Saturday, May 22, 2010

The Small Business Owner’s Program To Create Employee Generated Sales

There are many ways to generate sales for a small business. One of the overlooked ways is to generate sales from your employees. Here’s how to do that.
Your employees are actually a great source for new sales. We call this New Employee Business.
You can do this with employees no matter how long they have been with you, but usually we concentrate on new employees.
Your employees have friends and family that are perfect prospects for your product. It’s simply a matter of making the idea a benefit to the employee, and feel like a great deal for the friends and family.
Basically what we do is have an Employee Bonus Campaign. It sure sounds better that the We Want More Money Campaign, doesn’t it?
We have the employees call their friends and family (on or off premises), and have them offer the friends a special offer to just come in and look at our product. It’s usually a free pizza certificate from a local pizza shop. Almost any pizza shop will sell you certificates for a free pizza for $2.00 or $3.00 each. They just want to cover their real cost to make the pizza, and they get a new customer. They also sell that customer soda, chips, and sandwiches.
The employee’s friend comes in our store (this will work in any business), and we explain that the employee gets a bonus if they buy our product. The first thing we do though, is give them the pizza certificate. If you hold back their gift, it’s what they will be thinking about until you give it to them.
We give the employee a 10% bonus on any sale made that day to their friend. Of course, the bonus depends on your markup, and what you are selling. It helps if the employee is there while you explain the program and show the friend or relative your product. Of course, there is no pressure from you...but there is considerable peer pressure for the friend to buy something.
Parents or other close relatives almost always buy something if they are even remotely in the market for what you sell. Friends will also buy, but not always.
We make a big deal about the new employee getting their bonus. The people we are showing are eager to help their friend or relative. They get a good product (it helps if there is a special price or offer just for them). The employee gets more money in their paycheck than they normally get. And you get a new surge of business at almost no marketing cost to you.
Isn’t that what we all want?

Like this idea? You can download a free copy of my book The Unfair Advantage Small Business Advertising Manual at http://www.local-small-business-advertising-marketing-book.com