A fall in sales rarely happens overnight. In actual fact it would be easier to deal with if there was a sudden drop off as this would inevitably point to a specific, identifiable reason. As you know, where there is reason there is usually remedy. No, the more dangerous fall in sales is that which happens gradually over the space of months and years, but which can nevertheless leave a previously healthy business in a precarious position. Worse still, as the decline happens slowly it is either not noticed, written off as being insignificant. The problem is that as sales are often measured against previous year only,  a poor cumulative position over a number of years is less noticeable - but just as dangerous.

At whatever stage your business is in  it is always worth periodically reviewing the whole sales process to see what could be done better.  The kinds of questions which you can ask yourself are: When was the last time existing customers were mailed? What was the subject of the mailing? Were the cross-sold? What loyalty schemes are in place? Do we know how many of our customers repeat? Do we know why customers have left us and where they have gone? Do we know if our customers are happy? How is our pricing against our competitors? What products are our competitors offering? As always there are short term fixes and long term strategies for getting those all-important sales boosts - and they don't have to cost a fortune to implement.