How do you make your customers buy today?

After an interesting experience in Sainsbury's last night I wanted to share with you these top tips on how you can get your customer to take action today and buy your products. 

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Just to prove it here are the 3 bags of shopping that I ended up purchasing just because of the special offer in Sainsbury's.  I will end up eating the nuts and using the toothpaste but I didn't need to buy it yesterday.

Take some time to answer these two questions for your business:

Why should my customers buy today?

What else could they buy as well to increase the value of the transaction?

Have fun.  Stay in touch and most of all have fun in everything you do!

3 bags of shopping I had no intention of buying

The full text from the video:

1. Do promotions change the way you shop?
2. Have you ever walked into a supermarket and bought something you weren’t expecting to buy?
3. Have you been manipulated?

Well I thought I would share with you some things we can learn from some of Britain’s biggest institutions the supermarkets and how they do business.

Last night I went to Sainsbury’s for a coffee with a friend in the Starbucks.  I planned to buy nothing.   I had the coffee and as I was leaving there was a big display stand in front of me with the new James Bond Blu-ray and DVDs on sale.

They were on offer.  Spend £30 in store today and you can get the Blu-ray for £12 only.  That seemed pretty good.  I paced around the display stand wondering if I should do it.

You probably know that I am a James Bond fan and I loved the most recent Daniel Craig movie so I did it. This simple promotion of: if you spend £30 in store today you can get £6.99 off got me.

I spend the next 30 minutes buying stuff around the store that I am not sure I needed to by.  I picked up three packs of cereal (we will always use that) then some kitchen towel and toothpaste.  6 Packs of Toothpaste!

Then two large packs of nuts.  Some aftershave balm (got to look after my complexion and then finally this is the last straw I bought hand cream.  I thought I don’t want to have dry skin I will by hand cream.

I wasn’t going to buy anything and now I am wondering round the shop buying hand cream trying to tot up the figures in my head to see if I have spent £30 or not! I don’t want to go to the till and have nearly spent £30 so I over spend and when I get to the till and go through the self-checkout do you know what my total bill was?

£52!

I wasn’t going to buy anything.  Nothing at all.

My behaviour completely changed and all because an offer.

So what can we learn from Sainsbury’s?  For me it comes down to two things.

1.       Give people a reason to buy NOW.  Sainsbury’s brilliant said if I do this now then I can get something I want cheaper.  I was sucked in and I bought now.

2.       Up sell.  Sainsbury’s not only gave me a reason to buy NOW, they also asked me to purchase more for me to get what I wanted cheaper! And I like the lemming that I am followed instructions and spend £40 more!

So the questions you need to ask yourself if you want to increase your sales are:

1.       What reason is there for my customer to buy today?

2.       Why should they spend more money with me today?

To give you an example, say you ran a Yoga class weekly.  If you had a new person turn up for your course why should they sign up today to come back again next week and not only why should they sign up now, why should they sign up now for the twelve week package?

If you want to increase your sales you need to give your customers reasons to buy and reasons to buy NOW!

Love to hear about your experience of how offers have changed your buying patterns and your experiences of using them for your business.

Make some comments below and please share this if you think it is useful.