6 ways to increase your wholesale sales right now

As a wholesaler, you make money when your retail stockists buy your products. But, to increase wholesale sales in your business, you can’t sit back and twiddle your thumbs. You need to be proactive. 

Time and time again, I hear brand owners and distributors complain that they don’t know how to get new wholesale stockists. AND they don’t know how to keep the ones they’ve got engaged and placing repeat orders. Sound familiar?

Use the following 6 tips to keep your stockists coming back for more again and again. Soon, you’ll enjoy regular, consistent orders from your stockists, and your retailers will enjoy a nice tidy increase in their own sales growth as well!

6 ways to increase your wholesale sales

Step #1: Make a special introductory offer

Too many times I see brand owners and distributors send their potential stockists a really mundane, boring document about their products. And then they wonder why the retailers seem disinterested…

Instead, why not make like the Godfather and “make them an offer they can’t refuse”? Give your potential stockists a special introductory offer for their first purchase.

We use this strategy all the time for our website retail customers, but incentives can work in wholesale as well.

Step #2: Make ordering simple and shipping fast

If ordering is difficult, your retailers will avoid it like the plague. Make things easy for retailers by offering multiple ways to order – phone, email and website.

If your shipping is slow, this means your retailers aren’t getting the stock on the shelves quickly and therefore can’t sell it quickly.

Automate your ordering and shipping processes as much as you can. This means less waiting for busy retailers who want a simple, streamlined process, putting your company near the top of their lists of brands they buy from.

Step #3: Provide gold-standard customer service

In a digital age where many small businesses don’t even want to put their name or phone number on their website, it seems old-fashioned customer service is the exception rather than the rule.

Give your stockists multiple ways to contact you for help and to order from you. Make customer service easy, whether it’s a customer question or a warranty return.

If you can go the extra mile to make your wholesale stockist’s lives a little bit easier, you’ll definitely win a golden star! Your retailers will soon prioritize selling your products over a competitor’s brand.

Step #4: Run limited-time wholesale promotions

One tactic I’ve used with great success over many years is to run monthly offers to my wholesale stockists. This gives you something to promote in a monthly wholesale newsletter, and results in much more consistent monthly re-orders.

Step #5: Offer bulk discounts

I know that selling at wholesale price usually means you have slim profit margins to play with, so you may feel a bit scared of offering additional discounts.

But if that additional discount was only available on bulk orders of large quantities of each product, it becomes worthwhile.

Step #6: Create compelling marketing campaigns

It’s a mistake to think that, as a wholesaler, it’s not our responsibility to market our brand. It’s easy to assume that marketing becomes the retailers’ job. But that’s not the case.

By designing eye-catching, desirable marketing campaigns to promote your brand to your end customers, this helps to increase demand for your products.

In turn, this helps your wholesalers to sell through faster (and come back to re-order sooner!).

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Updated 2nd June 2019