Holiday cheer

It seems like the holiday season starts earlier each year. Retailers used to wait until Thanksgiving to display Christmas decorations and then Halloween became the starting blocks for early promotions. Now that October’s arrive, you’ll soon see Christmas merchandise and stores decorated with bows, ribbons, or Styrofoam snowmen.

November and December represent less than 20 percent of the year, but they are responsible for 30 to 50 percent of the total yearly sales for some businesses. With some of the financial rumblings going on in the U.S., easy credit may be a thing of the past and people will need to start spending within their budget. This will make it more difficult for retailers, especially small businesses that don’t have a plan to boost sales during the holidays.

Here are some ideas you can use to help formulate a plan of action in the coming months. Let’s start off with the goal, which should be ambitious, or even audacious: To make this holiday season’s sales one of your best, despite the sluggish economy, and create momentum that will carry your business into the next year.

In order to accomplish this goal, you should have these four objectives: 1) To get more customers who are new to your business; 2) to get those customers to buy more each time they visit; 3) to get all your customers to return more often and make a purchase; and 4) to get your customers to refer more friends and associates to your business.

Now these are easier said than done, but if you can verbalize and focus on the objectives, you can brainstorm some ideas on how you can accomplish each one. If you implement tactics to achieve all four objectives, it will create a continuous loop, because when your customers start to refer other people, it leads directly into the first objective to get more customers.

Now let’s look at some ways to achieve the four objectives. Many business owners have cut expenses to the bone, and only buy things that are essential to their operations or growth of the company. That often means training and advertising are slashed or eliminated because they’re considered an expense that produces little return. This could be a big mistake. Some forms of advertising can be a waste of money, but that doesn’t mean all advertising should be stopped. Every business experiences customer attrition, so it’s important to keep your company and products in the eyes and ears of new consumers. This is especially true when you have holiday sales going on. Advertising is defined as paid, non-personal communication, and there are dozens of ways you can target your message to prospects without spending a bundle. Be sure to test all your ads so you know which ones are working.

Training, especially the type that improves customer service skills or enhances your front-line staff’s selling ability can be the best money you will spend to get a huge return. The fact is, very few employees really understand how to effectively sell their company’s products. Most of them are merely order takers who wait for customers to wander around, hoping they will find something to buy. The cost to train staff will easily be recovered once they put the ideas into action. Selling means being concerned enough to understand your prospects so you can help them get what they need and want. People love to buy, but don’t like to be sold—so help them become better buyers.

Customer service training is one of those “common sense” areas of business that is not so common. Many employees do not know how to offer good customer service because they haven’t been trained, nor do they see it practiced much in the CNMI. Great customer service can lead to loyal customers. According to a Bain and Company study, a 5-percent increase in customer loyalty can boost profits from 25 to 125 percent over time. Bain investigated the connection between loyalty and growth and found that companies with the highest customer loyalty grew twice as much as competitors. Loyal customers are a result of loyal employees, and training is one way you can invest in your people so they perform at their best.

Here are a few more low-cost, high-return tactics you might want to consider: Create strategic alliances with other non-competing businesses so you can share leads or refer customers to each other. Stay in touch with your customers through e-mail, mail, or by calling them occasionally if they contribute significantly to your sales volume. Create a frequency rewards program that offers customers an incentive to return and buy more. There are numerous programs being used, and a simple one is just a card that is marked with each purchase. When the card is completed, the customer gets something free or receives a big discount.

If you would like some more ideas on how to better prepare yourself to increase sales for the holidays, e-mail us to get a free checklist and report that goes into more detail. We hope these suggestions give you some things to think about as we all brave the economic storm that is heading our way. If you get started early enough and work smart using a plan of action, you may find yourself cheering during the holidays, but please hold off on putting up that Styrofoam snowman until at least Halloween is over.

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