Sales volume

Sales volume equals the number of units sold by a company during a particular accounting period, for example, a year.

In the video below, Edwin Dearborn shares effective tips to increase your sales volume.

Why is sales volume important?

Unlike total sales, the sales volume metric focuses on the number of products sold rather than monetary profit. It may seem that sales volume is not as important as total sales, but that is not the case. Sales volume is an essential indicator of business health. It allows you to track the performance of marketing campaigns, evaluate the efforts of sales representatives, and choose the best places for physical stores.

Evaluating total sales, marketers endeavor to increase their revenue while monitoring sales volume to look for strategies to sell more products. If you have several offline stores in one city and the volume of items sold differs a lot, you should pay special attention to where you put your new store since shopping opportunities underlie this factor.

Besides, you can track sales volume from each of your sales reps individually. This will help you find out the most effective member of your sales staff, say goodbye to unmotivated colleagues, or invest in their education. 

You'll also get a clear picture of your top-selling products and those that need either more promotional activities or should be discontinued.

Read on to discover how to calculate your sales volume.

How to calculate your sales volume?

As we compare sales volume to total sales, let’s take a look at the calculations for both business health indicators with an example.

To find out your sales volume, you need to multiply the number of items you sell per month by the necessary period — a year, for example.

If you sell 300 light bulbs a month, your sales volume would be 3,600.

300*12 = 3,600

This means that you sell 3,600 bulbs a year.

If you want to find out your total sales, you need to multiply your sales volume by the cost of a bulb. Let’s say the price of a bulb is $15.

3,600* $15 = $54,000

So, your annual total sales would be $54,000.

So now that you know how to calculate your sales volume, you may be interested in some methods that will help you increase it. We’ve shared some effective tips below.

Remember that these methods should concentrate on optimizing your work with both prospects and sales representatives. Make sure that you take into consideration each aspect described below.

1. Identify the unique values of your product. This step is a must when developing a new product. Answer the following questions: “What makes our product unique?” “Why does our product stand out in a row of similar products?” and “Why should people buy out product?” Having this list of unique qualities at hand will help you easily persuade prospects that they need your product.
2. Put customers’ needs at the heart of your business. If you know nothing about your clients’ problems and preferences, they won’t come back to you. People love brands that appreciate their customers’ choices and do their best to improve. For example, if you own a cosmetics store and want to launch a new line of face foundations, you should research and consult with a dermatologist to produce different variations of the same product for clients’ problems, wants, and needs. You should consider age, gender, skin types, presence of skin problems (large pores, acne-prone skin, redness, bruises, wrinkles, etc.), the level of coverage, SPF presence, the type of finish, etc. This will help you create the best product for each client.
3. Nurture and qualify your leads. People are not ready to buy when they first meet your product. Hence, you need to qualify your leads based on their willingness to buy and financial opportunities. If you evaluate them as unqualified leads, they need nurturing. This process entails providing people with relevant content based on their stage in the sales funnel. This content should answer their questions, remove objections, and build trust in your brand. You can nurture your leads via email campaigns and chatbots for messengers. LIKE.TG offers its clients to send up to 15,000 emails and create up to 3 bots for free every month.
4. Invest in marketing promotion. You may sell unique products, but what’s the good in that if nobody knows about them? Well-thought marketing campaigns will help you increase your outreach dramatically, acquire more leads, and boost brand awareness. Choose a reliable marketing service that provides a set of features for this purpose. LIKE.TG allows marketers to reach their clients and bring in more leads on almost every digital channel available today. Inform clients about sales and hot deals, remind them about items left in their shopping cart, communicate personalized offers, and answer their questions via email campaigns, web push notifications, SMS, and chatbots.
5. Speed up your sales cycle. This term entails the sequence of steps necessary to sell a product. Your task is to sell more products in a shorter period of time. The faster you do this, the bigger your sales volume will be. We recommend investing more time and money into the best-performing channels, automate routine tasks via emails and chatbots (such as handling orders, reservations, answering FAQs), work on customers’ possible objections in advance, simplify the ordering process and site navigation, make a one-step checkout, make use of social proof, personalize communication, create a customer profile, and arrange meetings with prospects.
6. Reward loyal clients. Let customers know that you appreciate their choice. Working on building customer loyalty allows brands to increase retention, boost sales, and facilitate word-of-mouth. For this purpose, create a loyalty program. Give them points for using your service or buying your products and let them exchange them for a product or gift. Encourage customers to share their feedback. It will help you reveal what clients appreciate the most about your business and reveal your weak points and improve. Build a warm and long-lasting relationship with customers. Send them birthday emails, remind them about plan expiration, and recommend the product they may like.
7. Align your marketing, sales, and support teams. These departments complement each other perfectly since support and sales teams know both customers’ pain points and what they like about your brand. Pass this information to the marketing department, and it will plan communications accordingly. You may even improve and optimize your product if you cooperate effectively.
8. Motivate and reward your sales reps. These are exactly the people who make the biggest impact on your sales volume offline. So, you should hire them wisely. Following a pre-written script no longer works, so reps should be savvy people able to adjust anytime. Create the sales plan, mention the number of deals you expect to achieve each month. If a rep overachieves your sales quota, reward them with a commission. If they miss the quota, analyze the probable causes or consider hiring another more experienced specialist. Remember that your staff should be highly-motivated, and the salary isn’t the only element of motivation. Create a positive and friendly working atmosphere, improve team bonding, and be ready to help your colleagues.

Congrats, now you know why sales volume matters, how to calculate and increase this metric. Register in LIKE.TG to build long-lasting relationships with your clients and promote your products on any channel you need.