If you love your business, it won’t take much effort on your part to find new effective ways to improve your sales. Once your new business is running smoothly the extra benefits can fall right into place by doing creative things like…

1 Sending out Thank You or Customer Appreciation Cards – People like to be appreciated. Sending out an unexpected "thank you for all your business over the years" or "thank you for your business", or referrals given by customers etc. is good business and can increase your sales. Customers like to be appreciated. 2 Sending Gift Cards to Customers Who Refer You To Others And Get You Business – If you run a service type of business you may have had certain customers refer you to their friends and family. These customers may have gotten you thousands of dollars in work over the years from referring you to others. They may deserve a gift card to a nice restaurant or something. This can only sweeten your business relationships.

When I was in Amway years ago my upline distributor sold $200 worth of gift albums to a real estate agent in one day. The way these gift albums work is simple. Let’s say you send a customer a $50 gift album. The customer can choose from a series of gifts in that album that are all priced the same.

Back then, these albums cost anywhere from $25 to $250 I believe. A very nice, professional and handy way to say "thank you" to our valuable customers for their business or referrals! These gifts (or money) can also be given to other businesses that refer you to new customers as well to increase your sales.

3 Remembering Your Customers’ Birthday – I once read that a person’s birthday is the most important day in their life. Going out of your way to remember a customer’s birthday will definitely touch their heart and make you a friend. Take advantage of this little secret with a personal card or note and make your sales soar. Many businesses use this technique.

4 Adding on Extra Services to Your Existing Service – Do you run a house painting business for example? Have you thought about adding on pressure washing, evestroff cleaning, driveway sealing, window washing or light carpentry? These add-ons are a great way to increase or improve your sales and you don’t have to worry about advertising as much to keep profits coming in.

5 Offering A Monthly Or Seasonal Continuity Program - Adding on a continuity program can make sales flow on auto-pilot. Just as Netflicks offers movies for a low monthly membership fee, Block Buster has been doing it in their stores for years also. For $24.95 a month you get to watch unlimited movies. This locks in and guarantees your repeat business.

Window washing is a perfect example of a continuity program. Most commercial window washing accounts expect you to come back weekly or monthly. It wouldn’t be hard to get homeowners on a continuous spring and fall window cleaning account. Just about any business can take advantage of a continuity program and watch their sales dramatically improve.

The bottom line to all this is that people will automatically tell others about your great service even more than they already do now if you use creative ways to increase or improve your sales. You can literally have customers eating out of your hand and sending you so much business that you won’t have to advertise for years to come. Add that to all the other creative ways you have to improve your sales and you will be as sound as a pound!

Lee Cusano has owned and operated his own successful painting business for over 16 years. He has also helped many others to start their own painting business with his "Bid Like a Pro Estimating and Advertising CD-ROM".

Lee also offers a new free report titled "How To Quit Your Day Job This Week and Double or Triple Your Income". To get it go to http://www.BidLikeaPro.com