1. Send out a FREE sample of your product with a special “two for one” offer – this enables your customer to get a first hand experience of your product in action AND the “two for one” offer maximises your average transaction value.
2. FREE lessons on make-up, sewing, hair styling, skin care, gardening, building a pergola/deck/retaining wall .. the list is endless By seeing how to get the best use out of your products they’re likely to buy a range of accessories and essential items to help them achieve the results they’re looking for.
3. Open day … this is ideal for gardening centres or hardware stores where they can offer workshops and demonstrations on tasks that are specific to the needs of their customers landscape design, installing a sprinkler, home handyman tasks, building etc. This is similar to the ‘FREE lessons’ idea above.
4. Hold joint promotions with other businesses. You can offer their products as FREE gifts when customers purchase at your shop and vice-versa.
5. Free gift with purchase – you could offer a FREE T-shirt valued at $25 with every $50 purchase. The value to the customer is $25 but your hard cost is a fraction of that amount so it’s perceived to be more beneficial than a discount is (in the eyes of your customer) and it’s much healthier on your bottom line than offering a $25 discount.
6. Buy one get one FREE. (same benefits as above).
7. FREE mystery gift up to the value of $500 with every purchase over $xx.
8. FREE gift for cash payments over $xx … instead of paying the Banks merchant fees you’re rewarding your customers instead. It’s costing you no more however it’s encouraging your customers to buy from you and therefore will increase your sales volume.
9. Buy now, pay in 12 months time … encourages customers to spend more than they ordinarily would have if they were paying the whole amount now.
10. Package your products together. Cosmetics companies are famous for this. Package some of your poorer selling products together with your most popular lines and promote them as some sort of package. Packaged products make customers feel that they’re getting a good deal for buying in bulk, it maximises your average transaction value, and it helps you move slow selling items.
11. Bounce backs – it’s a fact that a customer is most warm to your products and services right at the time of purchase so make a special offer to them right when they buy – something that compliments the product they’ve just bought.
12. Package your knowledge – create introductory reports and newsletters and package them in with their product purchase.
13. Cross-selling checklist – this is a great way to maximise the average transaction value of each sale. Either run through a checklist with the customer (eg. The “building a pergola” checklist listing all the items they’ll need) OR create it into a special “how to” guide that includes instructions and enables them to check off all the items they need. This does the customer a favour because it ensures that they don’t forget an important item and it bumps up your sales figures too.
14. FREE after sales service – cleaning or maintenance of purchased product.
15. FREE hotline service – where they can call and ask specific advice relating to getting the best use of their product.
16. FREE design (valued at $200) – this service quite often involves your time only so it has a high perceived value but a low hard cost.
Kris Mills of Words that Sell ( http://www.wordsthatsell.com.au/ ) is a top selling copywriter, trainer and author of numerous how-to guides including Proposals and Tenders (Bids) that Sell. Kris has also produced a FREE ebook entitled “11 Bid Writing Sins and How to Avoid Them”. To arrange a FREE copy, visit:http://www.wordsthatsell.com.au/tendersebook.htm
