Hey, it’s Bob Negen, and in this episode of Real Retail TV we’re gonna explore this idea that A really successful holiday season doesn’t start end of October, beginning of November, Black Friday. The beginning of a really successful holiday season starts right now. Yes, the trees and the leaves, and the trees aren’t green, the leaves are green, and I drove by the beach here in Grand Haven today, and there are lots of people at the beach. So, it’s still August, it’s still summer, but guess what? August, now is the time to start building for a successful holiday season. Too many people start when the season starts, but now is the time to plan, so when the season starts, all you have to do is execute on your plan. So now is the time to start thinking about these, these 5 things that go into a successful holiday season. But before I get into the five things, I want to, this is the perfect time to talk about this, uh, thing that’s happening this week. This week, we are putting Holiday You, one of our most popular courses on sale for only $97. So if it, it is packed with great information that’s gonna help you build a better holiday season. So if you like what you hear in this episode of Real Retail TV, Do yourself a favor, you know, invest in a holiday, you spend an afternoon going through it, and then you’re gonna have the tools that you need to really, really kick some butt this holiday season. So, let’s talk about 5 things. The first thing that you need to think about now is what are your holiday sales goals. So, if you’re already trending up, you might want to build a goal that really, you know, I’m up 15% uh now. If I can kick some butt during the holidays, I can end the year up 20%. If you’re down or flat, now is the time to build some momentum to make something up. So, understand what you’re trying to do, you see, because unless you have that sort of North Star goal, your plans are not going to be as. As effective. The name of the game is to figure out what you’re trying to do and then build a plan towards it. So, number one, what are your sales goals for this holiday season? And what follows that is, what are your marketing promotional calendar look like? What are you doing to drive traffic? You see, if it’s the, uh, the last week of November or the first week in December, and you’re not where you wanna be and you say, oh, I need to do a promotion, that promotion’s not gonna be that good. You need to start really planning your promotional calendar, your social media calendar, your email calendar. Start thinking about it now. Start fleshing those promotions out now, because if you’ve got a plan. For the season, when the holidays come, all you have to do is execute the plan. You don’t have to make up the work. All you have to do is execute the plan. It’s gonna make your life easier and the work easier. It’s gonna make you more money also. And then the third thing to start thinking about right now is your people plan, and there’s two parts to your people plan. Number 1 is quantity. How many people do you need? Do you need to bring in 3 part-time seasonal people, 2 full-size time seasonal people, but understand what kind of coverage you need. In order to maximize the traffic that your great marketing plan is going to drive into the store, so quantity. And by the way, when you think about quantity, I’m gonna also encourage you to have extended store hours during the holidays. Extended store hours will make you more money. You’re gonna need people to cover those store hours, plan accordingly. The next thing about people is qua quality. So once you have the. Right amount of people, you need to make sure that you’re giving them the tools they need to be successful. And like our training programs, when we treat teach training, there’s 3 things that people really need to know to be successful, to be out on your floor, comfortable, confident, and being able to focus on your customer. Number one is policies and procedures. What policies? What procedures? What’s happening during the holidays? Just ask yourself for someone to function effectively on my team, what do they need to know? Just write them down for right now. So that’s the first thing. This, you know, these, this sort of, you know, what people need to know. The second thing is product knowledge. So ask yourself, what are gonna be my bestsellers? What’s hot right now? What do I need to, what do I need to teach so when people come in the store, my teams, my team members know what to sell and know how to sell it. And so I would ask yourself that question. You can’t give, you, you can’t do a little mini product training on every product in your store, probably, but you do wanna say, what are going to be my best sellers? What are the staples that everybody needs to know about, and then just sit down and write or make a little video about. How to sell the thing, what are the benefits of the thing, and what are the features of that thing. So if I walk into your store and I say, hey, I’m looking for a gift for a, uh, a 20-year-old woman, my niece, and I want to spend $20 your team members could go, Oh, I have the perfect thing. So you just wanna really, really orient them on what you have and how they sell it. So, and then the third thing to talk about is your holiday selling training, because it’s one thing to know what you’re selling, product training, it’s another thing to know how to sell it, sales training. So if you and your team have the retail sales academy, now it might be a great time to reset it. Call the office, we’ll get everybody back to square one. So they go through that basic certification phase, the first phase right away. So what are you doing? You’re reinforcing the skills that they already have. If you haven’t put your people on the sales, retail sales academy, now might be the time to do it, because I guarantee you that an investment in sales training now is gonna pay huge. Dividends during the holidays, because again, what is it about? It’s about your team being comfortable and confident on the floor. If they know what they’re selling and they know a system to sell it with, this is where you start cooking with gas. And then the final thing that we want to think about, the 5th thing to start thinking about right now, is what is your merchandise and inventory plan? What are you going to sell? Ask yourself, what’s our merchandise mix? You know, don’t go into this haphazardly. Think about it. Think about price point. Think about price points, uh, by gift category. Think about who your primary customers are. You know, I use the example of a $20 gift for a 20-year-old niece. That’s the way to think. That’s the way to think. Make sure you have your bases covered. And then finally, not that that’s your merchandise mix, your holiday mix, but then you also want to ask yourself, what can’t I run out of? You need to really, really be clear on what your best, what you think your bestsellers are going to be and build a system. In place so that you’re always watching your inventory levels. So you’re always making sure that you’re not going to run out. Before Susan came to work for the Mackinaw Kite Company, Steve and I used to get incredibly nervous during the holiday season because we would invariably, uh, run out of bestsellers or, you know, our vendors, our best vendors would not ship on time. Susan, when she came to work for us, because she worked for the department stores and because she knew what she was doing, she had been trained. She would call. So if somebody promised when she would place an order, she said, When is this order going to ship? And if it was an important order, she would call that day and say, Has it been shipped? And if it hadn’t been shipped, she would say, Why not? And who do I need to talk to to make sure that it does get shipped? You see, she was taking responsibility. To make sure that all of the things that we needed to have in stock were in stock. Don’t run out of bestsellers. So there they are, 5 things that you should start thinking about right now. Your sales goal, your promo marketing and promotions calendar, your people plan, and, and your, uh, merchandizing and inventory plan. Start thinking about them now. You might want to, uh, schedule a meeting with your managers, your key employees, maybe even all of your employees. In the next couple of weeks and really sit down and ADD this holiday season with them, talk about promotions, talk about training, talk about all the things that I talked about right here again, this is a perfect opportunity for me to really encourage you to invest. In Holiday You also, because if you, or when you’re done watching Holiday You, you will have a really firm grasp on all of these things. So you’re, I told you what you need to think about. Holiday You will show you how to do it in the best way possible. And yes, it is on sale, it’s only $97 and that’s a fantastic price, about half price, uh. Make that investment, it’s going to be worth it. But even if you do, don’t, I hope that you take this information and use it to build yourself a plan for the best holiday season ever.