How to Get People to Purchase Ten Items in Your Dollar Store

Opening and maintaining a dollar store can be a profitable enterprise. If every customer walks away with 10 items, you can see profits quickly increase. Follow a few tricks of the retail trade to compel customers to spend $10 instead of $1. To increase sales, advertise multiple products with similar appeal. On the shelves, display similar items together to allow customers to visualize products as a set. Offer discounts and added incentives to encourage customers to take advantage of a deal.

• 1

  Display items as sets. If you have items that compliment one another, place them together. Allow the customer to visualize what items will look like in a group. For example, display a set of china dishes rather than a lone plate. Assemble a basket with gifts inside, showing the customer how to make her own combination. Arrange matching decorations as a table centerpiece. Place tools in a tool box. The best place to arrange sets is on the ends of shelves facing the front of the store or between aisles.

• 2

  Offer a sale. Customers are attracted to free items, such as in a buy-10-get-one-free sale. Offering an incentive can make the difference between a smaller sale and a larger sale. Offering one free item for every 10 items a customer purchases could even entice sales larger than 10 items.

• 3

  Offer a tax-free equivalent for 10 items or more. A 10 percent discount for purchasing 10 items can entice customers to buy more than planned. If you choose to offer this discount, hang a poster that explains the final cost for several different quantities of items.

• 4

  Advertise your top 20 deals of the week. By advertising the best buys in the store, you emphasize items that customers are likely to purchase. If you have a flier, you could compare the store savings to purchasing the same item elsewhere. If you advertise the top 20 deals, customers are likely to find at least half of the items appealing.