What Every Small Business Owner Should Know This Fall

• Encourage a friendly, festive attitude: Shoppers want to feel warm and cozy during this time of year. Your customers are looking for bright advertisements, inviting storefront decorations, and friendly, helpful employees to greet them as they enter. They will recall the positive experience fondly, which can lead to increased spending year-round.
• Pay attention to what people are buying: Track what your customers are buying to find out where the demand lies and what needs to be restocked most. As the increased holiday spending is looming, it’s important to know where your customers are most likely to spend their money.
• Consider loyalty programs: If you haven’t already looked into a loyalty program for your business, now is the time. Your customers will be planning on shopping and spending a lot more during the holiday season. They will be looking for loyalty programs from stores they frequent to reward them for their holiday shopping. A loyalty program will help build customer loyalty and retention, and encourage them to visit your store more often.
• Start planning future sales and discounts: With Black Friday and the holiday shopping rush quickly approaching, frequent sales and discounts are just around the corner. In order to better plan for the sales and let your customers know about the money-saving offers, start organizing your upcoming promotions now. Having a plan for future sales and discounts will allow you more time to plan your upcoming advertising campaigns.
• Consider investing in new hardware and/or software: Employees will need to be on the sales floor during the fall season to help customers with their gift purchases and inquiries. Investing in new tablets or mobile devices will allow them to get out from behind the counter, interact more with customers, and help encourage sales.
• Set up payment processing: If your business is not already set up for credit card processing, don’t wait for the holiday season to catch you off guard. Shoppers tend to rely more on their credit cards during the season – often to build up reward points – so your business should be ready to accept their payment.
• Encourage gift card sales: Gift cards are a simple gift for most people, so they will likely want to buy a gift card to their favorite store for their loved ones. Look into unique or seasonal gift card designs and make sure your employees also encourage more gift card sales. Holding fun promotions amongst employees (for who can encourage the most loyalty reward signups or gift card sales) will also help boost employee morale and encourage customer interaction and sales.

Contact SalesVu to find how our software can help better prepare your business for fall and improve your business operations year-round.