The Early Days of Christmas: All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go

Copied from Doug Fleener's, "The Weekly Retail Experience" 

The week or two after Black Friday are always interesting. It's like being all dressed up with nowhere to go. You're ready for the rush. Some days there are flurries of activity, but other days there's not as much going on.

If you're going to get all dressed up, you might as well have somewhere to go! Here are some tips and reminders for maximizing these early days of Christmas:

1. Aim for an aggressive average daily sale. These early days are almost a perfect storm for raising your ADS. Customers are spending money, and you have more time to spend with customers. Get your team focused on ADS for the next two weeks. Run some daily or weekly contests to reward your staff for achieving a high ADS.

2. Events, events, and more events NOW. The key to beating your early holiday goals is creating incremental traffic. Too many retailers think they don't have time to do events during the holidays. That may be true after around December 10, but right now we're dressed up so we might as well entertain! (Read more on holiday events here.)

3. Offer appointment selling. This week and next, can offer your VIPs some precious one-on-one time in the store, perhaps even an opportunity to shop before or after the store is open. It's worth calling your top customers and offering them this option.

4. Host a retail employee appreciation event. What would be the impact on your business if employees in other stores in your mall or downtown referred business to you this holiday? It can happen if you host a retail employee appreciation event. Here's how.

Pick two or three days to host an "event" that celebrates and recognizes retail employees during the holidays. The employees stop by to pick up a small goodie bag that might include a $5 Starbucks card, a few coupons for your store they can give to family and friends, and an entry into a drawing for $250 or maybe even $500. It has to be high enough to motivate people to come in.

Promote the event by taking flyers around to all of the stores. You might limit the goodie bags to the first 100 or so people, but any retail employee can register for the drawing. Capture each person's email address so you can announce the winner.

Be sure to follow-up with both the announcement of the winner and to remind people about the coupons they can share with others. Believe me, this will create a buzz and result in additional business. You might even be able to get some press out of it.

So let me ask, what will you do to maximize these early days of Christmas?

Doug