Sales - helping or hurting your business?

Sales - are they helping your business?

I see so many business mums have sales - whether they are Facebook garage sales, end of season sales, or some other sale - whatever they are, there are new sales cropping up all the time.

Are these sales really helping these businesses?

One thing that sales can do is teach your customers not to pay you full price. I know I head down to K Mart whenever there is a children’s clothing sale, rather than paying full price. If your customers know you will be having a sale at a regular time, they may wait to buy from you until the sale starts, especially if you have a lot of them (like K Mart does).

Another thing I’ve noticed with sales is the prices barely cover the cost of the product, let alone the business owners time or any other overheads associated with running a business. Some sale prices look like they are below wholesale!

There is nothing wrong with the occasional sale or special, or putting end of season or end of line items on sale to clear them out, it’s more the regular sales that will cost a business in the long run.

Before having a sale for your business, think about why you are doing this and what you want out of it. And remember, you still need to make money out of it! Set a budget for your sale to make sure whatever your sale prices are, it’s not costing you money.

Everyone loves a sale and love buying things on special, however you don’t want your reputation to be sales all the time or your customers won’t pay full price.