business leaders

Do you have a holiday business plan?

Believe it or not, it’s November!  This year is flying by and we are officially in the holiday selling season.  It’s time to make sure your sales/business plan is solid for the duration of 2014.

The first step is to understand your industry trends.  More money is spent during the last quarter of the year than any other quarter.  However, most of that money is spent in retail.

If you have a retail business, you need to look at your visibility plan.  How are you getting your products in front of potential clients?  Retail businesses with a demonstration model will need to get creative this time of year.  Particularly in December, you will start hearing, “I’m just so busy, can you call me back the first of the year?” I recommend holding short holiday shopping appointments.

Let them know that you would like to save them time, money, and headache by keeping them out of the malls.  Stop by for a quick appointment where you can show them what is new and how you can package for the holidays.  Be prepared to show them options from stocking stuffers to high end depending on their gifting needs. 

Another retail strategy is to adjust who you sell to.  Each of us has an avatar we typically sell to.  But if you avatar is an adult woman, chances are, her spending is adjusting away from what she wants and into what others around her want.  At the same time, Men are more likely to buy gifts for the women in their lives during this time of year.  Adjust and sell to the men.

If you are in a service based business, it’s all about positioning!  During the holidays, it’s common for your clients to shift their purchasing dollars into the retail sphere.  So you need to position yourself to be relevant and important during the holiday season.  December is traditionally a slow month in the coaching industry. 

So last year, when I noticed my regular webinar attendance dropping, I decided to host the Girlfriend’s Guide to Holiday Survival.  I invited experts to come and talk about money management, holiday glamor, relationships, eating healthy during the holidays. I talked about time management and keeping your business strong through the holidays.  Plan A to lead generate was lagging, so I came up with a strategically positioned plan B and it worked!  We had about 500 women register for our event and we had solid sales in December.

Be cautious not to jump too far from how you normally do business.  Years ago when I was in direct sales, I decided I wanted to earn $10,000 from Holiday sales and decided (In early November) that I was going to focus on corporate sales.  I bombed.  I jumped in without a clear marketing plan.  I had zero time to build relationships and many of the companies had already made decisions on their holiday gift giving.  The even bigger challenge was that in chasing the corporate sales, I stopped working my regular business model, so that bombed as well.  I found that I did much better tweaking the way that I normally did business than completely switching business models during the holiday season.

If you would like more help mapping out your Holiday Business plan, we’ve got resources for you! For more details: http://amywalkerconsulting.com/