Quality control is one way to increase profits without increasing sales but it will take a lot of planning and a good business sense. Let's say a business is now into its fifth year of operation and is not on a down turn yet, there seems to be an overall lack of enthusiastic customers. A good first step would be to learn more about the customer's buying habits.

So far you have been the only company in a fifty mile radius selling sports equipment and your business has been steady. Yet you get drift of conversations here and there that tell you a few have been ordering their equipment on-line. They are doing it because they can get a better product at the same price.

You decide to upgrade your items to a better quality and since you are computer knowledgeable you expand your business to on-line advertising. No on-line sales yet. This is experimental for this year. It works. You break about even, but due to this expansion you expect your profits will rise by next year.

The above is not a real situation but is similar to what could happen. In truth, the only way to increase profits without increasing sales is, to my way of thinking, to improve your quality of what you are selling. However, the downside to doing this would be, at first, to lower your profits if your sales did not increase. This is just common sense.

Now let's look at some real ways to increase profits without increasing sales. In a situation such as this the business must be one that has a steady stream of customers. If more customers come in that means more sales and that does not answer the question the title raises.

This raises the question of larger sales being made at each time. In other words, instead of a man coming into a sandwich shop and buying one sandwich and a drink for lunch, he will be buying several lunches for the others back at the office. You supply a handy carrying carton for these lunches and place notices on their bulletin board daily of your menu.

And considering this type of business the price of bread could be lowered if day old bread was bought instead of fresh bread. One would assume, not knowing, that fresh bread is delivered each day and since day old bread is best for sandwiches it is not used until the next day. Why not go by the bakery the evening before and buy day old bread and pay less.

Another way to increase profits is to cut back on help. It will mean more working hour for the family but it will certainly increase profits. Or maybe use part time help instead of full time help; this will do away with the necessity of having to pay them benefits.

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