How much business will slip past your store this Christmas? How many opportunities will be lost? How can you make sure this doesn't happen?
The purpose of this site is to help retailers like you, and all of your team including the casuals and first timers, to make the most of Christmas. Not just from a gross profit and sales perspective but also making sure it is an enjoyable, entertaining uplifting experience for customers and the people serving them.
My name is Jurek Leon. I'm an Australian based trainer, consultant, storyteller and author of the '52 Terrific Tips For Christmas Workbook'. It's a passion of mine to help retailers make the most of Christmas.
Christmas Snippets introduces topics, tips and ideas included to stimulate comments from retailers like you on what you've tried, what worked well, even what you wouldn't do again and why. I'd love your input for this segment.
Related Articles includes articles from other retailers, retail consultants and writers on how to make the most of Christmas opportunities. So, if you read any good articles in association newsletters or retail trade publications please do send them in so we can share them with your fellow retailers. Of course, always include the source so that we can give proper acknowledgement and make it easy for others to access the publication.
My hope is that your visit to this site will help you to make a difference in the lead up to this Christmas and any other promotional event. May your cash registers jingle, your team be full of Christmas cheer and your customers be thrilled and delighted that they made the decision to shop in your store.
Merry Christmas
Jurek Leon
Special Agent for Customer Obsession
Terrific Trading Pty Ltd
Welcome
Aussie Christmas Statistics
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released some interesting facts and figures on some of Australia's Christmas characteristics.
In 2008, Santa will visit 3.2 million Australian families with children under the age of 15.
Most children live in New South Wales (1.3 million), Victoria (950,400) and Queensland (806, 500) where Santa will be kept especially busy.
Santa will be delivering some 37 million stuffed toys (worth more than $70 million) and 12 million dolls (worth $54 million) which were imported to Australia as at November 2008.
21,099 Australians travelled overseas on Christmas Day 2007, of that 8,605 were to visit family and friends and 12,494 for holidays. There were also 15,114 short-term visitors arriving in Australia on Christmas Day 2007, with 9,952 arriving for a holiday and 5,162 visiting friends and family.
Last Minute Christmas Tips
Your staff are weary, your customers are stressed and mad with themselves for leaving things to the last minute... again. It’s time for SUPER YOU to come to the rescue!
- Each remaining day of the Christmas countdown, and in the frantic first couple of days of the post-Christmas sales arrange for really good snack, sandwiches, smoothies and energy drinks to be supplied to your team on a regular basis to fit with their rosters.
- Be visible, congratulate them for the great work they are doing. Encourage them to think positive thoughts about their customers.
- Get them to congratulate cranky customers each time they tick another item off their shopping lift and invite customers to return in the new year when you can take the time to serve them well.
Turn pandemonium into euphoria; Christmas tears into festive cheers!
The Big Sheep Christmas Quiz
The amazing Rick Turner and his team at ‘The Big Sheep’,
an all weather on the farm family entertainment centre in north Devon, England
each year come up with their own Christmas Quiz. This year the clues
relate to the names of UK towns. If you hail from the old country or have
spent a bit of time there, it could be a fun one to do with the family.
Mind you, I’ve only managed to get 9 of them so far. The answers
will be up on their website www.thebigsheep.co.uk
on Boxing Day. Just as well!
A terrific idea. Congratulations to Rick and his team. Maybe it will give your business some ideas for next year.
A Christmas Quiz to Energise Your Store
It’s time to energise your staff and customers. Prepare a Christmas Quiz with 10 questions. Every staff member is given a sheet with the questions and they have to complete it with all the answers and hand them in at the end of their shift. Reward them for this with a gift, perhaps Christmas chocolates or something that’s fun.
This will mean they need to interact with customers to get them to help in answering the questions (they could even tempt the customers by saying “come back tomorrow and I’ll reward you with one of my chocolates”.
Below you will find 10 potential questions. If you don’t like them, that’s OK, replace the ones you don’t like with your own. If you do use them, Click here for the answers.
- Give 2 other names for Santa.
- What country does the tradition of Christmas come from?
- Why are Santas’s clothes red and white?
- Name Santa’s 8 Reindeer (No, Rudolph doesn’t count).
- Santa’s preferred mode of entry?
- What is the most popular Christmas tree topper?
- In what year were electric Christmas lights first used – 1895, 1905, 1909?
- In 1647 which country’s parliament passed a law that made Christmas illegal?
- Austrian priest Joseph Mohr wrote which popular Christmas carol in 1818?
- Is the 12 days of Christmas an English song?
Now, come up with (seemingly spontaneous) motivational moments in your store when a couple of questions are announced in the store and the first customer to answer each correctly wins a small prize.
A John Lewis Christmas story
Believe it or not, John Lewis department stores in the UK are actually expected to identify at least one example of a 'random act of kindness' in their branch each month. It’s a most unusual KPI that helps differentiate them from their competitors and create legendary service stories. These stories are then shared thus reinforcing the service culture. Here is a Christmas example.
It was a frantically busy day in the lead up to Christmas at their Southampton store. A staff member was helping a lady carry her shopping out to her MG sports car. So much shopping that she couldn’t close the little boot on the car. He took off his tie, tied down the boot, farewelled the customer and carried on with his work.
Isn’t that a wonderful example? No dilly dallying when he was needed elsewhere and yet he executed a simple act of gallantry. Akin to Sir Francis Drake laying his cape (with a flourish) on a puddle so that Queen Elizabeth I didn’t get her feet wet.
You can find out more about this fascinating company at www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk
And you can read an article I’ve written about John Lewis by clicking on ‘Lessons from Britain's Most Loved Retailer’.
A Nordstrom Christmas story
I'm a big fan of Nordstrom. My wife is a bigger fan! For many years we've been impressed with the "Nordstrom attitude" when it comes to serving their customers. A few years ago, we were in Nordstrom doing some last minute Christmas shopping. As we were walking through the men's department, an employee came out of nowhere and said, "Sir, wait right here, I'll be right back." I watched him run over to the next counter about 100 feet away, grab something and start running back. When he got back, he said, "Sir, I think you've been trying on sweaters." I said, "How'd you know?" He said, "The back of your black shirt looks like it's been snowed on, and it's not snowing in here!"
We both laughed and he proceeded to remove the fuzz with his lint roller. After about 10 seconds, he said, "That's it...You're free to buy more stuff! I hope you and your wife have a wonderful Christmas!"
After spending about one hour in the store, we each had 3 Nordstrom bags, and as we were walking out the exit into the rest of the mall, another employee ran over and said, "Let me keep all these bags here while you do the rest of your shopping. They'll be right here, just ask for me." He introduced himself, as did we, and he handed me his card.
About one hour later, with more packages from the mall, we came back. As we walked into the store, I saw the gentleman who had taken our bags walking towards us and with a big smile, "Welcome back Mr. and Mrs. Anderson." He then looked at our new shopping bags and said, "My goodness, you're going to have a load. Can I help you take these bags to the car?" Now please understand, it's Christmas, the store is full of people, it's cold outside, the parking lot is full...and this gentleman is asking if he can help take our bags to the car! And even though I said, "No thanks" I knew his intentions were 100% sincere. I have to tell you the whole service experience on that day blew me away, but I've learned over the years, it's business as unusual at Nordstrom!
From the introduction to a little book called ‘Customer Love – great stories about great service’ by Mac Anderson founder of www.simpletruths.com .
Christmas Bonuses are a nonsense!
In an earlier posting we heard Human Marketing specialist and former award winning Canadian retailer, Donald Coopers’ wonderful story about Christmas Tree Man . In this posting he takes a hard-hitting look at Christmas bonuses.
“Paying your staff a bonus to coincide with the birth of a baby 2,000+ years ago makes absolutely no sense at all. There…I said it!
Jesus wasn’t even born on December 25th. Most scholars agree that he was born some time around March 21st. The Church cleverly chose December 25th to celebrate in order to tie in with an existing pagan festival of “the sun god” in an attempt to interest pagans in Christianity. This was probably the world’s first example of “stealth marketing”…but I digress.
So, why not give your staff a “First Day of Spring Bonus”, a “Halloween Bonus” or, better yet, a “Thanksgiving Bonus”?
Bonuses should be earned based on performance and not based on scripture, time of year or some manufactured holiday. If you want to give your staff a Christmas gift, that’s great…but it has nothing to do with performance. Give them a turkey, a box of cookies or a nativity scene hand painted in China.
Christmas Bonuses may be well-intentioned…but they’re mostly ineffective. To tie bonuses to performance, consider these 4 steps… Click here to continue reading this article.
