today we’re going to talk about increasing sales and you know almost everybody would think that if you just increase sales you’re going to increase profit but that’s not necessarily true but you certainly can do better if you increase your sales so let’s just camp on that subject for this time period I’m going to give you four really good ideas I believe that can help you understand how to increase your sales and without sales you don’t have anything and so we’re going to just be sure that we can get those sales coming in to your business whether it’s a service or whether it’s a product you sell number one you really do need to know your cost of goods if your need to job cost or basically determine exactly what your costs are for each and every individual part of your cost of product or service that you’re providing for your customer let’s give an example let’s say you’re making cakes and some kind of a cake that requires flour and some margins and salt and and you’ve got a little bit of heat and some water well you should take the cost of the entire flour bag and know how what the pounds are our ounces or weight of that entire bag of flour is and you would know what the cost of that is and divide that out and you would know what a cup of flour would cost you or a gram of flour however you’re measuring same thing with the butter same thing with the salt and you know probably not much cost for water but every ingredient that goes into there you would have that cost added up so that you would know exactly what if you’re selling one small cake you would know what your cost was for making that one small cake let’s take hamburgers okay you would have the bun you would have the meat those are the obvious then you’d have a piece of lettuce you’d have some tomato as well as we’ll take a full tomato and whatever it costs and you decide that you can slice it up into let’s say 20 small thin slices well you would take the total cost of that tomato divide it by 20 and that’s the cost of the tomato on that sandwich add it all together all the ingredients together and that’s what the cost of that sandwich would be your service would be the same thing whatever you’re providing or travel your fuel so it’s very important that you know what your costs are because you’re going to be asked down the line potentially to lower that cost and you need to know what it is so very critical that you know the cost of each individual piece of item you’re selling or each individual hour of time they’re selling for service or whatever it is so number two you need to understand your product and service now in this day and age you can go google search you can ask your neighbors you can search the town next over you can get so much information and I’m surprised how many people don’t really know about their product you need to be able to explain to your customer what’s unique about your product why you have chosen the ingredients you have chosen where the ingredients came from the science behind that if there is some you should be a wealth of knowledge about the product or service you’re selling see when it comes down to it you’re going to be the one that gonna have to stand out differently than that person that’s selling almost exactly the same thing down the street we had the example of making soap that would be soaked for like well washing your hands or soap for washing clothes and you know the question was raised that the competition was selling it cheaper well they weren’t selling the same soap as you’re selling you’re looking for quality and you have something different in your soap and you can prove it if maybe you even did a little test maybe you can do with this suds test and you can take the other competitors a spoonful of it and put it in a a cup of water and then then stir it real vigorously and do the same thing with yours and you can see how yours has or suds you need to know what’s different about your product and that comes from knowing the product very well number three you need to develop rapport with your customer it’s amazing to me how in I go to developing nations and how non customer friendly most people are when we walk into the store you can have somebody that’s talking on their cell phone maybe you can clearly tell they’re talking to their wife or to Grandma their little kids and you’re wanting to ask them a question and you feel like oh my goodness I’m interrupting you let me come back when you’re not talking on your phone to your girlfriend or your boyfriend and I’ll ask you the question that shouldn’t happen you should at the door and acknowledge them when they come in the door hello mr. Smith hi mr. matumbo or whatever their name is and and when you get to know them a little bit make sure you ask them what are they do they have children what are their interests what are their hobbies get to know them your you need a rapport with your customers you see it’s well said that people will buy based on price of course but you can’t you can have a little higher price if you have a product that has higher quality and you can even do better and make sure that you have rapport and you’re gonna have a customer that will come back to you because they trust you people do business with people they trust and that comes from having the information like I said and also building rapport with them then number three there’s no gimmicks in these but there’s a lot of things you can do then that are different than just taking an order I I always have felt very sad when I saw what I thought to be a just an order taker they called themselves a salesperson but actually they didn’t do any selling at all all they’re doing is well how many do you want what color do you want they didn’t give an explanation they didn’t help the customer in any way that’s an order taker now if you’re the owner of the business you’re probably in sales don’t be an order taker you’re going to be the one that’s going to be explaining like I said the difference in your product and your service but also you’re gonna be the one that would give some extra help some ways to to explain what’s going on and and here are some tips number one I was just at a weekend or a week with my wife at a special event and it wasn’t 1 day later and they sent me a survey oh really and they said would it take five minutes that I’d fill out this survey and at the end they would give me a small gift or at least say thank you I took the time because they wanted to know what I thought of the time when I visit this particular business okay I filled it out you can ask while the customers there is there anything that you don’t see here that you thought I should provide for you I’m willing to add some things to my my product list if you if you see something you need I’ll check into it it’s building rapport but it’s also giving them the confidence that you’re gonna just more than take their order there’s things like I was shopping yesterday and I did at the checkout stand they brought this little little sticker and it says okay let me let’s read it here says in big letters 20% off well it got my attention 20% off well if you buy a certain amount like $20 or more they’ll take 20% off but it’s valid only through a certain four or five days it’s not valid right away so that’s a way that they’re getting you to come back into their store yes they’re giving you 20 percent or ten percent or five percent off whatever you choose you could do that in a little card or a little coupon you can say hey this is good for starting next Monday or neck all of next week come in and I’ll give you a little discount but you gotta know your numbers because you can’t give away too much money and if you’ll know that if they come back you’re still making some profit and you get them into a habit of coming back we have within in our neck of the woods or in the area where we do business it’s a frequent buyer plan so you come in and you buy one time and they didn’t do some kind to acknowledge but they make a record that if you come in again like a meal on the 10th or the 11th meal is free that’s interesting that you eat 10 meals and they have a little little car about the size of a business card and they have a punch and they make a way that they punch off in this acknowledges this is the tenth time that you’ve come in and eating at the store the 11th time it’s free very interesting you get traffic into your store you know we’re in the day that you can do a whatsapp list or group you could gather all the data that of each customer their first and last name and at least one way to contact them and then you could just send them out some reminders or some suggestions of things that are happening in your store how they could be benefit if they came in and and bought in the next bit of time or or just push out a specials or extra discounts but see when you get to discounting if you don’t know what your costs are you’ve got to be careful because at the end of the day you want sales that that result in having a profit well there’s a whole series of things and we call it upselling you could sell just you know whatever the hamburger and say hey do you would you like some fries to go with that that’s up-selling you might sell some electrical equipment that’s just someone and say well did you did you forget do you need a roll of black electricians tape oh yeah I forgot I needed that and you’re up-selling you’re suggesting they buy a sandwich and you can offer it and say hey with that sandwich yeah don’t forget now we have some good pop over here some good soda over here things that would encourage or suggest to the customer that there’s more there to buy than what they just bought from you well thanks for being a part of inspiring better business we hope these help we desire to be a help to you and we we really believe that we can make a difference in the business world around the world thank you