Take all retail holiday sales news with a grain of salt over the next five weeks. It isn’t going to be pretty but it pretty well isn’t going to be accurate either. Fight for your customers by focusing on them, not the news hounds looking to make holiday retail sales into the next American Idol skirmish.
My predictions for the stories you’ll see next week? Headlines announcing that retailers are nervous about the holiday shopping season and how Black Friday portends to a weak holiday season. How do I know this? Because that’s what has been covered the past TEN YEARS. You can read all about the five perennial bad stories of the holidays by downloading my free white paper with all the facts at http://www.retaildoc.com/holiday-sales/
As new stores have opened over the past several years, they have upped the bar, and although your store may still be completely functional, you may be turning off potential customers without knowing. Here are 5 questions you need to ask yourself to see if your store needs a redesign.
Contrary to the many pundits saying to lower prices, add discounts and coupons I ask, “How high is up?” Can you bundle some products or add a service to make more profit? That’s all you should be concentrating on: how to increase profits – not play Santa Claus with your markdowns.
If you make the customer insecure during the moment they are deciding or paying for your merch or service, you will then be trying to placate a nervous customer. By then though, the trust and relationship are gone and you’re left coming up with excuses to your boss
The holidays are almost here so I’ve come up with my blunt reminders for both staff and owners of specialty retailers. They’re by no means all the “Don’ts” but especially at the holidays, these 50 can make the difference between hearing, “I’ll take it,” and “I’m outta here.
If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!I was surfing the net and found a woman who owns a coffee shop being interviewed on TV. She felt the city didn’t do enough for business. Why? She said she has to pay a parking meter every two hours [...]
My advice for retailers who fear this technology? Buy one yourself so you know what you are talking, fearing and worrying about.
