Stomp Competition with Excellent Holiday Service

Well, it’s officially Black Friday.  Some people love it.  Some people hate it.  Either way, everyone and their dog is looking for an excellent deal.  Black Friday is the day I officially mark as a key time to prep your employees to provide excellent customer service for the holidays.

Here’s why it’s critical to crack the whip on red carpet service:

1.  The Holiday season = the biggest buying season of the year, which can mean huge profit potential for your business.

2.  Customers are stressed out.  They want to find the perfect gift at the perfect price.  Get a reputation for providing both of those AND a perfect buying experience and you won’t be hurting for more customers.

3.  People will remember you for either the good or bad experience they just had.  How would you like to be remembered?

If you’re a business owner or corporation, consider doing the following to stand apart from your competition this holiday season:

1. Provide every one who walks through the door a bottle of water or have free water on site.

2. Partner with a local restaurant or fast-food chain and provide 50% off lunch coupons.

3.  Make sure you’ve got modern music playing.  Music has been proven to affect moods.  Just because it’s the season, doesn’t mean you have to play ONLY holiday music.  Provide a variety and play music that caters to your market.

4.  Turn on your air conditioner.  Although the temperatures are dropping outside, when you cram several hundred people in one store, it gets hot.  And when people get hot – they get mad.

Here are a few tips for online business owners:

1.  Offer sales for the entire holiday season.  Many e-commerce sites will compete for business – we have less loyalty to most sites and more loyalty to the best price.

2.  Always offer free shipping on ALL ORDERS.  Not everyone is offering this, but if you can, it will make you stand out.  People LOVE getting something for free.

3.  Offer customers a $5 off coupon for referring your site to friends.

No matter what kind of business you own – above all – make sure that who ever is at the front lines engaging with your customers is chipper, friendly, helpful, honest, and fast.

6 Tips to Running a Profitable Holiday Promotion

6 Tips to Running a Profitable Holiday Promotion

As businesses gear up for the largest increase in sales for the year, the competition becomes steep.  Here are some tips to running a successful holiday promotion:

1.  Do what no one else doing.

2.  Make an offer (the best offer always wins) than no one else is making.

3.  Check for competitive pricing.

4.  Offer more value than your competitors.

5.  Give people what the want.  Make sure your offer is something your customers want to buy.

I am recommending that business owners seriously focus on competitive pricing.  Since we are rebuilding from a recession, more and more people will be driving down their prices.

And, most importantly…

6. One tip to being able to maintain your current price (or lose out on most of your profits) is to simply add more value or a bonus to your sale.  The minute you increase the value of your services or products is the minute people stop buying from their competitors and buy from you.

To learn more about my big holiday promotion click here.