As we have talked about in the past, your sales counter is one of the best places to increase your sales. I’m sure you have a number of products at your counter already, but we wanted to highlight a few categories that are key to increasing your revenue. These products normally have a great margin and you have the potential to move a lot of them.

SAFETY EQUIPMENT      

Most equipment needs some sort of safety gear when being used. Whether it’s glasses, dust masks or gloves, all of these things can be an easy upsell. One of the keys with safety gear is getting your counter employees to understand what gear goes with what equipment. If they don’t know this, they won’t feel comfortable recommending something, resulting in lack of these sales.

Make sure that you have a training session with your counter sales people to make sure they are knowledgeable in this area.

CONSUMABLES    

This is an obvious one and probably the most common. Most businesses have things like diamond blades or grinding and polishing tooling behind their counter. Make sure you have consumables for all of the products you are trying to sell or rent. Like the safety equipment, you need to make sure your counter employees understand the consumables and which ones are suitable for each type of equipment, so they can spot opportunities.

Just a quick example; I was working on a job in my house and needed to cut some concrete. I went to a rental store to grab a saw and at no point did anyone ask me if I needed a blade! That was a missed opportunity to upsell. The blade would have costed more than the saw rental. If you get your counter employees to understand the potential to increase sales from these products, you will have a better chance at getting them excited about it.

JOB SITE CLEAN UP        

One thing homeowners, and even contractors, sometimes forget about is the mess that their job may make. Especially people who are less experienced. Having things like drop sheets, vacuums, and other products like this readily available at your counter, may jog their memory or allow you the chance to sell something they didn’t even know they needed.

A simple way to do this is by getting your counter employees to ask what they are working on. This will give them a direction to take the conversation and recommend some clean up products that they may need.

Another thing to watch out for is new job site regulations that may be coming into effect. For example, OSHA has introduced new silica dust exposure laws in the U.S. Starting in June 2017, you will need proper dust extraction on all job sites. Dust control systems are great for keeping job sites clean, but will also help your customers comply with these new laws.

So, not only are job site clean-up tools handy for anyone, they also can go one step further and protect your customers from potential fines.