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It’s only September, but now is the time to prepare your small business for holiday season sales. One thing I’ve learned in my decades of helping small businesses is that you can never start too early for the holidays. Q4 sales can boost your bottom line significantly, but you’ll need time to maximize your results. Check out my list below for 7 steps to prepare your small business for holiday season sales.
7 steps to prepare for holiday sales
The frenzy begins on Thanksgiving, so now is the time to prepare for the holiday season sales! Here are 7 steps I recommend to the small business owners I work with.
1. Set your goals
As you prepare for holiday season sales, you’ll want to plan the numbers you want to see in terms of sales, profits, customers, and so on. Accurate forecasting will help you with everything else on this list, including ordering. Having the right inventory, having enough staff on hand, and setting the right budget for your marketing. To set goals and make forecasts, look at last year’s data to forecast this year’s sales. Some things to analyze from past years include:
- Holiday Season Sales (Thanksgiving through Christmas or New Years)
- Levels of goods
- Marketing efforts that worked (and didn’t work).
- Busy days
- Best selling products and services
2. Build your list
Another thing you can do now is work on building your email list. Even if you’re not building your list for the year, you can redouble your efforts and reap big profits in the next month or two. Your email list is vital to your marketing efforts, and if you start adding leads to your list now, you have time to nurture them and build relationships before the holiday season begins. If you’re new to email marketing, check out my 6-week online course; The ultimate email marketing guide!
3. Choose your products
A calculated holiday season sales plan involves choosing which products you want to push in your marketing campaigns. Whether you’re trying to get rid of old inventory or encourage sales of a new product, your promotions need to be consistent. Research what’s hot in your market/industry this year or ask what’s on your customers’ radar.
Once you’ve identified the products you’ll be pushing this holiday season, review your current inventory and pre-order to make sure you have what you need. During your wait, you may encounter problems such as shipping delays or out-of-stock issues.
Bonus tip: You can also consider creating your own Gift guidelines To highlight your products and direct your customers to specific items. You can add your gift guides to your website, write blogs about them, and post about them on social media.
4. Think about your sales strategy
To prepare your small business for holiday season sales, you should realize that this time of year can be different than the rest of the year. What worked in March may not work in December! With everyone cutting prices, you may have to be a little more aggressive in Q4 to stay competitive.
With your holiday season goals (see tip #1 above), you can start planning a. Sales strategy To help you reach those goals. What promotions, discounts, freebies or other incentives will you try this holiday season?
5. Layer on the marketing plan
Setting goals, building a list, identifying products and thinking about a sales strategy are all important steps to consider before settling on your holiday season marketing plan. You want to complement all the decisions you’ve made so far, so your content marketing, advertising, social media marketing, email marketing, PR, and all other parts of your marketing are aligned.
When planning your shopping, keep in mind big dates like:
- Black Friday: The Friday after Thanksgiving is a big start to the holiday shopping season. What will you do to grab a slice of the sale that day?
- Small Business Saturday: You may want to focus on local small businesses. Small business Saturday (the Saturday after Thanksgiving) when consumers are encouraged to ‘shop less’ and support local businesses.
- Cyber Monday: If you’re an e-commerce business, you’ll want to consider how you can use Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving) to boost sales during the holiday season. What do you do to increase website traffic to your online store?
- Frightful Saturday: Panic Saturday is the name given to the Saturday before Christmas when last-minute shoppers flock to complete (or start!) their shopping. Do you have a shopping plan to get those last minute holiday season sales?
While you may not participate in all of these important dates, you’ll want to pick one or two to include in your holiday shopping plan and you’ll have more shopping ideas for each week leading up to Christmas.
6. Plan for additional staff
When it comes to the holiday season, you’ll need a little extra help, which is why one important way to prepare for holiday season sales is to plan for extra employees. You need enough staff to handle the projected increase in sales and keep customers happy. Even if you’re looking closely at the numbers and looking to maximize that Q4 profit, hiring a temporary cashier or customer service agent is costly, so your customers get the best experience shopping with your business.
You need time to train your employees for the holiday season, so hire them early and create a training program to teach them what they need to know to work during the busiest time of the year. Training your employees gives them the confidence they need to help customers and use technology like point-of-sale software. You may even hire some of the staff you want to keep in the new year.
Bonus tip: Be sure to book your training program, including additional components just in time for the holiday season. That way, you’ll have them for next year too and won’t have to reinvent the wheel.
7. Focus on what makes you unique
As a small business owner, you may find it difficult to compete on price with your larger competitors during the holiday season when businesses cut prices to bring people in the door. Therefore, your holiday season sales and marketing plan should focus on highlighting what makes your small business unique (and why customers should shop with you).
What makes it unique can be the type of product you sell, your relationship with the community, your status. customer service And personalization, or something else. Consider it now so you can use it to motivate new and existing customers to do business with you this holiday season.
Boost your holiday season sales!
one third Small businesses report being most profitable in the fourth quarter, which shows why it’s never too early to start thinking and planning sales for the holiday season. Follow the steps above, and you’ll be ready to boost your sales this season and create loyal customers that will follow you into the new year.
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