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151 Quick Ideas to Get New Customers

105
Lost Sales Mean Opportunities

Lost sales, special orders, and buyouts can be an opportu-

nity to businesses that have the right inventories and are paying

attention to what their customers want and need. When one

small store started keeping records of special purchases and

items on which they lost sales, they quickly found one particu-

lar item they had reordered five times for a customer, and it

was an item they didn’t

stock. When this business            Assignment
offered to stock the
customer’s special needs,          Keep your inventory up
the customer assured them      to date, and track all your or-
that they would get all their  ders. The goal is to always
business. By tracking just     have what you should have,
one special purchase, they     and never have what you
ended up with a profitable     shouldn’t have.

new account. What are you

doing to keep track of items you don’t have, and to analyze

those special orders and lost sales?

                         Epilogue

    Anyone can say, “No, we don’t have it.” But it’s the
people who can say “We’ll get it,” who consistently win over
the new customers.

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