Home in on Lost Sales and Work out Kinks in Your Business
A Home Business Article Contributed by Alina Sandor
Home in on Missed Opportunities, Work in New Business
When working on your home business has there ever been a time when a potential customer asked if you carried a certain product or offered a certain service, and you had to say "no"?
No is never a good word to tell a customer. Plus, when this happens you loose a sale and a potential customer. If you don't fix this problem you may find your home business going down the tubes instead of working towards riches.
But how do you combat lost sales in the future with out spending tons of money and expending hours of work?
Don't worry. Below is an easy, cheap and sure fire way to get more customers for your home business and stop those lost sales.
Work out a Checklist to Home in on Business Lost Sales
An easy trick to curb lost sales is to make a checklist to document the requests made by potential customers.
The checklist should have a place to put the date of the request, item requested, estimated potential purchase, reason item was unavailable, potential sales loss and estimated gross profit loss.
Make sure your checklist is easy to use to make it work for your home business. Make sure you have plenty of space to put information and don't write all the information if you find some of it irrelevant to your business.
You can make this checklist on a word processor spreadsheet and print it out when you need a new one or you can make a "master list" and make multiple copies to keep in your briefcase.
Always keep this list with you so that you can write down the requests, even when they catch you off guard. Remember to ask the person making the request how much they would buy if you had that product.
Do Your Business Home Work
After a month you may find that you have quite a few checklists filled out. Now is the time to put them to work for your business. Take a close look at your lists. Was there a pattern of requests? For example, during a certain time of the month were you getting several requests for certain thing? Do you have several request for a product you could easily add to your inventory?
Calculate the loss of those goods or services that you didn't sale, such as how much could you sell if those items were available?
Make sure to read your checklists every month to keep up with them. If you wait to long in between taking inventory of your checklists, they may get out of control. You don't want that to happen because you won't know what your customers are looking for in a timely manner.
For you to take advantage of your new checklist system you must take the information and take action.Once you know what customers are wanting and what you don't have to meet the need, you can combat the sales loss by offering what your customers are clamoring for.
