This is a typical concern of entrepreneurs who want expand your business and they know what to offer the service of Home delivery to your customers can be a key to increasing your sales and achieving this goal.
However, we are not always clear on what it entails and what we need to get started. So here I share everything you need to know about this important added value and the steps you must take to implement it.
Why consider home delivery service?
Digital Clients
The first thing we must be very clear about is that today’s customers are very different from what they were 10 years ago. The world is changing rapidly and consumer markets demand more innovative solutions every day and this has to do with being faster.
We are in the digital age and social networks where the fastest and most creative survive. Time is short and competitors are beyond our borders.
“Today customers are won with added value, creativity and increasingly exclusive services.” [twitéalo]
The times in which the client came to our business patiently to know about our products and services are more and more distant. Today the client is more demanding, more informed and demands speed. Today customers no longer come to us, we must go in search of them and conquer them.
Traffic and External Factors
To this we can add other external factors such as the traffic in our cities where transporting us from one point to another can mean valuable time that our clients are not always willing to give us.
Global Competitors
Our competitors are no longer just in the store across the street or in the office next door. Nowadays people can buy through mega-sites on the Internet like Amazon or Alibaba and get their products delivered to their doorstep even sometimes with prices lower than ours.
Implementing Home Deliveries
The services of Home delivery they therefore represent one of those services of great value for our modern customers.
Whatever the role of your business: selling food, computer supplies, car cleaning, private classes, etc. Your clients will undoubtedly be delighted that you offer them the possibility of sending them the products or providing the service to their doorstep.
Nothing makes a customer happier today than making it easier for them to receive your product. Even the vast majority of them will have no qualms about paying a little more in exchange for not having to waste a couple of hours in traffic to move to your store to bring a product.
Implementing this home delivery service can be the differentiating factor that will help you substantially improve your sales.
Have you ever wondered how much I could improve your business with this service?
I am sure you will find many creative ideas to exploit it and get the most out of it.
If you still doubt it, see what Amazon has in mind with its Prime Air service …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNySOrI2Ny8
What considerations should be taken when implementing a home service strategy?
The advantages for the client are many and for your business as well. However offer Home delivery service It can represent additional costs that must be managed very well so that everything works positively.
That is why I recommend you pay attention to the following recommendations to carefully implement your strategy:
- Sales Tool. The home delivery service should be an additional and strategic sales tool. You must keep in mind that the main objective is to increase sales by a sufficient percentage to cover the costs of implementing the service and also generate additional profits. It would make no sense to increase 15% in sales if you spend this same percentage on shipping costs.
- Customer service. The second thing to keep in mind is that the service should aim to save the customer time and provide them with a premium value. One of the keys to successful home delivery is speed. A customer will value this service especially if it is a service that saves them time, fuel and hassle. Important: A key detail for this is to indicate via telephone to your client as clearly as possible how long you can fulfill their order so as not to create false expectations.
- Start small. In order to comply with point 2, your strategy must ensure that the times are achievable and for this you must start by covering only your area or surrounding areas and gradually expand the delivery areas as you have control of logistics and costs. Don’t intend to deliver across the city or across the country at the same time. Implementing the home service gradually will allow you to measure your capacity, your costs and fine-tune the times.
- Consider all the factors. The logistics of all shipments will be affected by different factors: the traffic, the route, the pilot, the fragility of the product, the vulnerability of the area, the weather, the schedule, the vehicle, etc. All of these factors should be carefully considered when scheduling shipments, times, and rates (if applicable). You must also consider it in your costs so that the solution is really profitable for your company.
- Don’t forget the marketing. The way you promote or advertise your home delivery service is also decisive for the success of the strategy. The delivery service should ideally be perceived as “free“As a good entrepreneur you should know that” free “does not really exist. For a good merchant, everything, absolutely everything is charged: directly or indirectly. Usually, services home delivery sThey are usually offered as free so that the customer does not resent a direct price increase. However, it is very common that the prices of the products for delivery to the door already consider the surcharge indirectly in the price or, as an alternative strategy, the customer can be asked for a minimum purchase to be able to offer the service knowing that at this minimum you already cover the shipping costs.
- Optimize your deliveries all the time. Adjust your times according to the number of orders. Depending on your business and how successful you are in offering home deliveries, you will need to adjust delivery times by weighing the number of orders against your delivery capacity. In simpler words, if you have more orders daily it is excellent but you should offer longer delivery times to avoid that you are bad with your clients which could be counterproductive.
- Create a travel log. Controls are important to accurately measure the costs of these kinds of services. From the beginning, it prepares a log to determine the factors that affect the trips: departure and return times, fuel used per week or per day, unit or multiple deliveries, destination and time of delivery, product delivered, unforeseen events that may arise, etc. This control can be carried out on a paper form, on a blackboard or on an excel sheet, but the important thing is to know the behavior of your market and your ability to respond to it.
What are the costs of implementing a door delivery service?
If you have a company or small business or medium and at this point you are imagining yourself with 5 motorists at your door duly uniformed and ready to make 40 deliveries a day, stop, you are rushing !.
In fact, I dare say that the implementation of a strategy of this kind can be a bit simpler than it seems:
- Do not make unnecessary expenses. If possible, start offering the service with your own vehicle and with you or someone you trust being the messenger (remember that you have to receive money for payments). Or, you can start with a bicycle offering the service in the surroundings of your business and over time, you can acquire a motorcycle as the demand for your products or services in this way increases. Doing it small helps you measure and observe market behavior and fine-tune your strategy.
- Invest only when demand demands it. If the demand for your products or services grows and your budget allows it, you can hire a part-time pilot to support you with deliveries. A good tip may be to offer the service at certain times, say at night or only during the week or only on weekends. This completely depends on your type of business or product. And if everything goes perfectly, you can consider the possibility of expanding the resources for your deliveries.
- Consider all the costs of the service. Whether your means of transport is your car, a bicycle or motorcycle, you must consider all the variable costs that they involve including the pilot (s): maintenance, fuel, repairs, salaries, uniforms, protective equipment, payment of vehicle taxes , accessories to transport products, road assistance, medical assistance, insurance, etc.
- Use external messaging services. Another good alternative to start with is to outsource the courier services of a third party. In fact, this is not exactly the cheapest option, but it is the one that would allow you to start with less risk since you would not have to make a large initial investment and would allow you to measure the acceptance and demand of the service. There are courier services everywhere that you can hire per errand or per day and that are very practical for this purpose.
Finally, you should include in the strategy a training plan for your staff that includes the person who delivers the orders and who receives them by phone.
Both must be very well instructed about availability, times to offer, knowledge of delivery areas, additional charges, acceptable means of payment, conditions, customer confirmation and, as always, the key is excellent attention to who calls.
Finally Measure … measure … measure
And to determine whatHow profitable are you? home delivery strategyYou must record daily how many calls and deliveries you make per week and conclude if this increase in sales is profitable to maintain the service and obtain a greater profit.
If this is positive, you can gradually improve your strategy and eat your competition. 🙂
