Guest Post: The Ultimate DTC Guide for Retailers to Boost Sales
(Image Source: Retail King Solutions)
To succeed as an entrepreneur, you need to be a successful salesperson.
Your ability to make money is linked to your ability to sell your product or service. Often businesses do not succeed in the DTC model, and we will discuss tips and tricks to provide a complete guide to boost your DTC sales.
In this article, we present steps to boost your DTC) direct-to-customer sales and successful tips and tricks to foster the development of your sales. Let’s check them out!
You’re Not Just Selling a Product or Service
A famous study in the Journal of Business Research has demonstrated that direct customer marketing capacities allow a company to create superior customer value. To develop an effective marketing and sales relationship, businesses should use a DTC (direct customer sales) and customer-oriented salespeople.
Selling is a way to help people solve a problem or find something they need. When you're selling, you tell people that your product or service matches their needs. You need to be able to sell the idea of your business to customers, investors, and potential employees.
Selling to Potential Customers aka DTC
When selling to potential customers, you're selling them on the idea of your business and why it is worth buying. You also want them to know that you're passionate about what you do – and committed to growing your business.
DTC's sales model is unique, as you need a distribution network, and you have to create a platform to direct sales to your customers, assess their needs, and cooperate with them.
How to Boost DTC; Work on Your Brand Quality and Popularity
To underline the importance of DTC and understand how you can boost your company's DTC, let's discover people's buying habits.
Three Reasons People Choose to Buy
There are three reasons why customers will choose to buy from your product or service:
They have a unique need that your business can meet, and they seek you out
They know you, and they know you are skilled at what you do
They don't know you, but they have heard good things about you from other people
Boost DTC; Seven simple steps
If you are thinking about boosting your DTC, it means you feel the need to have direct sales benefits. However, you need to start working passionately on your brand image. Here are 7 steps you need to take to boost your brand's DTC.
Build a website (you can use WordPress, choose your favorite layouts)
Develop social media marketing strategies to offer your products directly to your customers
Optimize your website content for search engines
Start writing blog posts for your website
Create video content on TikTok and Instagram to grab the attention of your potential customers
Work with influencers, famous people, and celebrities to advertise your products or services
Start focusing on the operations, such as packaging and delivering your goods or creating packages for your products.
These 7 steps will help boost your DTC as you can have more noticeable changes in offering your products and services directly to your customers. Planning deliveries ahead will save you time and money. From the very beginning, you need to learn how to handle retail deliveries to satisfy your customers, as the risk is higher that satisfied customers will become your repeat customers.
Wholesale and DTC
Retailers will be impacted if a brand seeks direct-to-consumer sales, which means that the brand that has improved its DTC has a higher chance of wholesaling.
Direct Salespeople and Retailers
Direct salespeople interact with customers and sell your product or service. As a business owner, you must ensure that your salespeople know how you expect them to treat your clients. And you need to correct any behavior that doesn’t meet your customer service standards. Retailers are your essential partners/customers; you should create specific approaches to keep them interested.
Here are some tips that will help attract more customers/retailers and brand ambassadors:
Aim to provide excellent customer service
Use advertising to communicate with existing customers
Keep your customers informed about what’s going on with your business
Reward your customers by offering them special deals, promotions, or samples
Time Management for Successful DTC
If you fall behind in your management, you can consider outsourcing employees or finding virtual assistants. Virtalent offers virtual assistants who can quickly help you to organize your work and save time and money. Being flexible is essential for an entrepreneur.
Effective time management can save you from losing deals and sales. On the contrary, failed time management usually leads to aggressive sales and customer dissatisfaction.
How to organize your time effectively?
Schedule all the team meetings and important events at the beginning of the month. As a busy person, you must schedule all the arrangements beforehand, including partnership proposals and investor meetings.
You can use the free timesheet excel templates to track your time and be more organized with your scheduling and time management. Include Google calendar to your time management tools list, as you can use google meet as a platform for online meetings and, at the same time, get reminders.
And finally, invest in your operations team, so you can trust them to handle more workload and use your time for new collaborations and DTC sales.
A Global Shift of DTC
There is currently a global shift to DTC sales, as, after covid-19, people need some interactions directly with the brand. Forbes published an article about changes in the DTC market and how customers need to walk into the stores again and buy the products. The research shows that DTC has a higher potential than ever as you can open stores and informational platforms and get more direct customers.
Final Thoughts
You are all set now! Following our guide will help boost your DTC and get more cooperation with retailers. Remember that you feel like the business's real owner and responsible person when you develop DTC.
You don't always have to give in to customer demands, but you always want to treat your customers with respect and kindness, even if you're telling them no. Positive customer behavior, social media marketing, and search engine optimization will boost your sales.
About the author
This content piece was written by our guest writer Anahit Babkenyan. Anahit creates SEO-friendly content with scholarly research. She enjoys traveling, reading books on the trains, and creative writing in her spare time.
Interested to have your work featured? Share your knowledge with our community by submitting an original article here!
