Sales Strategy Q&A

In order to expand your customer-base you need to give people a reason why they would want to potentially go out of their way to get to you instead of going to a cafe closer to home. As the others have mentioned, it’s difficult to give suggestions without knowing what you’ve already tried, but here are some ideas that will (hopefully) help you get more foot traffic in your cafe:

1. Corporate and event catering - catering not only opens up another way of doing business, but it can expose your cafe to a wider audience who may bear you in mind for future catering events 

2. Do weekly specials - doing a delicious weekly gets people excited and offers value-for-money

3. Host events - run comedy nights, open-mic, film nights, cork n’ canvas, etc

4. Try to nail one thing on your menu - we all have that one favourite dish that we would travel far and wide to get! Pick and master a household or local/national favourite that will get people talking 

5. Loyalty cards - loyalty cards are a great way to keep people coming back

6. Consider a suburb special coupon - give people in the nearby suburbs an exclusive discount
   
   Good luck :) 

Something i've been answering for over 20 years. When we first started, I never knew what to charge, it is a guessing game, trial and error to work out where your services sit, vs the market-place as a guide. It should constantly evolve. Start higher leaves room for negotiation, and always ask the obvious question - what is the budget... but be tactful about this - you may be able to ask it straight out, but you may need to build the conversation into this point and find a good reason to ask it; I normally give a range in that case, (as service is dependant on the amount of hours we put in), and talk to that as a ballpark. Then justify it. You can throw a BIG silly number out there too always helps break the ice - it won't cost a million $... plenty of sales techniques i've tried throughout the years like this; they can all work, they can all fail. The main point is feel out the conversation with the potential client, a good conversation and alignement will help justify your service offering as it is rarely apples vs apples they are buying  

Can anyone tell me whether line fees are required for the bigger retail chains, in the same way as the supermarkets?

Hi Steve,

Great question with no single right answer.

Some will suggest that it is impossible to have an 'outsider' come in and perform sales in a similar fashion to what an external OHS consultant or Business Coach might do.

Others will argue the other way.

There are organisations and individuals who offer the type of solution you have posed in your question and that others have expanded on.

I would be more than happy to have a conversation with you around some strategies that might be of interest to you, at the very least give you a couple of more options.

Cheers

Greg

Would love to hear your thoughts @Peter Khalil @Peter Khalil 

Hi Selena,

One thing? Cos there are many, many things.

But just one?

Define it.

Define it and you will be able to identify the ONE THING that will work best.

"Increase your sales" is equivalent to using a map but without knowing what the destination is.

If you can't define it, how will you know when you get there? If you don't know that, how could you know what to do?

It's akin to throwing darts blindfolded, you might hit the target occasionally but you have no idea!

Define it might be something like - we want to increase our new customer sales by 15% in 6 weeks.

You now have the end result and what success looks like, plus you have a baseline on which you can measure.

Now you can plan what the best strategy/action/execution is to take to get that result. The one thing.

You then prepare whatever resources, tools, training, skills are required to action/execute.

Then you participate, actually put the planing and preparation into play, this is the doing.

You check your progress, are we on track, is any adjustment required, what's working - what's not.

And this will increase the probability of reaching that 'defined' target, the payoff.

That's my 5Ps framework in action right there. As Covey said, start with the end in mind.

If 'increasing sales' is 15% more new customer sales in 6 weeks, then the ONE thing that sits behind that is going to be completely different to 'increasing sales' meaning 15% more existing customer sales in 6 weeks.

If you can define it; you can observe if it is happening or not; if you can define it and observe it, you can measure it; if you can define it, observe it and measure it, the feedback becomes objective rather than subjective.

Hope that helps and makes sense.

To your business growth.

Greg

Would love to hear your thoughts on this @Philip Brookes , @Anna Osherov , @Tony Eades , @James Parnwell , @Greg Vekar 

Hi Federica!

The cost to run online sales promotions varies depending on a range of factors including:

• The platform/channel - e.g. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, AdWords, etc

• Pricing options - on the Google display network you can choose cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPC) and cost-per-acquisition (CPA)

• The industry of the advertiser - keywords in some industries are more expensive than others 

While there are many variables, below is a breakdown of the ballpark figures you can expect to pay for various online channels:

• PPC: approximately $1-2 per click

• Facebook: approximately $1 per click

• Instagram: approximately $0.50 - $1 per click

A basic paid ad campaign could cost as little as $300 per month or reach into the thousands...

One of the most popular budgeting strategies for a sales promotion is by allocating a percentage of your sales revenue as it gives you more control and the budget will increase or decrease with the amount of sales you generate. A typical allocation percentage of sales revenue is around 5%.

The only way to avoid discounting spiral is by not going that rabbit hole.
Don't even start, as there will be NO end to that, and these customers just shout TROUBLE!
I would never agree to that, as it is  disrespectful to the work I do, the caring, time, effort I put into my work.