I once wrote a column on the subject of how to increase sales. In the end, it is about developing new products and cultivating new customers, but I would like to introduce it below as a possible reference for your way of thinking.
It is difficult to increase sales, but it is easy to decrease them, so I think it is important to make regular efforts to increase sales. This means that it is important to make efforts to increase sales on a regular basis, for example, by searching for new customers, developing other brands within the same customer base, and developing new products.
It is often said that offense is the best defense. Increasing sales to new customers by constantly looking for new customers and potential suppliers is an offense. It is a defense to not reduce transactions with current clients.
Of course, defense is important, but I believe that a skillful combination of a strong defense and a bold attack is necessary.
I think it is important to think about sales based on the premise that there is always a possibility of a decrease, rather than thinking that there will never be a decrease.
When I used to be a section manager, I could predict that our sales would be cut in half within a couple of years if we listed our clients with credit concerns during the bad economy. Even if we wanted to withdraw from our current clients, it would take time to develop new clients because of the business with those clients.
Ideally, we would like to reduce the number of new clients while increasing the number of current clients, but this is not going well. Therefore, we set a target for reducing the number of transactions with the main customers that each person was in charge of, and started by reducing the number of transactions with those customers that should be withdrawn.
Salespeople then tried desperately to find new clients to stop the decline in their personal business performance. In doing so, the number of new clients increased.
In the end, if salespeople in the field are serious, they can do things that seem impossible. In order to share information on new business development with each other, we reported to each other at our weekly Monday meetings what efforts we had made and what results we had achieved in the previous week in order to do business with new clients.
I think we also need to be creative in maintaining and increasing sales with our existing clients, which is our defense.
In the course of a long business relationship, we inevitably get stuck in a rut. Since we know what they are thinking, it is easy to adapt to them. I think that is where the pitfall lies.
If our customers’ storefronts become obsolete and their business performance slumps, it will eventually affect our transactions with them.
The spirit of “sampo yoshi,” or “good for the buyer, good for the seller, and good for the world,” as the Omi merchants used to say, is important. We must always observe the storefronts of our clients and make proposals to them while identifying the differences between competing stores and healthy stores, and questioning the plans of our clients.
I believe that it is through these daily sales activities that we can build a relationship of trust.
Sometimes my mistakes can lead to a reduction in business. However, in such cases, I think it is important to follow up on the mistake with sincerity, make every effort to minimize the damage, and build a relationship of trust that outweighs the mistake. If the transaction is not terminated, it should not be difficult to establish a “rain or shine” relationship.
In conclusion, there is no such thing as a miracle of recovery in business, and the only miracle is to make steady efforts on a daily basis.
When wholesalers were prosperous, we went to wholesalers, and when SPA apparel became prosperous, we went to SPA apparel. They predicted which business categories would grow next and attacked those categories, and I was making efforts while watching them side by side.
There is no guarantee that a client who is doing well now will do well forever. It is important to collect information on what type of business will be next and where the customers are, and to make efforts to increase sales while constantly exchanging information.