Planning is key in business. But more often than not we seem to run on impulse.
As we rapidly shift into fall, it’s common to start seeing sales. Some businesses take the route of gradual sales for the next few months. Others do no sales at all until the huge Black Friday sale hits.
Small businesses don’t have the luxury of a full team to run their sales. Instead, by planning ahead, they can create the same great hype and make the sales run smoothly when the time comes.
As September comes towards a close, you should have your sales for November and December all lined up and ready to go. Ideally this is something you could plan at the beginning of the year. However, if you are anything like me, we tend to put off the things we should get done in leu of the fires from today.
Finish putting together any sales for the rest of the year over the next two weeks. Get it all lined up and be ready to let them happen. While savings some stress in between.
Another thing to consider is holidays as business owners are stressful. Do you have enough inventory? Is everything ready?
Something that occurred to us last year was after the rush was done and Christmas was upon us, the sales slowed significantly. Yes, there will always be last minute shoppers. But are they paying you enough to stay open.
And I am not just referring to the income from sales. Are the few shoppers paying you enough to stay open in terms of time lost from your family? How about extra stress in dealing with the weather and people?
Sure, it can seem worth it to make that last push of sales before the year ends. But I want to encourage you to review if that is worth it in all aspects of your business. For us, it’s not worth it anymore. The time with family is much better spent.
The two sides of our lives often end like this:
For our homestead business, Christmas shoppers are done with anything handmade by mid-December or so. This means markets past the 10th-15th of December will be a bust. And online sales have tapered off because the likelihood of a shipped item arriving drops rapidly. We are not Amazon when it comes to shipping.
For our marketing business, our customers are done with most sales. Not many people are looking to start a new marketing campaign. New websites are not on the radar as our customers rush off to their own families. We go into standby and hang out in case of fires.
For us, taking a longer vacation makes sense. More time with family, less stress at the end of the year and a time to reset before the new year hits.
How would it feel for your family if you stepped back and took an extra week off to reset and renew? Maybe you should try it this year. Line up those sales and be ready to take a little extra time off to enjoy the fruits of your labor.