How To Ensure Your Business Survives In The Economic Downturn

What can we do to make sure that our business doesn't go bust in these tough economic climes? One easy answer is that we must make more sales! So many business owners, however, believe that this entails chasing after more and more extra customers. That can work, but it is a really hard way to go. The tactic that I propose in this article is quite a simple one really. It is to make more sales to our current customers than trying to go get new ones through spending our hard earned cash on expensive advertising. By selling more, I mean more of the goods or services that the customer came to you to buy in the first place. More related items to your first one, that while the customer is in the zone to buy you could offer, or perhaps more items that help the customer consume the original product.

Up-selling is the way big corporations like MacDonalds make the most out of each customer visit, we ought to try and emulate them. Aero-engine manufactures make money on the on going service contracts for their products, can we in our business do the same? Computer printer manufacturers make money on ink sales and will go out of their way to make you buy their own branded ink. If your printer breaks down and needs to be repaired under the warranty you can have a nasty shock when the warranty is declared void because the repair man has tested your ink and found you were refilling the cartridges and not using branded replacements. Now perhaps you don't approve of these tactics but, as entrepreneurs that are of a more modest size either on the web or in our bricks and mortar businesses, what can we learn from this and apply to our own offerings?

We are all aware that paid for advertising is expensive and sometimes a waste. We often have no idea which part of our advertising budget is going down the drain and which bit is hitting on target. Often an enterprise simply depends on word of mouth and its customers tripping over them on the way to somewhere else. If you are in the enviable position to get a large amount of passing trade to your door, or organic search engine rankings in the internet world, what we all need to do is maximise profits and the number of products and services that we sell by "up-selling" to our current customers.

You will find that the idea of obtaining new customers being so much harder for a business than selling something to your existing ones is often taught in many businesses training courses. So, in that case, our aim should be to entice our current customers to spend a bit more with us than they originally intended to do. Up-selling is just one way to achieve this. Once we've made a sale then the key to our continued success is in developing a relationship with our customer and selling consumables or similar products to them in the future.

The sale of an item should be just the beginning for us if we are smart.

Believe me, keeping hold of our existing customers is so much more important than going out and trying to find new ones, warming them up so that they become regular buyers. So many business people forget this truth and spend so much time, energy and cash going looking for new prospects while all the time omitting to build a great relationship with their current customers. It really is a mindset that I hope you will join me in and so protect your business and see that it doesn't fail in today's tough economic climate.