Every aspect of owning and running your own home based business boils down to several critical factors and one of the main ones is knowing your customers. If you know your customers intimately then your will know what triggers them to buy.There are always several types of customers but the main two I deal with are new customers and return customers and they both require different treatment.
With my vacuum businessmost of my sales are to medium or large industrial companies and the people that get the ball rolling for a sale are the technical people like engineers, mechanics, process workers, supervisors and purchasing officers. They require quioet a bit oif technical detail so I make sure all the information they need is on one of my websites right with the product images. This makes the sale a lot easier as they already know what they want and it is just going through the sale process.
The return customer is always a lot easier to sell to. The following sale is from a return customer.
QGC are an exisiting client who purchased an explosion proof vacuum unit for their gas seam explorations team in November 2014. I received a call from Adam, the Lead Gas Plant Operator wanting a second EX unit. I requested he send through a quote which he did in the following email.
First email contact from existing client - click to read email
My First email response - click to read email
View Quote
My second email response after a technical question in regard to a fitting - click to read email.
Client responds after a telephone call in regard to a special coupling that they want.
Client 3rd email - click to read
My supplier can't source the special coupling so we decide to proceed and they request an invoice to get the sale moving.
View Invoice
I now get a phone call and an email from their purchasing department.
Client emails Purchase Order request and credit card details - click to read email.
View Payment
Many clients will pay with credit card over the phone or send partial details by email and security numbers via text message to a mobile phone.
Read final email between myself and purchasing officer.
Breakdown of sale and gross profit
Sale AUD$3840.10
Cost of tank with vacuums installed;
- Stainless steel tank and trolley - $299
- Pneumatic power head components - $278
- Anti-static hose x 3 metres - $51
- Wand and floor tool - $70
- 40 metres Tiger Flex hose - $320
- 3 Camlocks - $36
- Airline - $76
- SCAV seal - $12
Total cost - $1141.00
Gross profit - $2699