Sales Tactics That Move Inventory

This is an excerpt from one of my World Tea News articles. To find out more about my freelance writing or to ask me about writing copy for your tea business, please contact me at vee at veetea dot com. Thank you.

The basics

Successful sales tactics vary from business to business, but some core techniques – mark-downs, value-added offers and sampling – are effective for almost everyone.

Percentage-off sales are a basic way to get customers to buy. Many companies offer discounts to all customers, but another approach is to target specific groups. For example, Jeffrey Lorien, co-owner of Zhi Tea, e-mails discounts on featured products or entire orders to established customers to encourage brand loyalty, and hands out order discount cards to build his customer base.

Lorien also offers free shipping on orders over $75 to encourage larger orders. Freebies like this are an example of value-added sales, another common way of stimulating receipts. Ginny Durand said free gift-wrapping encourages return customers to The Tea Exchange, which she co-founded.

Buy-something-get-something specials, another type of value-add usually reserved for excess stock, helped Whatever Works Wellness owner Connie Lasorso increase sales of clear tea Thermoses when she offered free flowering teas with Thermos purchases. She also includes discounts and freebies with a tea-tin recycling program – perhaps part of the reason her sales have doubled over the last year.

Jesse Jacobs, owner of Samovar Tea Lounge, upped his sales with $10 lunch specials (including tea) during traditionally slower weekday hours. He said it converted customers who aren’t normally attracted to tea, because “it’s a lower price point entry. They realize the value and walk out with a tin of tea.”

Sampling is another sales-booster. Durand and Lorien send samples with online orders to encourage customer loyalty, and Lorien credits a 40 percent increase in sales over the last year largely to the more than 10,000 steeped tea samples he has handed out. Durand provides coffee drinkers with a customized tea sample whenever they buy coffee, noting, “They always come back.”

Soon, you’ll be able to read the remainder of this article on my portfolio site, Copy & Taste.