How Is Your Holiday Selling Season Going?

I'm back!  After another business trip to the big Apple, I've got a lot to talk about.

First off, and most importantly, how do your holiday sales look?  It's time to take stock and make some moves if your sales aren't where you expect them to be.

Every year, shoppers are waiting for the deals and that's the reason you see the big retailers doing anything they can to drive their business.

But for now, we're in the mid-holiday doldrums.  People are shopping later and later every year, waiting for retailers to drop their prices so much that it will motivate customers to shop.  Look for the final weekend before Christmas to be absolutely huge!

THE REAL WORLD RETAILING TAKEAWAY
This game of chicken that retailers and their customers are playing every year will always result in the customer winning.  Retailers have to sell all of their inventory and attain their sales goals in order to please Wall Street.

As a small retailer, you need to operate the same way because if customers aren't shopping at the big guys, then they're not shopping at your place either.

1.    Take stock of your sales situation.  Where are you relative to your sales plan?  Are you ahead of plan, on plan or behind plan?  Follow your plan everyday and strive to attain your daily sales goal.

2.    Take stock of your stock.  How is your inventory situation?  Are you long on certain items?  If so, put them on sale.  Now!  You only have 2+ weeks in a time period where you'll see more foot traffic than any other time of the year.  Move the merchandise by creating a sale area and alerting every customer that you have the sale area.

3.    Get an e-blast out to your database.  Let them know about your sale and sale items.  Drive traffic to your stores as customers may come for the sale stuff, but will pick up other full priced items along the way.

I can't emphasize enough how important it is to be on your game every day.  The holiday time period is like a giant sand timer that was flipped over at the beginning of the holiday season.  When the sand runs out, you're stuck in the post-holiday slowdown.  Make sure that when it happens, you're not stuck with excess inventory.