Christmas Tips For Retailers

Christmas Day Quiz

This one is to keep the family occupied over Christmas.  It is Rick Turner’s annual Christmas Quiz.  You will find the answers at www.thebigsheep.com after Boxing Day.  Good luck!

 

Download Big Sheep Xmas Quiz 09

When a customer comes in to the store with children

Uh oh! Here comes another pram. Yikes - and a toddler too! It's yet another parent battling to do their Christmas shopping with kids in tow, writes Michelle Baraclough of www.childfriendly.com.au.

Do your staff know how to deal with an incoming mother and her tired kids? She wants to spend. She needs to spend.

So how do you and your staff ensure she spends her Christmas budget in your store, rather than walking out in frustration and going up the road to your competitor?

When a customer comes in to the store with children, it is often difficult to engage them in the sales process because they are distracted by their kids. Because some sales staff believe they won’t get a sale from a customer with kids in tow, parents can sometimes feel ignored or unwelcome.

 

Click here to read more from this Inside Retailing article: http://www.insideretailing.com.au/Latest/tabid/53/ID/7244/Take-customers-from-your-competitors-this-Christmas.aspx

Look after floor staff

Appoint someone to organise a lunch for some of your busiest days. This accomplishes two things:

 

1. It promotes a sense of camaraderie among regular and temporary employees and
2. It saves them from having to fight the line ups at the food courts; giving them more time off of their feet.

 

This is a great reminder from www.dmsretail.com in Canada.

Gift Cards are the solution for stressed shoppers

Kevin Graff says that if you don’t have electronic gift cards you are losing sales.  They are the easy option for time poor shoppers and are the solution for those hard to buy for friends and relatives.

 

And it’s wonderful from the retailers perspective.  Less returns after Christmas and based on last year’s figures about 12% of the value of these gift cards won’t be redeemed PLUS people given a $50 or $25 gift card invariably spend more.

 

Debra Templar author of Jingle Bells Christmas Sells says that gift cards used to be something that was too impersonal but the trend to more attractive cards has really helped make them the gift of choice.

Is your average sale up $6.50?

According to research from the University of Missouri a few years ago US shoppers spend an additional $6.50 per day in the 32 days prior to Christmas.  Compare your average sale per customer over this period with October and November.  Is it up by $6.50 per customer?

Source: John Stanley’s Christmas webinar.

Emotional Signage

According to the EFSA Trend Report for Winter 2009/10 (This refers to northern hemisphere winter) these are nine powerful emotional words to include in your Christmas signage:

Elegant

Refinement

Love of food

Sensual

Precious

Natural

Softness

Lightness

Nostalgia

Source: John Stanley’s Christmas webinar.

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas

Aussie advertising guru, Jon Bird reports in www.insideretailing.com.au  that in the UK, retailers are trying to make customers feel good, hoping that a warm glow will result in jing ling tills.  He says that Marks & Spencer has done it best of all with their annual celebrity-based TV commercial:

 

http://marksandspencer.tv/player.aspx?bcpid=1733261711&bclid=49480633001&bctid=48735674001

I agree with him that it is a truly charming execution, featuring a glittering array of stars from Stephen Fry and the Absolutely Fabulous team to Wallace & Gromit, talking about how Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without their something special. As he says it would encourage even the hardest hearted Scrooge to pay a visit to M&S. Like John, I love the very Englishness of this commercial too. 

There are more goodies like this at www.christmastipsforretailers.com

No cartons rule during trading hours

Stock up before and after store trading hours – you want the team to be 100 per cent focused on selling, not tasking. Have a ‘no cartons rule’ during trading times which keeps the store clean and team focused on customers.

Source: www.retaildoctor.com.au

Make those maintenance checks NOW!

Always important but now is the time to make certain that all of your light fixtures are working; your exit signs are lit, your fire extinguishers have been checked, your flooring and carpets have no turned up edges that can trip people, your POS and printers are working properly, your doors or door grills are in good repair, ceiling ducts are clean and dust free, fitting rooms are clean and welcoming, shelves are firmly in place to avoid accidents, no chipped glass anywhere, no rough edges on sign holders, the back room is well organized, the plumbing (if any) and any illuminated store signage is working properly.

 

You won’t want to be spending valuable on floor and customer time taking care of pesky maintenance issues that could be taken care of in advance. Emergencies aside, your concentration needs to be elsewhere so… get it done NOW.

 

Source: www.dmsretail.com in Canada.

Put movement into your displays

In his FREE Christmas webinar international retail consultant John Stanley quotes research showing that 43% of shoppers questioned could recall static in-store displays. But a whopping 94% of shoppers recalled animated displays.  Our first objective is to be noticed so this demonstrates the importance of putting movement into your displays.