In the environment of online marketing and sales there are fundamental metrics that must be optimized to increase conversions, the average ticket value per order, the frequency of purchase, and the customer retention period are the main among multiple indicators to monitor, depending on of the objectives of each business.

Under this vision, the average ticket is absolutely important, but it is worth noting that this metric is only part of the general picture, to draw a successful online sales strategy.

What is the average ticket?
The average ticket is the average amount that a customer spends when purchasing your products or services. This value can vary drastically between different markets, periods of time, or even between different branches or offline points of sale in the same city.

Given this, it is important to formulate your own KPIs or custom indicators for each point of sale, based on a combination of competitor data, specific market benchmarks, and of course, your own sales history.

In turn, the average ticket is a relatively simple metric to calculate. You just need to take the total revenue during a given period and divide it by the number of orders placed during that same period.

If, for example, a store has generated $ 5,000 of revenue in the previous month, and there were 100 orders, the average ticket calculates by dividing $ 5,000 by 100 to give a figure of $ 50.

Increasing the value of the average ticket translates into driving customers to buy more products or items that cost more.

And techniques such as upselling, cross-selling, and customer retention are excellent actions to optimize this indicator.

Factors to define the average ticket per customer
As we clarified at the beginning, KPIs are the most relevant and valuable metrics for your business. There are common indicators across all industries, but each company has unique KPIs to regularly track and analyze each organization’s service or customer engagement.

Once you identify which metrics are most relevant to your industry, add them to your KPI list for regular monitoring.

To facilitate learning, we will detail the most common, but also the most relevant KPIs for any sector.

1. Conversion rate
The conversion rate is the number of customers who complete a sale after visiting your website and viewing a product of interest to them. This rate is closely tied to overall revenue metrics.

Its importance derives since it represents actual sales compared to the number of customers who see your products.

This KPI can also be compared to other metrics designed to improve conversions, such as overall page views, average order values, and traffic sources to gain more insight into the behavior of your users who complete the purchase.

2. Gross margin
The gross margin is the actual profit you get, subtracting the cost of production and marketing cost of the goods offered. This is essentially the profit of the product after the sale.

Knowing how much your business earns from each sale is extremely important to ensure that it is growing and scaling properly.

3. Average value of the abandoned order
Tracking the average value of an abandoned order allows you to identify the average value of an order that is abandoned during the purchase stages.

It can also be measured in a general way and segmented by type of device, platforms, and traffic sources.

4. Cost per acquisition
Cost per acquisition is how much it costs to win a new customer. This will include advertising costs, email marketing campaigns, discounts offered, and whatever else is required to finalize the sale.

This indicator is also essential for analyzing the average ticket since it gives us an idea of ​​how much effort and money it takes to really get a customer that generates income.

Profitable Growth Strategies to increase the average ticket
ticket.

To develop strategic actions that promote the possibility of increasing the average ticket, there are various tactics that serve to boost the aforementioned indicators, among many others that are part of the goals of your company. Let us know the following:

1. Invest in your most successful channel
Check the numbers and statistics for your last period. How many sales have you made through each of their campaigns? What marketing efforts and through which channels have the most sales been driven in that period?

Once these basic values ​​have been identified, we can investigate which were the products with the highest value they sell given within these campaigns.

Once you’ve identified your highest performing promotional channel, it’s time to think creatively. How can you use that channel to its full potential?

If investing in more advertising is not an option, you can invest more time, resources, or promotions that drive the sales of strategic products or services that increase the value of the average ticket.

2. Increase prices
Nobody loves price increases, but inflation and the increase in the value of your products or services is a reality. Most loyal customers will understand and want to support your company.

You can spend some of your new income on marketing and improving product quality, turning the shopping experience into a premium service that justifies the additional cost.

3. Focus on a new audience
A classic way to even double the average ticket is to find a direct way to attract a new audience but related to the solutions that your brand offers.

To reach this new target audience, select some new marketing channels, and monitor how they work. Then, choose the platform with the best ROI, focus resources on optimizing results.

conclusion
Managing a diverse range of products and services with different values ​​and prices can represent a challenge when it comes to increasing the profitability of the company since multiple indicators influence the profits that we obtain as a result of each of the strategies.

By monitoring the value of the average ticket, we obtain a global understanding of the income that each client brings, but to raise this metric it is necessary to strengthen the tactics of both the marketing and sales departments together.

These efforts not only increase the company’s income but will optimize the results of various areas, generating much more productive and efficient actions.

We know that as a manager or president of a company you always have one thing in mind: reducing costs, along with the search for new strategies to increase profitability.

But is it really possible to achieve this without laying off employees, lowering the quality of products and services, or negatively impacting the structure of the company?  Yes. But it is necessary to analyze in depth both the activity and the operation of the company’s processes, in order to make future decisions that allow you to reduce costs and increase profitable growth. That is why today we share some strategies that can help you achieve this goal.

how to reduce costs in the company

How to reduce expenses in a company and increase productivity?
Do you know what the term “process reengineering” or Business Process Reengineering (BPR, for its acronym in English) means? If you have no idea what we are talking about, we will explain it to you below:

“Reengineering is the fundamental overhaul and radical redesign of processes to achieve dramatic improvements in contemporary and critical measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service, and speed.”

This evaluation makes it possible to detect failures, inefficient processes, unnecessary tasks, and determine the real costs at each stage of the production process. So if you ask yourself how to reduce expenses in a company? Based on this diagnosis, you can start working on adjustments.

Within each organization, there are fundamental areas, in which you can start the implementation of this strategy to reduce costs.

Human Capital Department
Considering that employees are the most important resources since their professional capacities guarantee the success of the processes, it is necessary to manage Human Capital efficiently. We know that this is not an easy task; therefore we recommend you consider:

1. The outsourcing of payroll management. In Mexico there are firms specialized in the outsourcing of payroll, which is in charge of complex calculations; keep benefits and payments up to date; carry out the employer proceedings; Payroll (payroll maquila); specialized recruitment; among other services. When you delegate these tasks, you can reduce financial costs, as well as the administrative burden that comes with maintaining an internal department.

2. Team incentives. When employees are motivated there is a positive impact on productivity. It is not just about giving them more money, because a company that cares about the well-being of its staff and offers opportunities for professional development through constant learning, is well valued. Being considered an ideal place to work, employees will be focused on their tasks, without thinking about looking for new opportunities. With this, you get a reduction in the costs caused by staff turnover.

3. Reduce occupational risks. Each company has a loss ratio according to the activity it carries out. With the Annual Statement of Work Risks, you can determine the risk possibilities to which your collaborators are exposed.

Detecting risky areas improves the maintenance of facilities and avoids factors that endanger the equipment. This reduces the cases of absenteeism due to illness or accidents. In addition, by lowering the accident rate, the work risk premium before the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) is reduced.

Administration Department
The administrative area can also be outsourced to reduce costs and increase productivity. Of course, you should be aware that this team also develops strategies to reduce costs in the company, such as the ones that we are going to present to you now:

4. Comply with tax obligations and avoid fines. As a company, you have some procedures to carry out before the authorities, such as payment of benefits, payment of taxes, annual reports of profits, among others. Failure to do so can result in penalties that would have a strong impact on the company’s finances.

We can recommend that you create a checklist of your Company’s Compliance with Tax Obligations so that you do not miss any.

reduce costs in the company
5. Budget and inventory monitoring. Keeping constant monitoring of the production process allows better planning of the budget. In addition, it will be possible to identify unnecessary expenses or new trends to better position your services.

One of the advantages of this inspection is not to accumulate inventory or to have a low turnover rate. When you manage to efficiently solve this situation, you can reduce costs and increase productivity.

6. Restructure expenses
marketing. Using “guerrilla marketing”, social networks, or some creative alternatives to promote your company, is reflected in a reduction in costs compared to other traditional media.

It may interest you: Financial Social Responsibility

operations department
While you can handle some issues with external teams (raw material suppliers, for example), the operations department is the heart of your company. For this reason, it is key that it be profitable and sustainable, so it is one of the areas that we recommend you review when you want to reduce costs. These are some of the general recommendations:

7. Save on services and materials. This strategic task ranges from lowering electricity consumption (with the usual tips to disconnect equipment, take advantage of natural light, among others) to avoid unnecessary printing on paper.

Taking these measures, with the collaboration of your employees, is a good tool to reduce costs in a company; while being responsible for the environment.

8. Process automation. One of the advantages of technology is that it allows you to reduce costs and increase the productivity of your company. For example, you can use a CRM for the sales area, or a chatbot for customer service.
You can also integrate certain equipment into your production line that increases the efficiency of the work team.

9. Cloud technology. You no longer have to spend a large amount of money on computer equipment. Thanks to technological development, you can store your information in the cloud, manage the company’s servers, implement virtualization and other functionalities, while reducing operating costs.

10. Alternative contracts. Figures such as the Home Office or freelancers have gained a presence in the professional field. This is because younger employees are not comfortable with traditional hours. On the other hand, some specific tasks can be solved without the need for a plant worker dedicated exclusively to them.

In this way, you not only modernize the structure of the company, making it more dynamic and flexible, but it is also positive for the financial health of the company, by reducing operating expenses.

conclusion
When aiming to reduce costs in a company, it is always necessary to evaluate its processes and make adjustments that do not necessarily have to be drastic. In fact, you can start with the implementation of small changes that impact the structure.

From there, scale the scope of the changes until the development of a long-term proposal that consolidates a new business vision is achieved. The market is constantly evolving, so we need to take regular action to avoid being left behind.

Why learning faster can improve profitability We share 10 tips to shorten the learning curve so your resources are productive in the shortest time possible.

In this modern era where companies seek to improve, the only constant is change, and there is always something to learn. When consultants offer a solution, they focus on current business problems and spend time finding solutions. It is important to note that the more refined the solution, the higher the probability of a return on investment.

One of the deficiencies is that when we analyze the same problem, we can offer different solutions, resulting in a non-standardized delivery. What if you could learn from other people’s experiences and use the knowledge you learned to solve the problem in the same way or improve it? In this scenario Phil Kirkham, Hydra Soft Sales Director invites us to:

Explore the “Zero to Hero” phenomenon; Y
Explain how consultants and project managers can learn six times faster by gaining “Artificial Experience.”
To start, Phil gives us an interesting article on how to reduce the learning curve of a consultant to be productive quickly in a company.

“In 1879, the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus created 2,300 nonsense three-letter words for an experiment. Each word he listed had the pattern: consonant-vowel-consonant (for example, sif, ral, kat), avoiding common words that could be easily remembered. Ebbinghaus recorded how often, and to what degree, he could recall them after specific time intervals. One of his conclusions was: as the amount of material that needs to be learned increases, the amount of time it takes in learning it is proportional “. This makes sense right? But what made his findings remarkable was that he was the first to use the term “learning curve.” Today, this is a familiar phrase and especially relevant to people who pursue in life the “never stop learning.”

The length of your learning curve plays a key role in determining how quickly you can be available to deliver a project when you join a project in a new role. Project managers improve over time, they know more and can offer greater value to solve different problems, along with the implementation of strategies to minimize the risks of a project or scenario. What we often lose is the experience of how to develop the project and locate the appropriate resources.

To increase the steepness of the learning curve, we have put together 10 tips that will help organizations effectively deliver knowledge transfer, and contextualize the concept of “Artificial Experience”.

10 tips to shortening the learning curve; why learning faster can improve profitability
1. Set a Goal
What you want to achieve should be tangible, measurable, and as specific as possible. For example, you are about to deliver a Microsoft Office 365 migration to ACME company. Your goal could be to offer the solution as you see fit. However, a better way would be to record improvements and strategies used, to minimize risks the next time you go to do the same job.

2. Review past experiences
Review the experiences someone has had before and make sure that the lessons learned and the experience gained are included in your plan. One of the biggest time savers is when you start the next plan with some of the risks documented, including a successful risk mitigation strategy. The knowledge gained reduces risks, saving time and effort.

3. Create deadlines
10 tips to shortening the learning curve; why learning faster can improve profitability
Deadlines help understand the critical path of the project, adding a sense of urgency and incentivizing the team to complete a series of tasks. Your deadline must be aggressive and realistic. If not, you could be a victim of what is known as Parkinson’s Law. In 1958, this law was defined by C. Northcote Parkinson. The law says: “Work expands to fill the time available for completion.” Which means that you will work hard enough to reach your deadline. If the deadline is too long in the future, you will tend to complete the task with the effort necessary to reach your commitment. If you are in the professional services business, this may affect the number of hours you have to bill on the weekly report. Thus, define more aggressive deadlines, by which you could be comfortable with these, and make sure your team stick to them.

4. Define tasks
Break down what you want to accomplish into tasks. Once you’ve set a deadline, define what your plan will achieve for the day, week, and month. Estimate how much time you will spend on each task per day and plan at that level. For example, next Monday your task may be to: define an appropriate reporting structure. For this, it is better to define the steps that you need to develop to achieve this task. If one of these steps takes longer than you defined, you can adjust your schedule accordingly.

5. Measure progress

Keep an accurate time record of the progress you make. This will help you keep track of the schedule that has been defined. Review which people delivered faster than planned, rather than examining tasks that took longer than expected. If the completed work was faster than expected, was it rushed, or did the consultant use an innovative method? Could you then share this innovative method with the entire work team to reduce time? Reviewing the amount of time it takes to complete a task, it provides details on what to automate and what can be scheduled to reduce the risk of cost overruns.

6. Reward your team
To motivate teams, include rewards for reaching key milestones. For example, break the program down into phases linked to billing, and reward the team after completing each phase. For example, a reward for turning in time could be a day off of entertainment for the team.

7. Assign responsibilities
Hold the team accountable for the results by letting the key people in your life know what they are trying to do. A shared goal adds motivation to meet deadlines and increases profitable growth.

8. Record the evidence
In delivering a program, the company needs to create feedback loops to capture detailed notes and procedures. This detail provides information that will help you and the assurance team to publicize what is happening at delivery. Supporting the evidence of all events around the collaboration will help professional services companies understand where risk can occur and what the mitigation strategies are prior to project definition. Detailed records will also help organizations recognize where knowledge can be turned into “Artificial Experience” to deliver faster and better quality projects.

By recognizing and retaining the “Artificial Experience” it will allow organizations to:
Create knowledge assets that provide the ability to reduce the skills required to deliver a result;
10 tips to shorten the learning curve; why learning faster can improve profitability Improve project reliability and quality.
Protect the business against the loss of knowledge assets, that is, people leave.
9. Track the IRR
Make sure the IRR is visible. Keep in mind that a project often has many stakeholders representing more than a single economy. Projects have many collaborators who are regularly employed and rewarded in different ways, which in turn may have different priorities. Having a single plan and agenda helps teams stay motivated and ready for delivery.

10. Feedback
Using an independent peer review process is one of the fastest ways to identify valuable learnings. At Hydra, the expert project assurance team reviews work plans, related collaboration, and feedback loops, including suggestions on how to improve them. This feedback can speed up the capture of the “Artificial Experience”; and visibility into the logic behind the process, helps you understand how and where to make changes to deliver evidence-based improvements to deliver projects faster.

conclusion
There’s another reason for wanting to speed up your learning curve … by wanting to learn something and get it right, you will feel better about the initiatives your company offers. So the next time you set out to win a new client, you can show how successful projects are delivered at less risk. Which means, it will generate income according to its newly developed capacity. In other words, identify and share the “Artificial Experience”, to shorten the learning curve and generate more revenue, faster.