Hi everyone, I want to talk about a simple technique that will give you fantastic results. It will increase the sales you make at your next craft fair.

As you are standing behind your craft show table on a wet winters day at your local craft show remember this solid gold tip.

SMILE!!

Smiling WILL increase your sales at every craft show. Full stop. It will.

Now I don’t have any hard and fast figures to give you or months of testing results to provide for you. I can’t really take the chance of doing one craft show smiling and the other frowning!! But think about this.

If you saw two stall holders selling exactly the same crafts, one is smiling, pleasant and fun and the other is not smiling and looks unhappy and fed up. Which would you walk towards? Which would you buy from? The answer is always the same, every time!! You go to the smiler!! You go towards the happy seller. Even if you do it subconscioulsy, without thinking about it, you gravitate towards the smiling craft stall holder. Why? It’s human nature.

My old business partner used to say that people will always prefer to buy from a friend rather than a stranger. You can trust a friend, you can accept a friends advice, you know they are honest and truthful. When you are smiling and being happy, naturally you look more friendly and are therefore considered to have more of the attributes of a friend than someone who isn’t smiling. So, inturn you appear that much more helpful and trustworthy and honest. And your sales will increase as a result! Every time!! It’s true, try it, it works!!

So, whilst you may have worked hard on your crafts table display, your leaflets and other marketing materials, don’t forget the most important element. You, and your smile. It will get you more sales than any other sales tool you could use!

Happy crafting.

Steve

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We are living in uncertain and volatile times. Everything that is happening in the world economy at the moment is bringing fear and doubt into our lives. So with all this pessimism and problems in the stock markets and banks what chance have we got as small business owners? How do we go about selling crafts and creating income in such uncertain times?

Here are two ideas to consider.

1. When big purchases decrease, small purchases can increase. When times are hard people tighten their belts on the bigger purchases. They put off buying that new car, or sofa, or upgrading to a flat screen tv. At the same time they tend to look more towards little purchases, the smaller items that make them feel good. Do your crafts fit that bill? Consider a family that would normally take a weeks holiday in Europe.

With things as they are now, they put off that expensive trip until another time. Instead at the weekend they take cheaper days trips out with the kids. They visit a craft fair for example, and they might buy your crafts at the fair. So you can see that there are always opportunities, you look to exploit that and use it to your advantage. Make sure your sell arrange of lower priced items, don’t just have the $300 painting you just finished, have a selection of $25 paintings too.

2. In hard times people move away from large sellers to smaller sellers. With all that is happening in the stock markets average consumers are seeing massive organisations, even banks, falling. Confidence is low. Money is tight. Even if consumers are not consciously aware of it, they are having doubts about large corporations.

The spin off to this is that big is bad, small is good. Global is bad, local is good. Do you see that there is an opportunity to exploit this. When things are tight there is an opportunity for small local sellers to provide a real and friendly, reliable service to customers. You can push this in your marketing, at your craft fairs and so on.

These are just two examples of opportunities that you can look for during the current credit crunch. There are loads more ideas and ways to increase your craft sales, all you have to do is think about the current situation and look for the positives that you can draw from it that you can use to sell your crafts successfully.

So, ditch the doom and gloom, look for the positive and sell your crafts better than you have ever done before. It can be done.

To your crafting success.
Steve

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