SALES LEADERSHIP 101 – Planning and executing a successful sale
This quote, this quote from the famous Kevin Costner “Field of Dreams” really applies to any retailer who want to have a successful sales event.
Like anything that is built:
- You need to decide what you want;
- You need to decide how you want to accomplish what you want;
- You need to make a plan to accomplish what you want;
- Then you need to execute what you want;
- Then afterwards you need to review the event to ensure you got what you wanted from everyone involved;
- And finally, you need to take and apply any lessons to the next time.
When a company is smaller, the same principles apply, you just have fewer people completing all of the different requirements. When your company is larger, more leadership and coordination is required but regardless, the more time is spent deciding on the “goal” of the sale and planning the “execution” of the sale, the more ready your people will be to make the sale a success.
What do you want the sale to accomplish or why have a sale?
What is the purpose of having a sale? Before anyone says “don’t be an idiot, the purpose is to make money” please realize that a sale should have a specific purpose; How does it help drive your business?
- You may have too much inventory,
- You may have too much of the wrong inventory,
- You may have too many slow movers,
- You may have gotten a really good deal on some inventory,
- You may have too much discontinued inventory.
- You may want to take more market share and exploit your competitive advantages
- You may want to participate in seasonal events to take advantage of traditional selling times like Black Friday and Boxing day.
- You may simply want to drive business and a sale seems to be a good way to do that.
A word of caution, I have worked for many companies that seem to have a sale every weekend, be careful that you don’t train your customers to only buy products that are on sale. Sales are great and every business should do them, but the law of diminishing returns is at work, the more sales you run, the better each successive sale must be to get the same results.
What kind of sale or what kind of concept do you want to build the sale around?
Choosing theme or concept is important. I suppose you could simply say “This sale is our biggest sale since our last sale;” however, usually a little more finesse is required.
You need to decide what is the primary offer that you want to use as a central theme.
Preparation for the sale:
- What are the primary products that are to be featured?
- What is the stock situation on the products you want to feature? Running a sale without the primary items in stock is a recipe for driving your customers away.
- What media will be used to promote the event to capture the attention of as many households as possible: Social media; Radio (scheduled spots, live remotes); Newspapers (full page, partial page, small spot); Flyer (what kind of distribution, single drop or multiple drop). Lead times become important, ad copy needs to be prepared and double checked.
- Scheduling staff, all of your people should be prepared to work all of the hours that you are open, give them alternate days off if necessary.
- Include all associates, even those who do not normally work with customers. Everyone should be cross-trained to help during events, even if it means answering phones and keying sales bills.
- Everyone should know that when you run a sales event, coffee will be provided for the morning prep meeting before the doors open, meals will be provided along with something non-alcoholic to drink, this way they can focus on being available regardless of when the customers arrive.
- Merchandising, the store should look as good for the last customer as it does for the first customer, a key to sustaining a 3- or 4-day event and it doesn’t take much more effort
- Merchandising, preparation of price tags should be completed several days prior to the sale, checked and then put out at closing the night prior to the sale and any previous sale tags should be removed.
- Merchandising, all stock featured in the sale needs to be on the showroom floor and the sales team needs to be aware of the locations and the locations of “step-up” items.
- Merchandising, have “spare” merchandise ready and tagged to replace anything that comes off the showroom floor during the event.
- Each sales associate is assigned areas of floor care normally, for an event it is important that the showroom sparkles and everything works
- Cleaning staff should be scheduled the day prior, and each day of the event
- Preparation of offers for your sales and office teams. We used to use a form called “Changing Gears”, that laid out the dates and times, the terms, the primary offers, and the secondary offers. In addition, there was information on whether items were in stock or were being subbed by a replacement.
- Make sure extra delivery spaces are available and your warehouse and delivery associates should be aware and ready, in a perfect world your delivery teams should not be full anymore than 2-3 days in advance, if you allow delivery times to stretch into weeks, you will have many customer cancels.
- The warehouse teams should be prepared to cover all of the hours of the sale, as well, as to be prepared to service customers who pickup up to 30 minutes after the store closes.
- Ensure that all necessary supplies are prepared and ready, it is very embarrassing to run out of sales bills during an event.
- Schedule sufficient staff to answer phones and work the counter, if people want to work longer hours, pay the over-time, make them feel appreciated
- Your people are the key to making the sale a success, train them well, take care of their problems, and solve their problems quickly and without criticism during the sale.
Execution: Day(s) of sale
- Have a meeting of all your associates before the store opens to review the offers and to answer questions, and to say thank you, especially if it will be a long day,
- Have brought coffee and donuts for them, it is important,
- Have pizza or subs or sandwiches and something good to drink for them for lunch and for supper if you are open for longer than normal,
- Have upbeat music to set the tone and atmosphere,
- LET YOUR PEOPLE DO THEIR JOBS – DO NOT DIRECT THEM AND THROW THEM OFF THEIR GAMES, owners and managers who micromanage during an event should be made to wait outside until the sale is over.
- The manager should be available to price, solve problems, sign off bills, and field sales calls, they should be in one place so people know where to go to find them,
- Sales people, write business and managers make sure you give them lots of praise,
- If the office staff are keying sales bills, make sure EVERYONE hands off the customer with a proper introduction and an EXTREMELY clear understanding of what is happening. In fact, for the sake of customer service, the sales person should key the sales bill, if possible.
- Office staff, supplemented by accounting shoud help write bills, answer phones, return calls and answer emails, and get lots of praise as well,
- Customer service staff, let them do their jobs, their function is to deal with customers who may or may not know we have a sale and those customers just want their problems solved without having to wait until our sale is over. By the way, customer service people should always get lots of praise,
- Keep your merchandiser fixing the floor throughout the day(s),
- The Sales Manager should be “goaltending”, turning around customers at the door who didn’t buy or get helped,
- I know people will be tired, but try to have the sales people review their bills either before they leave or first thing especially if the office staff have been entering bills,
- Email stats at the end of each day to all associates and compare to same sale from previous year,
- Repeat each day of the sale, the store should look as good for the last customer each day as it did for the first customer.
One day after the sale:
- Ask each associate for point form notes on: 5 things they thought we did well, 5 things they thought we didn’t do well, and 5 things that we should do different next time
Three days after the sale,
- Review all of the points, adopt the ones that make sense and keep a constantly updated journal on best practices.
Good luck and good selling.