It is that time of year again when we start looking ahead for ways to increase the sales and profitability for the coming year for our businesses. This can be done by looking at the various areas of your business from previous sales to planning to marketing to selling opportunities to presentation and display.

Increasing your sales for 2008 is something your sales team can do but there are a heap of other activities that can make it happen easily too. So here are seven ideas to get you more sales and increase your profitability:

1. Review where the money is by going through previous sales. Look at product lines and suppliers. What is selling well, what sells only occasionally but brings in sales elsewhere and what is just not bringing in the money and taking up space? The space wasters need to go. Get the space opened up for products that sell and increase you sales immediately.

What suppliers are giving you good prices, good selling products and are easy to work with? What suppliers are difficult to deal with, products are not selling and could they improve their prices? Go with the suppliers that are best for your business. Supplier relationships make a huge difference and with the opening up of the internet you have far more choices now.

2. Use a planner for the year ahead to note down selling events like Valentines Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas, festivals, special events, your trade show schedule and local wedding expos and seasonal features in local media. By knowing when what is happening you can be ready to take advantage of the best selling periods with you marketing efforts.

3. Look to your website and if you do not have one, get one. A website can be as simple or as complex as you want but it will always be growing and changing so it is not a static marketing tool, it is a constantly evolving and developing 24/7 marketing tool that can seriously increase your sales.

If you have a website already look to your internet marketing strategy for 2008. What do you want to achieve and where do you want to spend your energy? Within a year depending on your marketing budget you can usually build up between 4 - 8 key internet marketing plans that can then be consistently maintained and grown in the coming years. This includes key words and search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, classified ads, article marketing, directory listings, link sharing, social bookmarking, and of course affiliate marketing. Because of the range of choices and how they integrate you need to focus only on a few at time. It is the focusing on key marketing initiatives over a 12 month period that makes the difference and increases the sales.

4. Communicate with your customers with newsletters. Building up long term and profitable relationships is vital for increasing sales by communicating with customers about what interests them about your business - new designs, sales, promotions, competitions, visiting designers, industry news and special events. An regular email newsletter is cheap to run, showcases color pictures of designs, increases online sales as well as shop sales and also gives you the valuable environmental angel of being electronic. You can also have a small number of well designed print newsletters available at your jewelry store counter for customers to pick up.

You can build your email newsletter customer list through consistency; when customers sign credit card slips offer joining the newsletter, have a membership club, run competitions and have an online sign up box as well as one on the counter. You'll have thousands by the end of the year.

5. Look to your selling opportunities How and where do you sell your jewelry designs? You can increase your exposure through an online jewelry store, participating in trade shows and expos (I find bridal expos great for finding new customers), party plan showings, TV shopping networks, mail order catalogs and being at local fairs and festivals.

6. Ask your customers what they want and what they think of the products as well as how and where they shop with a survey. You can run online surveys within email newsletters and at your online jewelry store as well as having printed surveys that are quick for customers to fill out at the shop or expo stand. Polls are good for quick answers that can show you trends. By knowing what customers think and want you can better target profitable jewelry lines and stories and increase sales.

7. Presentation is very important so whether you are designing displays for your jewelry store, trade show display booth, home showing jewelry party plan business, wedding expo or craft show you need to make sure your display looks great. So look to how you are displaying them; does it attract customers, does it show off the earrings and necklaces in a fresh and alluring way, do the jewelry displays look tired, what about the colors - are they competing or complimenting your stock and what does your display stands say about your business to your customers, suppliers and competitors?

Investing in portal jewelry display stands that attract customers while showing off the necklaces and earrings at their best can pay for themselves with a sales boost. I know by using a decorative earring holder range my sales increased because the customers like them and the increase the opportunities to talk with them, thus increasing the selling opportunities.

So go over your plans for your business for 2008 to find ways to increase your sales and profitability because anything is possible when you want to make it happen. Looking at the various areas of your business from previous sales to planning to marketing to selling opportunities to presentation and display can bring about the fresh look your customers will respond to while giving you and your sales team that fresh inspiration that makes all the difference.