HOLIDAY TIP #1Show Christmas Restraint
‘Tis the time to show discipline. The holiday season lures with the hope of boundless sales, but you should buy only what you think you’ll need, advises Julie Johannes of Happy Hounds Pet Supply in Bigfork, MT. “We all get excited about the sales that come our way for the holiday season, and I used to overbuy just to reach order minimums or free shipping requirements. Now I look at what I need and how much, and if a company isn’t offering a deal within those parameters, I skip it.” Johannes adds that this applies just as much in the post-holiday period, when manufacturers try to sell off what remains to make room for their new products. “Follow their lead and sell off your own older stuff rather than buying more of the old.”
HOLIDAY TIP #2Embrace the Power of Pumpkin
Another strategy to deal with the problem of excess holiday inventory is to bring in products that can do double duty, advises Robert Gerrity of Petworks in St. Petersburg, FL. “We’ve found that a couple of pumpkin-themed/flavored treats on the holiday display sell just as well as the holiday-themed treats. This can be extended to anything that sounds like traditional holiday foods or items, such as turkey, cranberry, pie, etc.,” he says, adding that those items are also “more available to order during the holidays if we run out.”
HOLIDAY TIP #3Opt For the Extra Body
Getting the balance right with holiday staffing is another tough area. Jennifer Baker of Grateful Dog Bakery in North Ridgeville, OH, argues that given the downside it’s better to err on the side of having too many staff members than too few. “Adequate staffing is key to avoiding stress and burnout. I would rather have an extra person dusting than one person getting hammered.”
SALESCuriosity Is Key
Probably no piece of sales advice is repeated more often than “listen more.” But what’s often omitted is exactly what the salesperson should be listening for: Product specs? Willingness to spend? Opportunities to praise the customer? Jim Lattin, a marketing professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says the answer is threefold: You need to learn what is important to the customer; what is negative about his or her current situation; and what she thinks might constitute an ideal solution. “With this information, we can create a stark contrast between the customer’s current situation and their ideal. And then map our product onto the customer’s ideal solution,” he says. But what usually happens is salespeople just make assumptions without exploring the hints provided by the customer and never allowing themselves to find this sweet spot. “Learning to be authentically curious is thus critical for effective selling,” Lattin says.
Advertisement
SALESLive in a Fantasy World
Encourage your staff (and even yourself) to loosen their grip on reality, argue marketers Rich Baker and Gary Levitt in a column at MarketingProfs. The result could be truly exceptional service. Ask them to imagine that each customer is someone who would automatically merit preferential treatment — the store’s founder in disguise, for example, or their mother. “With this sort of fantasy in mind, their service should be nothing short of fantastic,” they write.
MANAGEMENTStop Asking For Feedback. Start Asking For Advice
Feedback, we’ve been told, is a gift, be it negative or positive. How do you improve, after all, if you don’t know what you’re doing wrong? But what if that thinking is wrong? Recent research from a Harvard Business School study found that a better approach was to seek advice. The reason is threefold: First people love giving advice — it makes them feel valued. Two, they don’t love giving negative feedback — it makes them uncomfortable to tell you where you messed up. And three, feedback tends to look back and is often not “actionable,” whereas advice can be. It’s important when seeking advice to ask for specifics (“Where exactly can we improve our online channel?”) and to ask someone who has the appropriate experience to actually help.
MANAGEMENTExtend Credit
What’s the best way to utterly destroy an employee’s effectiveness at work? Stop them from getting things done. And what kind of idiotic boss would do that? Oh, the kind who takes credit for an underling’s work, needlessly interferes or disrupts an employee’s progress on a job, sets conflicting goals, or restricts their autonomy. All told, it’s about one in three bosses, say Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, authors of The Progress Principle, who spent 15 years studying the diaries of workers and their bosses. “People want to make a valuable contribution, and feel great when they make progress toward doing so,” they say.
