How To Prepare Your Business For Peak Season

With Black Friday and peak season approaching during lockdown, our customers are preparing for an increase in online sales.  For some, this season is seen as stressful and for those unprepared it’s a nightmare. Here are some tips to ensure your busy period runs as smoothly as possible.

Stock Up

Make sure you have plenty of stock, this may seem obvious but this doesn’t just boil down to your trading goods. Ensure you have plenty of bags, gift wrap, cash till receipt paper and necessary office supplies. Examine and study you inventory levels. If you have already operated during a peak season, study your sales and predict a budget and what stock you will need. If you are conscious of stock space, order your stock to arrive as a top up every week or every two weeks.

Clean Up

This may seem like an unimportant task in the grand scheme of things, but clean up your current stock and work area. Organize your stock to be easily accessible when you’re in a rush., this will reduce your stress a significant amount on a busy day. Spend some time out of store opening hours to lay out your store to abide by social distancing and plant impulse purchases on route to the checkout. This will not only increase quick sales for you but cause less commotion at the checkout tills.

Restore your shop! By investing this time not only do you encourage foot flow but giving customers the right impression means they will return. Paint the walls, clean the carpets and repair the fixtures and fittings you’ve been meaning to get around to.  Fix your lighting to make it welcoming and decorate during the holiday season. This may seem minuscule to the rest but by decorating your store you create an inviting ambiance which will encourage customers to spend more time there.

Staff

Ensure you have enough employees, being short staffed during the holiday period can not only be stressful but can cost you sales. Be sure to start organizing shifts and working hours ahead of time, this gives you a contingency plan if a staff member needs to take time off for any reason. By having enough staff members present this ensures all customers needs are catered too.

Take time for yourself

This may seem like an unnecessary step, but ensuring you and your staff have time for yourself will result in better quality service for your customers. Schedule breaks and lunches for yourself and your staff. This will not only reset your physical body but your mentality too, you will be more pleasant and prepared to handle more difficult tasks. Employees need to be rewarded for their hard work too by giving them a 10 min rest break aside from lunch gives them a moment to themselves.

Prepare for the aftermath

With an increase in sales comes the dreaded possibility of an increase in returns. Have a dedicated team member and space for returns and issues, this will ensure the rest of the business and or store will still operate smoothly during this time. This may continue after the holidays so don’t stop your peak season attitude on the 26^th of December. 

Advertise and promote your store more during this time to completely utilize the holiday shopping spirit and after peak season plan your staff and stock levels for the future few months.

By taking these measures we hope your peak season goes smoothly and you see a record-breaking revenue for your business. Overall, don’t forget to savour the moment and enjoy the season. Good luck to all our customers!