Closing the Holiday Sale

Oklahoma City—The holiday season is now in full swing. Smart retailers have already planned advertising schedules, organized holiday events, arranged for extra help and designed eye-catching window and in-store displays.

The only tasks remaining are perhaps the most crucial: making the most of holiday traffic and closing each sale.

Drawing Them In

The holiday season means more people are shopping for gifts, which means more people are passing by the store. The trick is getting them to come inside.

Oklahoma City-based Samuel Gordon Jewelers' prime location across from a popular shopping mall gives it ample opportunities to reach out to holiday gift shoppers. Besides posting timely messages on the giant electronic sign in its parking lot, the jeweler relies on an advertising program that's between four and six times as aggressive as its normal schedule. The store's spotlight event this holiday, CEO Gary Gordon said, is a 42-week, multivendor bridal promotion.

Tapper's Diamonds and Fine Jewelry in West Bloomfield, Mich., is also using an "extensive" advertising program and special events schedule to lure customers to the mall store, owner Steven Tapper said. Trunks shows are expected to drive traffic, as are regular e-mail "blasts," and the store's quarterly newsletter, "Dazzle."



Sealing the Deal

Once customers are in the store, a successful retailer makes them feel attended to, Gordon said, even if sales associates aren't free—so a five-minute wait doesn't turn into lost business.

"Our security guards will approach customers and smile, welcome them to the store, and say 'We will have someone with you in just a moment, thank you for your patience.'" Gordon said.

After a sales associate makes a sale, the transaction is turned over to an "appealing, young college student" who assists with the actual purchase and passes it to the gift-wrapping department. Wrapped purchases are then returned to the sales associate to deliver to the customer so that the transaction "is finished up with a familiar face and the relationship-building aspect of our business continues on."

"We don't even want our sales associates writing tickets because every moment they're writing a ticket, they're not with a customer, creating a sale," Gordon added.

At Tapper's, customers are greeted within 30 seconds of entering the store. To deal with the holiday rush, employees from other departments are trained to help out on the sales floor, assisting with everything but diamond sales, which are left to qualified associates.

If a customer is waiting for a particular sales associate, that associate will give the customer a realistic estimate of when he or she will be available and offer to set up a special appointment if the customer would rather not wait.

Finally, associates must know how to close the sale.

"You've got to ask for the sale," Tapper said. "People will linger if you're treating them properly. But we know when to stop the conversation with something like 'Can I wrap it up for you?' 'How would you like this wrapped?' or 'Is this what you'd like to take home?'"

At eight-store Bernie Robbins Jewelers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the way to close sales is not getting customers "in and out" but keeping them inside the store as long as possible, President Harvey Rovinsky said.

The store's greeter will offer shoppers refreshments, direct their children to the play area and encourage them to look around, as "shopping is not unlike entertainment," Rovinsky added.

"Somebody must be greeted within 10 seconds of walking in," he said. "I know how I want to be treated when I shop, and I do the same for customers."

The key to closing the sale, he added, is understanding the store's mantra of "first solve, then sell."

"When the customer comes in, he or she has something we have to solve—a request, a need," he said. "It's our job to find out what that is, solving their reason for coming in. After we achieve that, we sell them the product."