SEMA News–June 2021

BUSINESS

Four Tips to Double Your Company’s Annual Sales

It All Starts With Product Education and Providing Accurate Data

By Chad Simon

Most people work as hard as they possibly can to try to increase their sales, and that can lead to burnout and extremely disappointing results, according to Rich Barsamian, vice president of sales and marketing for Advanced Clutch Technology. In any economy, trying to double your customer base can be a daunting task. To achieve that goal, focus on different ways to attract new customers.

In a recent SEMA360 webinar entitled “Four Tips to Double Your Company’s Annual Sales,” Barsamian outlined four strategies. They include growing your customer base, increasing your average order value, boosting the number of purchases by the customer, and looking at data-driven decisions.

“Prospecting is important,” Barsamian said. “The late John Wooden once said, ‘Never mistake activity for achievement.’ This speaks to the fact that oftentimes people act busy but they’re not getting anything done. In order to increase your closing ratio, prospect with integrity and qualified background checks.”

Grow Your Customer Base

Sell it right; sell it once. It all starts with product education, according to Barsamian. Educate your employees about the product they’re selling and what it can do so that they can turn around and have the confidence and knowledge to sell it to the customer.

Stay in constant contact. With potential and existing customers, the best value you can offer is yourself. Continually work with them. Find out their challenges and what they need. Make sure they know who you are, but don’t overkill it. You’ll know the rhythm by your relationship with your partners.

Develop a social selling strategy. Two-thirds of companies don’t have a social selling strategy, according to Barsamian. “If you’re a manufacturer, repost anybody’s social-media post that featured your product. When you go shopping, look at what other people are using and what they’re saying about it. You’ll be shocked at the results of how people view your brand. It will help you increase customer base, both directly and indirectly.”

Increase Your Average Order Value

In theory, increasing your average order value can be achieved by raising your prices, but is that really going to help? The life stream of your company and its growth are dependent on product. Therefore, the number-one way to increase average order value is to continually introduce new and dynamic products, according to Barsamian.

Ensure that your customers are listing all your SKUs, whether they stock them or not. That will drive more sales and increase average order value. Also look at resellers’ websites.

“If they’re dedicated to Ford F-150, they should list every F-150 part you sell,” Barsamian said. “Many consumers are loyal to certain websites. If they don’t know you offer a certain application, more than likely they won’t buy it—or worse, they’ll buy a competitive product. Create an internal team and ensure that your online resellers have your latest logo, images and data. Show more than one product image at different angles.”

Boost Purchase Frequency

Barsamian suggested implementing a quarterly rebate program to help determine your customers’ average buying frequency. That way, you will be in the face of your customers every month talking about their targets, where they are, their struggles and successes.

“Let’s say they make quarter one but miss quarter two,” Barsamian said. “They can still make quarter three. You’re not going to penalize them for that. Use promotions such as giveaways when they purchase a product. Run a sale. New products will increase the frequency of purchases.”

Look at Data-Driven Decisions

There’s nothing more frustrating than having inaccurate data on your own site when you’re trying to educate customers. To avoid that, load all of your data in your operating system and ensure that everything is updated at one time when you make a change.

According to Barsamian, you are shortening your opportunities if you map only to the applications for which you make product.

“You have a golden opportunity to see what people browse for and don’t find,” he said. “This is another way to grow your sales. Ensure that your application lookup is showing everything ACES can give you. When someone researches a product on your website, you need to track that. Look up the year, make and model they looked up and grab their IP address. You want to be able to sort out how many people are searching for that product.”

For instance, you can see the IP address for someone who looks up a ’21 Ford Mustang. Let’s say they don’t get any results and they seek it again the following week. You’re going to strip out that vote for that month. If that same IP address researches a ’21 Camaro SS, they get to keep their vote because they browsed for something different. When you do this, it will give you the broadest view of what people are searching for, according to Barsamian, who also suggested offering consumers what they want, not just the company favorites.

“When there’s a new application out, there are seven people behind that first request who want that part,” Barsamian said. “Then there are seven people behind that person and another seven behind that person. Over a period of time, it may drop down to five or six and then three. That’s fine; you’re still perpetuating and selling product. However, when the product gets older and more affordable, people start to work on them again. So that number might go back up. It’ll never be a seven again, but it will absolutely continue to grow
in sales.”

Vehicles-in-Operation Reports. These reports are free to SEMA members. If you’re trying to decide between making product for the new Hyundai 2.0 Turbo or new Hyundai Genesis, the reports will give you the registered number of vehicles by state.

“It’s a trickle-down theory,” Barsamian said. “Now your customers know what to stock and where to stock it. Imagine [thinking that] all the Toyota Tundras are in Texas, and you find out that they’re actually in California. You’ll be able to find those results by looking at vehicles in operation. Now your customers will know where to stock product, how to advertise and market it, and what training they need to give their customers to sell it right the first time.”

SEMA Data. Data sells product, and the SEMA Data is an excellent source for obtaining product data. Before SEMA Data came about, more than 50% of SEMA members didn’t have product data, according to Barsamian. “If you make race products and don’t have year, make and model applications, how would you describe that product over the phone to somebody? You would give them the attributes—how long is it, how wide, what finishes it comes in.

“If you’re not partnering with a great data company to make sure your data is clean and pure, get on that immediately, because you’re hurting yourself and your customers from being able to sell your product,”
Barsamian suggested.

Just Do the Math

The Formula:

Customers x Average Sale x Transactions

You have 300 customers and your average order value is $3,500. Of those 300 customers, the average sale is once a year they buy from you.

• 300 x $3,500 x 1 = 1,050,000.
• Increase your customer base by 26%.
• 300 x 26% = 378.

Your average order value is $3,500, and we need to increase that by 26%.

• $3,500 x 26% = $4,410.
• Your transactions should go up to 26%.
• 1 x 26% = 1.26.
• 378 x $4,410 x 1.26 = $2,100,394.

You have doubled your $1,050,000 in sales.