Christmas Tips For Retailers

Christmas is a magical time at this retailer

Helping your customers rediscover the spirit of Christmas is a terrific way of building an emotional bond with your customers and being remembered in the best possible way long after the festive season and January sales have passed.  Tulleys Farm in the UK (near Gatwick airport) are well known for creating outstanding farm experiences to help promote their produce and their shop as a destination.  Check out: www.tulleyschristmas.co.uk/santas-sleigh-ride.  Tulleys Farm are part of a magnificent movement of UK farm shops creating wonderful farm experiences for families throughout the year. See www.farma.org.uk for more.

Creating a Theatrical Christmas Experience

What can you do to lift sales and to create a theatrical experience for your customers?  How are your team engaging with customers this Christmas period?

These are two of the key questions covered in depth in international retail consultant John Stanley’s FREE Christmas webinar.  There are some great back up slides.  Lots of good visuals to study and take last minute inspiration from and John’s energetic presentation is easy to listen to and learn from.

Check it out by clicking here: http://www.instantpresenter.com/WebConference/RecordingDefault.aspx?c_psrid=EC56DB8885

Get your website working for you this Christmas

Today’s guest column is contributed by Chuggin McCoffee from www.thecoffeebump.com who knows a thing or three about effective websites:

Put the Christmas items that you are featuring on the homepage when people enter your site. If you list your prices clearly including any savings, people will be much more likely to buy them as gifts. Furthermore, it is important to clearly mark all items as holiday specials because that will get the ball rolling for Christmas shoppers.

The truth of the matter is that many people put off purchasing their Christmas gifts until the last minute. However, if people are shopping online, they do need to take into account shipping time so that they can receive their gifts before Christmas.  So, remind them of this and have a big ‘Act Now’ button for them to click.

One more thing to seal the deal for people Christmas shopping on your website is to offer free shipping with specific items or ‘FREE shipping for orders over $xy.00’ to encourage multiple purchases.  If the customer sees free shipping for holiday purchases advertised, they will be much more likely to buy.

Chuggin McCoffee is a coffee fanatic who has spent the entirety of his career cultivating and studying all of the best uses and brewing styles for optimal coffee and espresso flavor. His specialty site for all coffee needs and supplies is: http://www.thecoffeebump.com/

Christmas Retail Webinar from Canada

Kevin Graff recently conducted a one hour webinar on ‘The Retailer’s Guide to a Successful Christmas’.

It covers staff management, Christmas selling, store operations, inventory management and marketing.  Lots of great information, clearly explained in Kevin Graff’s easy to absorb style.  At $59 Canadian it’s well worth investing in.

Go to www.graffretail.com for details.

Think about store layout

Ensure there is still space for people to navigate the store easily and that there is plenty of room for queues to form. If you consider the layout of the store from the customers’ perspective, you should have a store that will be focused on peak trading and cater for even the most demanding shoppers.

An effective queue management system is vital and signage needs to be considered. Does additional signage need to be displayed to direct customers to the relevant stock locations? And think about the physical location of stock. Does it allow for cross‐selling of products?

Research has revealed that during the same sales period, if 100 products were sold with no signage, then 170 were sold when handwritten signs were used, and 265 products were sold when signs were professionally produced to sell the product.

This is an excerpt from Melbourne retail consultant Debra Templar’s great little e-book ‘Jingle Bells Christmas Sells’.  It’s only $12.00 (in Aussie $$$s). Click on the title to have it delivered immediately to your desktop or get it FREE using the ‘It Must Be Christmas’ promotion.

The ultimate goal for holiday success

My thanks to US retail service specialist Anne Obarski www.merchandiseconcepts.com for this contribution:

The ultimate goal for holiday success is to maximize sales and gross profits and to minimize markdowns and expenses.  More importantly at this time of the year and in this business economy it is even more important to maximize repeat business.

How are you inviting customers back to your store?  What new and unique products, services, coupons, and events can you offer to make your customer say, "I have to come back and tell everyone I know"?

Within the next few months it is imperative to use every available resource to communicate with your customers what you have to offer and why they should come to your business and not the competition.  By communicating through email, social networking sites, phone calls, using effective advertising channels and face-to-face conversations with your customers on a consistent basis, you can be assured that your business is well positioned, correctly packaged and highly promoted through the holidays and beyond. 

You can read Anne Obarski’s full article by clicking on Download Holiday Success - Keys to Jumpstart 2010.

Train your seasonal staff properly

There's nothing much more frustrating for a customer than running into a seasonal staff member who, quite frankly, is useless.  Look, we know you need to hire them, but for goodness sakes don't put them on the sales floor if they aren't properly trained.  All you'll be doing is frustrating your customers and losing sales.  And, don't make the mistake of tossing them behind the cash desk if they're going to slow down the lines.  Give them the basic training they need on service, selling, policies, product knowledge and your cash register functions.  It takes time to do it right.  But consider the ramifications on your results if you don't train them properly.

This Christmas tip comes from Canadian retail expert Kevin Graff www.graffretail.com

Are you asking the November Question?

If you’re making good use of my ‘52 Terrific Tips for Christmas Workbook’ you will now be asking the November question which is, “Have you started your Christmas shopping yet?”

Yes, I know that the reaction may well be a groan or a comment like “I don’t even want to think about it”.  Great!  This allows you to respond with “Sounds like you’ve got some people that are difficult to buy for?”

Now, you can go on to be a problem solver.  And if you help them to find a suitable gift not only will you have created a sale, they will feel fantastic.  I’m sure you’ve experienced that feeling of euphoria followed by relief when you find the right card or gift for a friend or loved one.  You can help your customers feel the same way.

Even if you can’t match your merchandise to the needs of your customers you can at least help them to think through their gift buying dilemma and narrow down the options.

If they have started their Christmas shopping, congratulate them, pause then ask, “Any difficult people still to buy for?”  Then follow the same problem solving process as above.

Use your diary or lose next year

One of the most valuable commercial tools that is overlooked by 8 out of 10 store managers is keeping a commercial diary. Being able to look back at the events that took the operation by surprise the previous year is the first critical step in ensuring that they don’t occur again.

Whether it is an observation that seasonal recruitment started two weeks late or the store ran out of hams three days early, any one of these recorded incidents would completely change the planning and effectiveness of the peak trading operation the next year.

As soon as the Christmas season ends, sit down with your staff and look over the successes and failures. You should question why some things worked and others didn’t. Was it simply a bad choice that no one wanted? Or was it hidden in a corner of the shop?

Get started on that diary!

This is an excerpt from Melbourne retail consultant Debra Templar’s great little e-book ‘Jingle Bells Christmas Sells’.  It’s only $12.00 (in Aussie $$$s). Click on the title to have it delivered immediately to your desktop.