Make it a Happy Holiday Selling Season

October 2008

multipage

As a continuation of the August cover story in Picture Business magazine, we wanted to provide imaging retailers with additional perspective on the holiday selling season. In the coming weeks we’ll offer up several pieces that detail steps retailers can take to make their all-important holiday Q4 the best it can be.

We’ll play a little Blackjack for openers as Doug Fleener has provided us with “21 Tips to Brighten the Holiday Selling Season” for retailers.

21 Holiday Selling Tips for Imaging Retail

1. Send all of your customers a personalized Christmas card with either a picture of the store or the staff. You need to do this now!

2. Send your top customers a gift card or gift certificate wrapped in an attractive box. Give higher amounts to your best customers. If your staff is good, when your customers come in to spend their gift cards they will end up making purchases for far more than the face value of the gift.

3. Email your customers and tell them about the top 20 gifts available in your store this season. Include a printable wish list for them to use either as a shopping list for others or to give to someone else.

4. Put the same list into a press release and send it to the local paper, radio station, etc.

5. Run one-day sales on the slowest days of the week.

6. Give a gift card with purchases over a certain amount. The card will inevitably result in a sale that will reduce the overall cost to you.

7. Drop small thank-you cards in customer’s shopping bags with their purchases but don’t let them see you do it. You can either have the staff fill them out in advance with the words “Thank You” and their name or have a seasonal person fill them out without signing a name. While it may not be practical for most of you to do this on all of your sales, you can definitely do this for the large sales.

8. Hire a musician to play Christmas music in the store during peak times. The live performance will differentiate your store and l keep the customer there longer. The longer they shop, the more your opportunity to sell them more.

9. Post your top 20 gifts on a large sign in the store and then sign each product on the list with the corresponding number. Include on the product sign why it is a unique gift and who would enjoy receiving it. Are you thinking you don’t have time to do these sorts of ideas? If it adds to your overall sales then why wouldn’t you make the time? Read on!