SELL MORE

There is nothing like a bit of desperation to drive creativity! Maybe no one is buying your products or services like they used to – but that just means we have to ask what would they buy now? Sometimes a situation like this opens us up to the possibilities for our business that we have been missing because we were so busy just doing what we have always done. Brainstorm, throw ideas at the wall, try anything and everything! There is nothing to lose right now!

Sell In New Ways

1) Sell Gift Certificates – You can do this yourself right on your website or you can use the tool that Kabbage built at helpsmallbusiness.com to instantly be able to sell gift certificates and make them available to the general public.

2) Sell your Products Online – If you have products but have always sold them in person, through trade shows, fairs and/or a retail store it is the perfect time to get your online store set up. There are lots of options but the general consensus is that Shopify  is the best tool, easiest to use and affordable to get set up.

3) Deliver Consulting via Video – If you are a service business you don’t have to stop! Buy a Zoom account (it is as cheap as $15/month) and you are instantly able to do client consults over video, you can pitch and sell virtually, you can host webinars and do pretty much 100% of what you used to do in person over video. Literally!

4) Expand your Market – Maybe your immediate community or country is really struggling right now – but could you sell what you do to people in other communities or countries? Can you find more of your customers in other areas of the world right now? Think about who might still be in a position to buy from you and connect with them.

Sell New Things

1) Look at your assets – And ask what else you could do with them. You also have certain skills and resources that you have been using for your current business product or service. Maybe the world doesn’t need your current product or service but the assets and resources and skills that you have could create something new that the world does need? A great example of this is the numerous distilleries and perfume companies that are using all of their production facilities to make hand sanitizer right now.

2) Start a new product or service line – If you have been thinking about spending time building out a new product or service this is a great time to do it. You have time to do the work to get the foundation in place and you have a wide open market to try to sell it to with a captive market of people sitting at home looking for things to occupy their hearts and minds!

3) Customize something you currently do for the corona crisis – If you can take anything that you do right now but create a “coronavirus crisis” version of it will increase your chance of short term sales. Think about how your work can meet the demands of the market as everyone is dealing with the physical, emotional and financial realities of the coronavirus.