Welcome Retail Collaborative’s “Golden Quarter Nuggets”, a ten-part series to help you and your business thrive this holiday season. Whether you need some tips on how to get organised, clear advice on planning your stock and sales, or step-by-step guidance on how to get your logistics in to shape at this critical time of year, I have you covered. Every Thursday, I will be diving in to the topics that matter during retail’s most important trading period.
In today’s post, I am giving you my top 5 tips for setting yourself up for success as early as possible, so you can breeze through Q4 with less overwhelm and anxiety, and more ease and clarity. Let’s get started.
1. Define your big vision for Q4, both for you and your business
This should be what I call “an umbrella goal”, an overarching idea that encapsulates your passion and ambition, both personal and professional.
- What do you want to achieve? A new stock launch? More visibility? A capsule collection that delights your customers?
- How do you want your business to look in January? Are you looking for growth? Perhaps you want to clear old stock so that you can take your business in a new direction? Do you want to simplify your operations?
- How do you want to feel? This is an important part of running a retail business that I always encourage clients to consider; after all, feeling stressed is not why anyone set up their business.
2. Identify any potential issues now
I know it isn’t easy to dwell on the weaknesses in your business, but focusing your efforts on what isn’t working so well in October means that when the busy shopping season gets underway, these problems won’t come back to haunt you.
What went wrong last year, and why? eg, did you encounter last-minute postal delays because you didn’t build extra time in to your forecasts? Were deliveries held up in customs because paperwork was not complete? Learn your lessons and put in mitigating actions now.
3. Drill down in to the details in every area of your business
- Stock and sales: what sales do you want to generate? How much stock will you need to meet these targets? How much stock do you want to start with in January?
- Promotions: which ones are you running, and when? Can you afford them?
- Deliveries: when is your stock arriving? Is there enough time for your fulfilment centre to process the deliveries? Are there any delayed deliveries that need to be chased with your suppliers?
- Warehouse: have you communicated your requirements with your fulfilment team? Do they know which deliveries to expect, and when you’re running promotions? Don’t leave them in the dark; allow them to plan as well.
- Postage: do you have your final delivery dates mapped out? Make these clear for your customers well in advance so they can plan. Do you know which carriers you are using, and can you negotiate good postage rates with them? Are there any potential postal strikes coming up?
- Marketing: have you planned your emails and social media posts? You should start creating and scheduling them in now, so come November, you are fully focused on order fulfilment and customer service.
4. Plan to succeed
- Create a Q4 calendar and put in all the key dates for the actions you identified in step 3, eg promotions, last postage, deliveries.
- Next add in all of your milestones, eg stock delivery – warehouse booking in, promotion start – promotion end
- Create a social media planner with details of all posts and when they are due to be published
- Build an email marketing plan to ensure your communications reach customers at the perfect time
5. Track and record everything.
Set up a system to gather as much data as possible to inform next year’s planning:
- How did your warehouse colleagues manage the influx of orders? Did you prepare them adequately?
- Were your deliveries on time, or should you bring them forward for next year?
- What did your customers love? What wasn’t a hit? Can you ask them for feedback?
- Which marketing efforts paid dividends?
- Were your promotions successful?
- What was your returns rate?
All of this information will help you for years to come, and it’s far more effective to record it in real-time than to try and fill in the gaps during your January haze.
When you think ahead and plan, you identify potential issues before they arise, so I always encourage clients to do a deep-dive as early as possible in Q4 to give their customers the best experience when shopping with them. In the current climate, you can’t afford to let your standards slip.
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