Are You Generating Sales Even When Your Store Is Empty?

A friend of mine has a retail store and spends a lot of time waiting for a customer to walk through her door. We talked about how she can use that time creatively and productively to generate more business.

Retail is all about relationships with your customers. She knows a lot of her customers by name and has contact information for some of them. I suggested that she compile an e-mail list of her existing customers as a tool for ongoing communication and that she begin collecting email addresses and information on every customer who walks through the door. Having a way to stay in touch with your customers beyond the limits of your store is a powerful tool for generating repeat business.

Remembering that this is all about relationships, without the pressure of a sale, she asks new customers if they’d like to be on her e-mailing list of preferred customers so they can receive advance notice of specials, new shipments, events, etc. The appeal of your list is that it is a private or exclusive group that receives special treatment of some sort. This increases the desirability of being a member of your list. People need to feel that there is some wonderful benefit to them before they sign up.

Collect information about what your customers buy from you, their preferences, information about their family, like birthdays, anniversaries, special occasion events in their lives. Find out if they’d like reminders for these events. If you know they have children of a certain age and you are getting in a shipment of products that appeal to that age group, you can notify them.

You want to send messages out to your list on a consistent basis, but not so frequently that your customers feel abused with sales messages. Think about what is important enough to your customers that they will appreciate hearing from you. Think in terms of what your customers perceive as a value to them and craft your e-mail messages accordingly. You may end up segregating your customers into groups and sending appropriately different messages to each group.

The goldmine here, is that you are building relationships with your customers. Your customers need to know you, like you and trust you before they buy from you. Once you have established that golden relationship with your customers, you want to treat them like gold. Make your customers feel special, treat them special and they will reward you with repeat business. And from repeat business comes the added goldmine of referrals that brings new customers to your store.