Increase Your Retail Revenue

One of the income-generating areas in which many schools can improve is retail sales. You don’t need a big inventory or to spend a lot of money out of your pocket to increase your sales, you just need to be smart about how and what you promote.

So whether you’re using Webmation’s The Online Pro shop or have an in-house store, have students order from catalogs, etc; you can use the following strategies to grow your retail sales.

Offer a Discount for a Second “Like” Item

When your students are ordering uniforms or t-shirts, for example, offer a discount if they get a second item at the same time.

Everyone needs a uniform for class, but not everyone likes to do their laundry in between classes -so these are two easy items to suggest that they get another at a discount.

Highlight Featured Products in Class

Is there a new martial arts training aid or gadget that would be great for students to have at home? If so, get a few for the students to try out in class and explain the benefits of having one for themselves. Offer a discount and you’re bound to sell some.

Raffle off a Cool Item

If you’re looking through some of the newest product catalogs and come across a few items that even you’d like to have, chances are, some students will feel the same way. Consider getting that hot new MMA shirt or other item and raffling it off. You could either sell tickets and do the raffle as soon as the retail amount has been collected or have students do something special to qualify for a raffle ticket. Those that enter and don’t win, may want to buy it with a discount incentive if offered to them.

Sell Weapons with a Free Seminar

If you were going to have a nunchaku seminar and charge $20.00, instead of providing chucks for everyone to use and give back, charge the additional retail price of a pair of practice nunchaku. So instead of charging $20.00 you charge $30.00 and give the participants the weapons to keep. Now you’ve gotten your seminar fee and the full retail price of the practice weapon as well.

Promote Retail Gift Certificates

Make sure that all of your students and their friends and families know that your school offers gift certificates. Promote it online on your web site and on your social media accounts. You should have some signage in the school to promote them as well. Offer electronic gift certificates in addition to hard copy ones to reap the most sales.

Make Your Retail Offers Visible

Even if you’re not stocking much merchandise, you can still have a retail area with catalogs or printouts from your online pro-shop for people to view. A display with your featured products, school logoed items, and product samples should be in a major traffic area so that everyone sees it.

The more they can see and touch, the more they’ll want to buy.

Action Steps: What to do now

1. Review your retail sales volume from the last three months including what was sold and how much you profited.

2. Choose one or more income-generating ideas from this lesson and implement them with a goal of exceeding your sales from the last few months.