Paul Lemberg

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You are here: Home / Archives for profits

By pl 37 Comments

Strategies for Holding Sales

 

Follow these tips to make more money by holding sales promotions

It’s that time of year…

Maybe it should be called Sales Season.

Want to know how to make sales work for you – and have more cash coming in right now without hurting your year-round profits?

There are four important tips, and each one will make a difference to whether your sales bring in a much-welcomed cash boost or tank your margins until the end of time.

Watch this short video, and be sure to post your comments below when you’re done.  Tell me what you need to know and what you think…

~pl

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today I’m talking about how to have a sale. It’s on my mind because it’s sales season. Black Friday… Cyber Monday… This is the time of year when all retail businesses, marginal ones, finally make a profit.

Now everybody knows I’m the “higher prices” guy. You know… Higher prices leads to higher margins, which leads to stronger profits, and gives you more money if you use marketing and sales. It’s a virtuous circle. Stronger demonstrable value always, always is the most profitable strategy over the long haul.

But as we know people sometimes need incentives to take action. Time has to be compressed. Sometimes the pressure has to be turned up. Which brings us to The Sale.

Sales are not the only way, but they are a good way to get people to take action.

Sometimes you just have to stimulate some business, you just need to bring in cash right away. Used strategically, sales are not a bad thing. They ARE a bad thing to rely on for your whole business but strategically they’re not bad.

Here are some tips if you’re going to have a sale.

First, you can’t always be running a sale. I’m thinking of Banana Republic. I signed up for their buyer’s club account. And they’re always running a sale. Almost every other day I get some sort of a discount coupon from them. It does drive purchases, it does act as an incentive. But it absolutely hurts margins.

Next, have to offer a reason for the sale. You don’t want people to expect your sale and you don’t want them to think you’re going to do it all the time. Tell people why you’re making this particular sale. It could be a tax sale, maybe it’s a divorce sale, perhaps it’s an inventory sale. It might be your office burned down – a real fire sale or a flood sale. It could be a “you want to expand your business” sale. It could be “I’m an idiot and I just can’t stop myself and we’re going to have a sale”.

You have to offer something as a reason for the sale so that your customers don’t take it for granted that the sale prices are going to be the “new” prices.

Next, don’t have the sale at an expected time. In other words, Black Friday – while it does work to put companies in the black – doesn’t work because in fact Black Friday crushes all the sales for all of the time before, and some of the time after.

So don’t do your sale when people expect you to have a sale.

See, people will compress all their holiday shopping, they’ll compress it to one day. On Saturday right after Black Friday I was in the stores and while they weren’t empty, they really weren’t full. You know what I did on Black Friday? I bought my daughter a new computer. Why did I do it on Black Friday? I got a pretty good discount that I know I was going to get. If people expect your sale, they’re going to wait for it. If it’s the same time every year, they’re going to wait for it. No matter what, don’t always do it at the same time.

Next, have a defined, limited amount of time and stick to it.

If you say it’s going to be a 3-day sale, it’s a 3-day sale. Prices go back up afterwards. Banana Republic had a Black Friday sale, but – as you expect now that I keep mentioning them – prices stayed at the BF level.

Next, make your sales irregular in length. Don’t let  people know how long your sales always going to be so that they can wait until the end.

Last – It doesn’t always have to be the same kind of deal. You don’t have to cut price. You can cut price but you can also do things like a 2-for-1 or a 3-for-2. You can bundle services with a product or vice-versa. You can throw in the upsells, you can add premium value, you can even offer special things that people can’t get any other time. A limited time offer or a one time offer, in other words you can’t get this any other time so you better buy it now during the sale or promotional period.

All of these approaches give your customer more value and your average revenue per transaction where you’d like it to be.

I’m just going to recap to rules for having a profitable sale:

  1. Have a reason, a justification.
  2. Do it randomly in terms of time.
  3. Make it for a defined period of time
  4. Use other strategies besides cutting price.

This is Paul Lemberg and if you think it’s time to just bump up some business a little bit before the end of the year, go on have sale. To your outrageous success…

Filed Under: Business Strategy, marketing, Sales Tagged With: Banana Republic, black friday, cyber monday, growth, margins, marketing, profits, promotions, sale, sales

By pl 64 Comments

Mea Culpa and
How to Jump Start Your List

I’m not dead…

And I haven’t stopped writing…

But it has been almost eleven months since my last blog post so I might as well have.

So this quick post is combination of a mea culpa plus an important lesson.

First the mea culpa:

I stopped speaking to my subscribers…

I stopped communicating with my community…

I let the dialogue dissolve…

While I never forgot about you, you probably couldn’t tell the difference.

Sure there are reasons why these things happen, but really. Who care about your reasons for things? (That by the way, is an important lesson in it’s own right…)

 

I don’t know if you’ve ever done this kind of things to the people upon whom you depend. Stuff happens, yes… Stuff does happen and it happened. It’s been a paradigm-shifting year for me. (More about that later.) But I teach business development strategies and profit generation and marketing  and I really ought to know better.

Now, if you’ve ever neglected your loyal customer base – and you’re in danger of losing these folks entirely, there is something you can do about it.

 

 

There are two steps:

The first is send out some really good free content. The specifics don’t really matter.  You could send videos or audios, you could post written content to a blog. You could hold a teleseminar or a webinar series. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as it’s solid content, rich with valuable information. And make it free.

Your job here is to remind your followers, subscribers, customers, whoever they are to you remind them of the value that you bring to them and then remind them who you are and why they should pay attention.

It doesn’t matter whether you send one piece or you send many because the point is this:

A key to consistent and ever growing sales is keeping the communication lines open and active, you get it?

Keep those lines open and active.

Use this core idea to get your business back on track if you’ve let it slip. If you haven’t let it slip but you want to generate more sales, open up the communication lines and make them active.  Whatever you do, do not do what I’ve done.

Step 2: make a killer offer.

What’s a killer offer? A killer offer is the kind of offer that cannot be ignored, that people have to respond to, that provides so much great value at such a reasonable thing that you’re asking for like decent price, great offer, decent price that people have to respond to. I am not going to make a killer offer today. What I am going to do instead is I’m going to send you more great free content. The kind that you’re really going to benefit from, the kind you’re going to learn from, the kind you’re going to bring to your business and have your business produce better. And then I’m going to make you a killer offer and it’s going to be coming up soon so you want to pay attention. Great business coaching coming your way and great offer, a great killer. New Programs, products, and a great year-end special for you so look out for all of it.

Do me a favor and post your comments below.

~pl

 

Filed Under: Business Strategy, leadership, List building Tagged With: lead generation, list building, marketing, profits

By pl 15 Comments

The 7 Master Keys to Rapid Business Profits

Grow your business faster than it’s growing now…

Would you like that?

Stupid question, right?

I hear it all the time…

How do I grow my business? How do I get more customers? How do I increase sales?

How do I add customers and increase revenue when I can’t pay my bills? How do I grow my business large enough to sell it? How do I keep my kids in school and pay my mortgage? How do I stay afloat and support my family?

How do I survive — in this economy?

I recently realized just how much entrepreneurs need help now more than ever.

That’s why I created this new video series: The 7 Master Keys to Rapid Business Profits. 7 short sessions to get you thinking about how to grow your business. Each one between five and ten minutes. You may be doing some of this stuff, but I bet you’re leaving something out.

And in times like these? I want all the edge that I can get.

So give yourself an edge.

I’m really excited to be doing this series, so leave me your comments and tell me what you think.

Click the video and get started now…

 

 

 

Click to watch Master Key #1

 

Filed Under: Business Strategy, Goal Setting, marketing Tagged With: growth, marketing, more revenue, profits, sales, sell your business

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