Increase Add-On Sales During the Holidays with These Techniques

With all signs pointing to a lackluster retail holiday selling season, you have to maximize every sale.  Here are a few ways to increase the units per transaction, and increase the average transaction as a result.

If you like this, you should buy that – Creating feature areas in your store that have a few major items you want to push for holiday surrounded by complimentary products helps sell more than just that one item.  Use signage and have your employees interact with customers to help them understand how the products work together.

Stuff the Stockings – I continue to push stocking stuffers for holiday as customers are always looking for those unique, fun little items that round out their holiday gift giving without breaking the bank.  Create a whole stocking stuffer display and make it interactive, like a stocking stuffer smorgasbord to get customers to buy one or more additional items.

Sample products – If they try it, they will buy it.  Make sure you have products available for testing everywhere and use signage, or have your employees interact to get customers to try different products. The chance for a sale rises significantly if you can put the product in the customer's hand.

A warm drink is the way to make them stay – offering a warm beverage like coffee or apple cider gets customers to linger longer.  It gives them time to scope out more of your store as they walk around enjoying their beverage.  And that means they may find more gifts than they had planned on, resulting in increased sales.

Wrap the Cash Wrap – You’ve created a number of different ways in your store to get your customers to purchase more, and the cash wrap is the final opportunity.  Make sure you have impulse items at your cash wrap that customers can grab and go.  Products under $20 usually work best. Bonus points for products that can be sampled along with 8-10 of them available for purchase.  In the beauty biz, we sampled everything from candles to hand lotion (and sold a ton).

How are you maximizing sales with every customer walking in?

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