For many businesses, the final quarter of the year is the busiest. No matter when you have peak demand for your products or services, being prepared for it can make all the difference to your bottom line. Make sure you’re ready ahead of time with these tips for your small business.
Preplan Marketing Campaigns
Preplan your marketing calendar one year at a time. When things are slower, look ahead to what needs to be done during higher intensity periods and do them now. Create and save blogs, tweets and Facebook posts. Pre-order print materials for special campaigns. Build email marketing campaigns and targeted website landing pages.
Focus on Employee Readiness
During non-peak times, evaluate employees’ performance in terms of customer service. With call recording features (available via cloud based phone systems like Halloo), you can easily record calls and play them back to evaluate interactions. Consider refresher training on customer service scripts and policies. Refresh your team’s knowledge of upselling strategies as well as how to implement features of your virtual phone system that will help deliver improved customer care.
Set Goals
Set goals and work strategically to achieve them. Prior to your busy season, take the time to review sales from previous years’ busy seasons and this year’s sales to date. Create goals to exceed what you have done in the past. Goals should be measurable, realistic and include details of how you will achieve them. For example, “increase sales 30% over the same period last year through the use of a weekly email marketing campaign which include discount coupons for different products.”
Be Ready to Handle the Demand
It is important to be prepared to handle the excess demand you will create with your efforts. Add extra users as needed, with Halloo’s automated phone system, allowing you to adapt quickly to business growth without additional investments in technology. By having flexible systems, you can expand when needed to keep up with the extra demand.
Work smarter, not harder, by taking advantage of non-peak times to completely prepare your business for busy periods. You’ll see the rewards of this extra effort when you meet and even exceed the goals you have for yourself and your business.