How to hire top sales people to generate more profits?.

It is a tough task to hire sales people that perform well. To hire top salesmen you need to follow your senses and their past performances. It is a hard job to cold-call and sell. Not everyone is successful because when approaching a customer you need to speak the right tone and help the customer much as possible to make them convince why your company's products are of right quality and the right price. 

Hire experienced sales team for your department.

You can ask for a resume at the job interview. This will indicate how long a sales person worked for a company and why this person quited the job. It can be because another company offered more money or because the collegues were not pleasant. There can be one of the reasons why sales person quit at a certain company. Just look at how many pervious companies hired this sales person and how reputable the companies were. It is not easy for company as Manpower to offer a job to person who have worked for a company as Goldman and Sacks. 

Prepare the sales team.

To help your current sales team and attract more experienced sales people you need to offer them right workspace, tools, also a proper marketing team to promote the products the sales team is selling. Keep the sales team updated with new product features and discounts for up-sales and cross-sales. Also your salesmen need to own a good portion of communication skills to be patience. And deliver the right message to the customers to give a good idea that your company's products work because of it is build for the job. 

Offer a competitive compensations plan.

It is a tough task to attract top performing sales persons because they are already in their element at the current company. They are often happy with their results at the company they are working. Some are willing to look for another challenge and others are not. The headhunters are well know with the fact that some sales persons who are looking for a new challenge will find the recruiter. Promoting the sales jobs through sites, radio or even TV such as Monsterboard.com will give you as the sales department a chance to find the top performing sales person for the right job. Good compensation package will make the sales persons keep their job.

What does it take the candidates view your company as it is?.

The candidates will taste the vision of your company's culture after they read some job information or get more background information through the job advertisement or company's playbook. They will discover what market and customer base they need to focus on. The top performing sales people will get to know about the documented sales process. They will analyze the reputation of the company by viewing the sales records and other aspects. The sales persons will get to know about the relationship between marketing and sales and if there is a marketing automation technology is in the place.

How can you find the ideal salesmen?.

Hiring past employees will not have the chance of growing your business. It is better than the 'gut feeling' to consider the sales DNA. The confidence of the salesmen, how they can upsell and convince the customer. Also you need to find out how ambitous they are. Also the past sales experience is an issue what you can find out in the resume. You need to find out how skillful they are and how well their communication skills are developed. Through the years of cold-calling they might be able to fight to get those sales generating rather than taking no for an answer. The fighters mentality in sales is inevitable.  

How to start a successful business?.

If you always had the ambition to start a business of your own. Because you are inspired by all the established businesses that you see when you go shopping. It is never too late to start a business of your own if you are determined, educated and have the passion to keep your long-term focus. Just imagine that sky is the limit. You are now able to find all the information you need online. Look at the big boys like Coca-Cola, McDonald's or Nike. These companies have a history behind their names have dedicated to achieve successful gains through the years. Here are some matters you need to consider before you start a business.

Passion is the keyfactor to keep longterm focus.

We all know that doing business is to gain riches but that should not be the main issue if you want to grow in due time. First of all you need to be passionate about doing business. It is to change the world around you for your self and for others for better. If Nike did not deliver that expected quality sneakers like Nike Air Max 95 for example. The customers would not trust that brand and do not buy tennis polo's and baseball caps from Nike. What do you bring to the table?. Except for becoming wealthy doing business. The aim should be to grow your business in due time because you own a good sense of humor, determination and passion to do business.

Strive for the best quality for your products.

Set your mind to grow in due time through scaling your business. If you just start a business it seems like a big dream to get money like Apple tech company. You are the only one who can make that change going from mediocre to expanding your business by offering the best quality what customers want. It is the main challenge to make people's lives easier through your products or services. The competition is out there. It is easy to dream and talk about starting business. It is all about the knowledge you bring to practice. The customers are out there too. It is the challenge to create the best products and services with the best qualities for your customers to buy. 

Set realistic goals when it comes to generating profits.

You need to adjust your business plan from time to time. It is easy said than done to say "Dream big". The reality is there are various costs and bills that is needed to be paid. It is quite more complicated than running a household. Analyze your profits and costs. Look at products and why it is generating more turnover than other products. It might be that you set the sales price too high or too low. Keep an eye open on the costs of shipping or transportation costs. Challenge your self to be realistic when setting profit gains for the next quarter. There might be political or climate issues occuring which effect your profits. 

Be ready to adapt to change and be flexible.

Business environment is constantly changing. Look at the last 30 years how computer technology made that huge impact on the buisness landscape. To survive as a business you need to be a opportunistic and see the visions of the future. It is possible because when you analyze your sales records you will see what products need more attention when it come to promotion. You can produce goods such as Coca-Cola which came with their Coca-Cola Vanilla and Cherry to offer an alternative to their customers instead of regular Coca-Cola. In Europe there was a change of currency in 2002. The business had to change their prices and went through a make-over. Be felxible when change occur.

Be disciplined and get a hold of the time-management.

Disciplined like a Spartan should be when you go to win the battle doing business. Remember you are not the only fish in the sea. Why should the customers buy from you?. Be accountable for your deeds and wake up early to do business and motivate the people under you to be like you. Make a time-table to be effective when operating your business. The challenge is to get the most of the time and milk the clock to meet the profit targets. Get a good rest and eat well. You can not go to war on an empty stomache and sleepy.  

Skills you must own to be a successful leader.

How can you be a successful leader?. There are skills you can master to become one. People like Donald Trump and Bill Gates have set lots of influence for the younger generations. People like Donald Trump and Bill Gates put in work from to get from A to B. With developing communication skills, heart for the cause and good sense of humor. They got where they wanted to land. If you are a business graduate then you have learned at college what it takes to run a business. In case you did not  finish college such as me. Here are some skills you need to own to become a successful leader.

Inspiring motivation.

A compliment towards your team mates can bring your company that extra mile towards those profits you want to generate. You can push your workers verbally, but giving them physical rewards like a company owned car or an office of their own. Give that pat on their back. Give your team mates more responsibility if they are ready to take it. Place a coffee machine on the workspace and also a soda machine. Give your team mates a day off regularly. Remember you all need is each other. Create a pleasant ambieance that is soothing for your team mates. Let the sphere be informal. Create a brotherhood.

Develop communication skills.

You as the team leader need to talk to your co-workers to motivate them and navigate them through the rowdy landscape of doing business. You need to discuss matters with co-workers to improve your common ideals together about creating a good relationship with other companies. You as the team leader need to solve problems that your co-workers have and other business related matters to gain more profits in due time. 

Be positive.

Do not use offensive language when you feel like your co-workers are not performing well. You do not need to treat like your co-workers are listening to rap music from New York City. First of all keep an open eye on the workers that perform well. And those are left out get them more motivated through getting them out of their stressful situations. Do not wait untill the new co-workers catch a burnout because you are pushing them. A compliment is not that hard give. On the workfloor there are personal problems involved. And workers can not function well if they have personal problems. Find solutions to help them out. 

Delegate tasks to the right workers.

To know the strenghts and weaknesses of your co-workers indicates that you are a successful leader. Once you know this you can delegate task to the right worker to get the job done. You need to get a hold of a certain vision what can take your team from A to B. Through delegation and functioning as one will create a solid system that will make the workflow smooth. Recognize and realize when to delegate what task to what worker. 

Be creative.

Find solutions and go beyond limits and use common sense too. Learn from the other path finders. If your business brand is having a make over. And of course you need a new lettertype for your brand. If you are a leader of a department of a large company with 100 workers. Find a worker in the right department who know a few things about graphic design. Also you can do research about the competitive brands. Just find out what makes their brand's lettertype so attractive. Of course outsourcing to a freelancer is the easy part. But you can take the odd path to swim like Salmon.

Gain trust from the co-workers.

Be someone the team can talk to in the sense of being human. Not only business related matters. But also personal matters. Build a bond with your co-workers as the Chinese Triade. Be ethical and be a successful leader to inspire and motivate to create a pleasant work ambiance and you know the cause. You are on the workfloor to do business. You are not alone on this journey. There are people depending on you and you are depending on your co-workers. 

How to price your products?.

Pricing can be an quest of it's own. It is part guesswork, part of it is psychology and part of it is marketing. It is always needed to keep an eye open when it comes to the competition. Pricing can be not easy but if you plan and execute. Then it might be not that hard. It is not always the price where consumers, customers, clients and prospects worried about. It is a known fact that quality above quantity counts. The price gives an idea about your goods brand's quality. This also can project the image of your retail concept. 

Why set a right price?.

It keeps the products  competitive and it is not like the food market or the jewelery store in a third world country where you can bring the prices down or negotiate. It is possible to negotiate a deal when you are a wholesale store and a retailer call you to order and you both can discuss a price. Setting the right price means that you can take your profit and deduct all the costs to play safe.

Things to consider when pricing your products.

You need to price your products in a manner that it is not too high because when it is priced too high it will make the customers leave it on the shelves. If it is priced too low it will make you that you can not cover costs and this means less profit for you to gain. When pricing your product add the costs and the profit margin on top of that. This will give you the right retail price. 

With value-based pricing you need to know what the other retailers charge. This means you can add the costs and also the profit margin to calculate the price. 

Competitors-based pricing means you are aware what the other retailers charge and you give the customers similar prices. 

There is also another pricing method it is called elasticity-based pricing. This means you can measure what product has sold well and what product not. You can give discounts when you analyze how the customers react to price changes. 

There is also the cross-product based method. This means you can price different flavours of soda of different size bottles in a product range at various prices. 

The other methods to consider when pricing your retail products are bundle pricing, keystone pricing and gross-margin pricing.

E-commerce pricing vs.brick-and-mortar pricing.

Above mentioned methods can not be considered the same when it comes to pricing. The low prices are priced online for goods other than in person sold products in the stores. It is a fact that lower priced products sell better online than higher priced products because of the risks. 

Shipping price.

The price to ship a certain size package is not cheap as in an envelop. You should include the price of shipping as a cost or calculate as a separate cost. You can indicate how much the shipping costs when you show your product for sale online on your merchant website. 

Add shipping costs upto the profit margin.

Calculate the shipping cost as a cost and add this up the profit marging and state the final price if it is free shipping. Do not leave the profit on the table by not including the shipping cost to the final price.

Test different pricing methods.

The retailers have gained success by pricing to appeal to customers emotions and instincts. Good pricing is about planning, executing, analyzing and playing the sport on a level to give the right products for the right price. You can try psycological pricing methods.

Stacked discounts: This means you can offer discounts at 25% off and another 20% off than 40% off. This way you can make the amount that is discounted look bigger than offering fixed amount.

Bonus packs: Offer 30% off than 25% off. This way it is plain to see that you give a good discount to the customers than giving them the regular prices.

Prices ending with 99 cents: Price your products with 99 cents at the end. If you offer your product for 16 dollars other than pricing it for 16,99 cent. When you price your products for 99 cents at the end. It will look like the chuncky amount is 16 dollars and the 99 cents is less. The customers do not care much as the chuncky amount about that 99 cents.

How to close business deals with negotiations?.

It is often  that sales deals are made to get what one party has and the other party wants. It is a win-win situation when mutual benefits are involved. The sales reps are often too easy to give a lower price or a trial without doing their best to close the deal through negotiation. With good communication skills as a salesman you can give the customers a good deal. Check out below how you can close business deals with a good negotiation process.

Negotiate to close the business deal.

You need to develop a skill before you execute. The only way you can gain these set of skills is through practising the knowledge you have gained through the years. Offer good deals what customers can not refuse. Only through digging into the needs of the customers and finding out what will make them happy and statisfied is the solution. Talk to the customers on their own level. Adjust to the situation where the customers are at right now. This means to solve their pain-points. 

Get towards a win-win situation.

You got the goods what the other party wants. The customer know after their orientation what you got and what you can give to the customers for the right price. Customers have a need and you can ask them questions to get to know their need better to offer the best deal to create a win-win situation. If you create the momentum to negoatiate with trials and lower prices. You can upsell and cross-sales. 

Start the negotiation with a highball or lowball offer.

If you are a salesman then you can start with the regular prices but the buyer is savvy too. It is good to talk to the buyer in manner to let them know that they are at the right spot to score. You can let the customers know about the quality of the products and why such and such products are priced at a certain amount. Let the customers know about the functionalities of the products and the advantages. Let the customers know when a certian product came on the market and when a more advanced product is coming out. If you the exclusief dealer.

Create time sensitive offers.

As a stimulation to convert you can give discounts, trials or incentives to customers to take action. Give the other party to take action with a certain time-frame or drop it like hot. It is a good reason to buy from you because you offer a good deal and the prospects will get serious about your offer. You can negotiate in stages to get the prospects to buy from you. Once you coldcall and the buyers know about your products. You can make an appointment and meet face-to-face to negotiate further. This means you can show live samples or give more information about your offers and discuss an expiring date.

Let the other party know that you are paying undived attention.

Through listening you can get to know lots of information. Use keywords what the customers are using to let the prospect know that you are listening. Asking questions and listening to the need of the customers and this means you can help them out. Let customers know that there were more prospects like them before and that they had the same pain-points and how you have solved it. Give customers the idea that you have the products for the right price and if the customers want it that they can get it. That you are listening to what they need and closing a good business deal is possible. 

Prepare your self before the negotiation.

Through the company's website, press releases or articles about the products you can get to know precise background information to close deals. You can orientiate to go further with a best company and this will give a chance because there is more than one company offering the same products. Since the monopoly is forbidden. If you going to meet a person of a certian company because you are a business-to-business company. Then do a background check online on Google or LinkedIn. 

Give the negotiation a human touch.

If you are too formal this might bring down the temperture in the room where the both parties reside. You know that cutting through the fluff and be straight that you both want a win-win situation. If the good Lord is willing you can go home with the products the customer wants and you as the salesman with the profit in the pocket. We are from a planet called Earth and we all breathe Oxygine and share the same sunlight. You are dealing with humans here. Do not be afraid to make mistakes with spelling when writing a salesletter or an e-mail. If the customer say that you made a mistake acknowledge it.  

Benefits of a point-of-sale system.

For a smooth workflow you can adjust to the new technology that is available on the market for the retail businesses. Having a Point-of-sale system makes the workflow much easier and this will give you insights in the sales records of the past. This also means that you are able to predict what products to oder for the next week, month or the next year. I will give a sum up of the advantages of a POS system.

Manage your inventory in a better way.

POS system gives you the proper insights of the inventory of your store. If you want to look up for a certain period if the Coca-Cola cans of 33 ml are in overstock or not. You can manage your inventory in real-time. Once you receive your inventory. If it is in your catalogue then you can simply scan the products and enter the amount. This way the products will be recorded in the inventory of the POS system. This saves lots of time and effort in manually tracking of inventory. Every item sold will be deducted from the stock amount in the inventory.

Invoicing without problems.

POS software makes it possible to group all your products and record all your invoices. There are various types of invoices that you have to manage in a company. It is important to keep an eye on the different types of invoices. You will be able to find invoices for sales, purchases, repairs, rentals and consignments depending on what type of software you own. For accounting purposes you need an easy invoice management. It is simply the proof that you have sold a certain product or a service to a particular customer. The invoice gives a description of what item sold for what value. The amount of goods sold. Exact description of the goods.

Makes the transaction process faster.

The process of the transctions flow much faster. This simply means that the customers have to wait much shorter. The products will be automatically calculated once the products are gathered by the customers at the counter. The invoices can be printed at the spot with a printer. POS system makes it possible to make the customers complete the transactions by paying with a credit card, debit card or in cash. 

Smoother customer management.

Having a POS system will make you to store the customer information. You can keep a record of the customer information by name, item or phone number. Having a record of customers information will give you a overall vision of the targeted market and the segment you want market your products to. Also you can separate the new customers from the loyal customers. Having a record of a customer information you can send promotions and build a loyal customer base. You can offer taylor-made products to certain customers once you know their interest through the sales records.

Reliable customer orders.

Once a customer comes to your store but the item customer wants is not in stock. Then you can place the order in POS system and once the product is arrived your employee can contact the customer in question. Because the POS system has stored the customer by name, phone number and item's description. This means you can generate revenue by gaining customers trust by helping them out by taking orders and supplying the goods on time or even to the door.

Great way to keep a record of purchasing and supplier order management.

You need to buy equipment to maintain a business. You can track orders and your suppliers' order management. POS system offers an open API to connect directly to your suppliers. Once you place an order through the POS system you will be able to get an overall view of the all the orders placed. This will give you a idea what you have ordered from the suppliers. Once you place an order and you will be able to see what you have purchased, the cost and the description.

How to grow demand for your supermarket?.

If you have the dream to become successful running a supermarket. Then you might know you need a business plan, a good location where the customers can reach your supermarket with no problem. You need a trustworthy staff. You need a wholesale store and transportation to ship your products to the store. You can take a franchise to take a load off your back or create a model from scratch and scale in due time. You need to hire a manager who is well trained. All you need is to create demand is a well organized staff to perform to create demand.

You can attract customers with special offers.

You can keep an eye on the past sales records and see what products are selling like cupcakes and products are not. Once you get an idea what product sells the best you can choose to sell other product variations with better features for a higher price. If a product is not performing well than you can give discounts when it is in overstock. Print flyers and papers with discounts and deliver it to the door. These special offers must be time sensitive. Otherwise it would not be special. Also you can offer buy one get one free offers. To generate more sales you can give discounts for your product reviewers.

Make the inventory management perform better.

Inventory is waiting on the shelves to be sold. Because products like fresh vegitables, fruit and dairy products are very risky. It should be ordered on time and sold before a set date. Inventory management is challenging and it should be planned and done carefully. You need to find a balance between stock and demand and order according to the insights you have through the past sales. You need reliable software to manage the process of ordering and planning. Having a such of technology gives you vision of the stock. 

For a supermarket is (POS) point of sales software needed.

A POS software and hardware for analyzing of inventory, sales, employees and customers. You can track sales to get to know what product made the most sales and what products have performed less. This way you can adjust your sales strategy to make more sales. It is not like billing the conventional way. It is less time consuming. It helps you to make the customers wait shorter time and you can help the customers out more accurate with billing. 

Create a well organized store to enhance the shopping experience.

Create an ambience that is typical to your supermarket. Offer a free cup of coffee or tea. Play background music. Place products which are related next to each other. Make your store easy to navigate. Place display islands and sell products like candybars and chewing gum at the cash register. Offer alternative products for a higher prices or lower prices. Offer not only shopping carts but also baskets. Have a good staff help the customers out quickly. 

Promote your supermarket and advertise your products.

You can promote your supermarket on local TV, radio or in the newspapers. You can print promotional material such as discounts and spread to the local customer base. To attract new customers to your store you can advertise at the local soccer field with advertising boards. You can support the hockey club of your city with t-shirt with your supermarket's name on it.   

Create a customer profile.

Get an idea of the ideal customer's profile and market your products to those when you think that they are in need. If your supermarket is in a Jews or Muslim neighbourhood sell Kosher or Halal products. Get to know the age, gender and ethinicity of the potential customers. Get the customers interested in the products you sell by promoting to the ideal customers.