Contest, communications, and

tips for a winning holiday

Here are a few things for you to consider as you work to create a

winning holiday.

A fun and productive holiday game/contest. One way to sell

more to each customer is to focus on his/her holiday gift list, not

the products you sell. A number of clients have supplemented

this approach with a very productive Winning Holiday List

contest. It’s quite simple. The goal is to make a sale that includes

gifts for at least two people. One of the two people can be the

customer him/herself.

To keep track, the employee must write down on a slip of paper

the names of the gift recipients. This shouldn’t be a challenge,

since we should always know the name of the customer and the

people for whom they are shopping right?

The employee scores a point for each name. For example, if a

customer makes a purchase for two other people and himself,

the associate scores three points.

You can run the game/contest on a daily basis or over a series of

days. Even if you do multiple days, it’s better to have daily

winners. There are two ways to win. One winner is the person

that scores the most points, and the other is the person with the

highest single sale score. One client is doing it just a bit

differently. Each sale with two or more recipients qualifies the

associate for an entry into a drawing for a cash prize. However

you do it, focusing on winning more of each customer’s

shopping list is a great strategy to win this holiday.

Holiday communications. Communication is important in any

organization, and that's never truer than in retail during the

holidays. Customers and sales are won or lost depending on how

knowledgeable and well-informed the frontline staff is.

Daily Take Five meetings and the regular staff meeting are

usually sufficient for in-store communication, but during the

holidays too much changes throughout the day to rely only on

meetings. Owners/managers will send/post a daily email or

memo but again, sometimes things just change too quickly during

the day to make that fully effective. That’s why an old school

communication tool is still one of the best during the holidays.

As a store manager, you can place grease boards in three key

locations where each member of the staff would regularly see

them as he/she moved through the day. The staff is expected to

check each board every time they walked past it.

The first board is for inventory updates. While mostly use for

out-of-stocks, it also informs the staff of what had is received or

when hot products are coming in.

The second board is for key daily operational communication.

Instead of trying to tell everyone about an issue, the board

should be updated, when something comes up. Maybe credit

cards taking longer to process than usual, or there is a last-

minute change to that day's break schedule. This is much more

efficient than trying to tell everyone something when at any

given time, half of them were with customers.

The third board is the daily motivation. It would list the day's

goals, tips to achieve them, any contest, etc. this board is the first

thing to be done in the morning and needs to be added to it

throughout the day. Separating the operational and the

motivational boards is important.

For company communications, the support team needs to

reduce or eliminate non-essential communications as much as

possible. This is easier said than done, but it's important to keep

vital information flowing without taking managers away from

the floor. The suggestion is to direct the information flow

through a single conduit, either an internal person or the district

managers.

Tips for the staff. The three essential tips for the staff are:

1. Ask to take five minutes off the floor when you get that crazy

and overwhelmed feeling. Even better, suggest a five minute

breather to a co-worker who clearly needs it.

2. Don't stop the sale. It's bad for business and unfair to your

customer. Never say, "Will there be anything else?" Wait until

your customer says he/she is done. Until then, keep working

your customer's list - and help them find gifts for themselves,

too.

3. Don't skip the things that keep you centered. Whether it's

church, the gym, Starbucks, or sappy holiday movies, don't be

too tired to do what you like to do.

Dynamic Experiences Group, LLC, a customer experience and

retail consulting company, helps retailers of all sizes to improve

their customer experience and increase their sales and profits.

Our retail consultants assess the current approach of your

business and then recommend a solution based upon your

organizational needs and opportunities. Visit us:

http://www.dynamicexperiencesgroup.com