Retail businesses are all about selling products and services. Of course, selling quality products and offering top-notch services is your key to long-term growth. There's a lot of competition for the consumer dollar in the marketplace. It's a constant battle to increase sales each year to take your business to new heights.

One method for garnering consistent increases in sales is to increase your average sales transaction. You can calculate your average sales transaction, and then work at increasing that figure via different means. As the name implies your average sales transaction is the amount, on average, that you sell to each customer. This measurement lets you know how well your business as a whole, and your employees individually, are doing promoting the inventory you have on hand.

You calculate your average sales transaction as follows:

Sales for the Week/Transactions for the Week = Average Sales Transaction

As an example: $8,500/174 = $48.85

How do you increase this figure and therefore your overall weekly and monthly sales? The best way is through suggestion selling. When you suggest additional products and services to a customer who is already buying a product or service from you, you garner those extra sales. For example, in a gift shop you may sell a certain brand of candle to a customer. You then proceed to offer them a candle accessory to go along with it, such as a wick trimmer and wick dipper set.

Here are a few things to consider concerning suggestion selling to raise your average sales transaction figure:

• Suggestion selling is not high pressure selling. You are "suggesting" an additional product or service to your customer. They decide whether your suggestion is appropriate for them at the time. You present the opportunity and they calculate whether it's beneficial for them to take advantage of the opportunity.

• Suggestion selling means fulfilling your customers' wants and needs completely. They may need the additional products or services you're suggesting, but didn't know you carried or offered them. Your suggestions educate them. If you don't make the suggestion, they may go elsewhere searching for these additional products or services.

• Suggestion selling is a cost-efficient method for highlighting new products and services you have. You're already spending time selling; why not suggest new lines, as well as new services, at the same time. This is wise use of your selling time.

It's important to get your employees involved in raising your average sales transaction through suggestion selling. After all, you can't do it all alone. Here are a few tips for inspiring your employees onward to productive suggestion selling. The results will be a higher average sales transaction number:

• Post the average sales transaction number in your backroom. You can post an overall number for the store. You can also post individual numbers (per employee). Individual numbers are the total sales an individual achieves in a week or month divided by the number of transactions they process. You can gauge an employee's progress as a sales associate with this number. You can help them work on suggestion selling skills if you see their number stay the same or even drop.

• Offer rewards to your staff as a whole if the overall store average sales transaction figure increases in a month. Offer individual rewards to those sales associates who increase their personal number.

• Remember to make the effort to increase the average sales transaction via suggestion selling a healthy competition. Have your employees concentrate on meeting your customers' needs, not badgering them to buy extra products through high-pressure tactics. Teach them to suggest wisely. This means offering additional products and services that they feel a customer may truly benefit from. Teach them to suggest relevant additional products that match a customer's original purchase and can enhance their use of the original purchase.

Using suggestion selling to build your average sales transaction is a way to measure your employees' selling skills. Look at this is a positive way. Those who work hard selling your quality lines will receive nice rewards for increasing this figure. Those who are not increasing this figure will receive the knowledge and training to improve their skills so they too can earn rewards. In the end, you, your business, and your employees benefit.

However, first and foremost, your customers benefit, who now have exactly what they need when it comes to products and services they require. Suggestion selling means one-stop shopping. Your customers have no need to pick up complementary products or services elsewhere. Through suggestion selling they obtain all they need in one place... your place of business.