, but this can be detrimental to both parties. If you feel overworked and underpaid, the quality of your product could suffer which starts a downward spiral. Consider reducing your payment terms. For example, from 30 to 14 days.
Make it easy to pay
This is the age of convenience, and people will almost always pay you via the easiest option. If you only accept cheques or bank transfers, your customers might take longer to pay due to the inconvenience. Worst still, they might even decide to work with your competitor if they have easier payment methods. Consider accepting credit cards, paypal, online payments etc.
Perform a cash-flow forecast
OK, this might not be the quickest way to improve cash flow, but it’s important you analyse when your sales are at their highest and lowest throughout the year, in comparison to your outgoings. This will give you an idea of where you need to bridge the gap between sales and outgoings, and there might just be something you missed which is causing problems.
Cut costs
The reason for your cash flow problems may not be down to sales, it could just be down to your spending. By creating a cash flow forecast as suggested above you should know when your quiet periods are. During these periods you should be spending the least amount of money possible.
Tell your staff
If cash flow is important to your business, your staff should be aware of this. You may have salesman on the front line who may just work a little bit harder if they knew the importance of every sale. Your accounts department may be just that little bit more pressing when chasing money.
It’s not easy managing business cash flow, but we found the trick is to get to know your company and it’s customers. When are your sales at their highest? When are your sales lower? When do your customers usually pay?
We hope you have found these tips helpful. If you would like some advice on how to improve your sales online, please get in touch now to see how we can help.