5 Tips to Maximize Retail Sales as a Solopreneur in 2022

Photo by Liza Summer

As a solopreneur, you’re probably living your dream. Working at your preferred hours, running the business you want to, and being your own boss.

But you would know – while there are many benefits to solopreneurship, it comes with its set of challenges. You have to shoulder the growth of your business and single-handedly break new sales records.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% during the first five years. One of the primary reasons solopreneurs struggle is because they fail to structure their business model in a way that supports scaling and stability.

And while maximizing retail sales in solopreneurship sounds like an impossible task, it really isn’t. You can do so, without hiring teams or increasing your work hours.

Consider these top methods you can take to increase your retail sales.

1. Understand your Customers

What makes retail an irreplaceable source of purchase is the personal touch that customers actively seek. To provide this, you need to invest your time in learning more about who you want to sell to. Take out a few minutes just to know your prospective customers better. What motivates them to come to your store? What are their challenges, needs, and how do they want to be served?

Make it a routine to connect with your customers on a daily basis. Reply to their emails, connect with them on social media, try reading as many reviews and comments as possible. Check your ratings and feedback. If you follow this regularly, you’ll be able to gauge what your customers expect from you.

The result?

You can achieve targeted selling. Knowing the basic what and why will help you understand how to push prospects down the sales funnel. It will increase your chances of making a sale and closing more deals.

2. Automate to Save Time

As a solopreneur, time is your most important asset. You cannot afford to spend time on trivial tasks, especially when those tasks can be easily automated. If you’re going to continue your journey alone, integrate the best automation tools to free up your time.

For example,

• You can use a chatbot to automate your website conversion and lead generation
• Leverage Social media automation tools to schedule your posts and enable notifications on these platforms
• Manage your sales and leads on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools.

The best part is most of these SaaS tools are available free of cost for small businesses. All you need to do is set things in motion and invest time in increasing your sales.

3. Build a Reliable Supply Chain

While retailers need to keep a track of the market demand to meet consumer expectations, they often face endless complexities in their supply chains. As a solopreneur, you need to work harder in building a reliable supply chain that functions smoothly without your regular involvement.

You might be wondering how an efficient supply chain can increase your sales. The modern supply chain covers a lot of aspects that encourage retailers to meet the needs of their customers. With integrated business planning, advanced stock management, and inventory planning, you can lower your costs and increase your sales.

Incorporating demand planning, forecasting, and management strategies and tools can help. Choose a reliable and well-known delivery service that will mitigate risks at the individual supplier level and optimize your sales across your product’s lifecycle.

4. Ensure you Have an Online Presence

Despite being a retail store, there are high chances your prospects will look you up online. A lot of customers today start their buying journey online regardless of whether you’re an online store or an offline one.

This makes an online presence a must-have if you want to grow your retail business. Hence, build a website and keep it regularly updated. Also, you can get a business listing on Google and add as many details of your business as possible such as:

• Profile Details: Add the name, address and contact details of all your stores
• Visual details: Add images and videos (A virtual tour can be an added benefit)
• Working Hours: Add opening and closing hours and the number of days in a week it’s open
• Reviews: Add the star ratings and reviews your existing customers have given.

Getting a business listing on Google is a pretty straightforward process but it can go a long way. If not anything else, this online presence builds immense credibility for your business as it enables your customers to read reviews and reach out to you.

It builds trust amongst your prospects and draws more people to your store, particularly those who have clear intentions of making a purchase.

5. Broadcast your Business

Retail businesses are heavily reliant on relationships and word of mouth. If you’re just focusing on numbers and sales, you’re taking a short-sighted approach. You don’t just want to close a sale and gain a customer. You want to provide them value. You want them to shop with you again. You want them to spread the word and grow your market.

Not having a team doesn’t mean you can’t do your bit to promote your business. Nearly 48% of small businesses have established a presence on social media. Social media is just one way to connect and engage with your prospects. You can also build an email subscriber list, and advertise in local events.

You can also consider hosting classes, meetings or other networking events in your retail store to generate a buzz around your business. Ultimately, you want to increase your brand awareness and drive traffic to your store or even your website.

Wrapping up

Many still wonder how solopreneurs can be successful and earn big numbers all by themselves. Understand that solopreneurship is not about working round the clock and filling in the shoes of a team. It is all about building smart strategies, automating key parts of your marketing, and solely investing time in things that really matter.

So there you go. We just walked you through some top retail techniques that will help you reach new levels of sales targets. We hope you can implement these to take your business to new heights.