You’ve managed to get through the holiday season, the frenzy of the sale season, and now, you’re in that post-holiday lull.
Or perhaps you’re one of those retail stores, whose trade actually drops during the holiday period. So what do you do, to make that time effective for you and your business?
There will always be slow times in your business. The most obvious thing to do to make this time effective, is to…
Download Tips And Ways To Grow Your Business When Retail Is Slow
1) Take a holiday, because you need to have downtime, you need to recharge. It’s super important to your mental and physical health, and let’s not forget, you are the most important part of your business. But if taking a holiday is not on your agenda, here are twelve things you can do to make the most use of this time.
2) The most effective thing that you can do is to take this time to sit down, and map out your marketing advertising and editorial calendars. Knowing where you’re headed in the coming twelve months will give you confidence and focus, and hopefully stop all those last minute rushes, confusion and aggravation that tends to come with unplanned activities
3) Check out your product descriptions on your website and update them. The google gods love you to be different, and original. If, in your haste to get products onto your site, you’ve just copied and pasted the manufacturers descriptions, now is the time to go and make them unique to your store.
[Tweet “Write what you love about the product, and sizes or other things that are frequently asked questions about your products”]
4) Clean out your store room. Take stock of what’s in your stock room. Pull everything out, clean the shelves, vacuum all those crevices and when you’re putting everything back in, assess it’s suitability in your store. Is it time to offload a bunch of old stock? If so, I’ll pop a link to my most downloaded resource in the show notes, 9 Strategic Ways to Move Old Stock
5) Write some blog posts. If you’ve been putting off this blog post idea that I always talk about, now is the time to get it sorted. You could write a whole 6 months worth of posts over these few weeks
6) Expand your mind. Take this time to undertake a bit of professional development. Learn something new. If you need some ideas, I’ve got 2 courses that just might suit you. If you’re not up for the time and energy a course takes, try a 1 day course on how to use your camera better, or how to use a piece of software that will make your life easier
7) Clean out your “online” store room. Maybe you’re one of those people that files everything methodically. If so, skip to point 8, but if you make up the 99% of us that don’t, this is a great time to go through and sort out your digital files and documents. Whilst you’re at it, scan all those pieces of paper you have lying around and file them in your new, clean, digital system.
8) Listen to some podcasts. Now that you’ve got so time up your sleeve, pop in a set of earbuds and load up your phone or digital device of choice and learn on the go. Bonus, you can do this whilst doing most of the other items on this list.
9) Write an ebook. If the pop up on your website says sign up to our newsletter and save 10% off your first order. It’s time to make a change. What questions do you always get asked? Write a simple FAQ sheet, create a tutorial or sink your teeth in and write an ebook. Solve a problem for your customers instead of a measly 10% discount.
10) Schedule some social media posts. If facebook, twitter and instagram often seem like a chore, quest up a bunch of relevant posts into hostile or buffer, so that when it gets busier, it’s one less thing for you to have to worry about.
11) Join or create a mastermind group. By surrounding yourself with like minded people, you’d be amazed at how much further you’ll advance in business and life.
12) Write some processes. Systems are essential to running a business. Even if you fly solo in your retail biz, it’s important to put systems in place to ensure that when the time comes, you’re not frantically trying to create them, or worse still, trying to onboard a new team member without them.
As you can see, there are many things that you can be doing when your store isn’t busy. This week I’ve created a download of not 12, but 21 things you can do when you have some free time in your business. You can download that at salenaknihgt.com, along with a host of other actionable biz strategies for your retail business.
And whilst you’re over on the website, checkout the cool new feature I just installed, where you can ask me your own retail biz question. Simply click on the black rectangle on the right hand side of the page where it says ask me a retail biz question, and you can record your question live, and it may just feature on an upcoming episode of bringing business to retail tv.
If you’re loving these strategies, subscribe to the bringing business to retail podcast, where each week, i interview industry and thought leaders for their take on business and life and share this episode with a friend
Download Tips And Ways To Grow Your Business When Retail Is Slow
