Winter is coming! 4 tips to avoid the winter slowdown

 

Tip #1. Look to the past to budget for the future

Seasonal slowdowns are normal in every business. To combat this, take a look at your past business years and start creating your budget now. Creating your budget begins with knowing when business slowdowns have occurred in the past. Review your sales numbers for past winters and take note of when you start to see a drop off and when you start to see them rise again. This should help in determining just how much money you’ll need to put aside each month to stay afloat during winter slowdowns. You can also use this information to determine when and where to cut back on your expenses (ie. operation hours, seasonal employees). The goal is to have your budget in place to avoid temporarily closure of your shop.

Tip #2. Explore new ways to find customers

Get a jump start on sales before they begin to slowdown by exploring new ways to find customers. Consumers give a higher level of trust to recommendation that come from family, friends, and industry influences more then other forms of advertising. Here are a few options to explore:

• Start printing company t-shirts and wear then around town. Throw in phrases or references only locals will understand. Then, give them away for free to loyal customers!
• Take out your email list and reach out to past customers and ask for Yelp or Google reviews.
• Another way to take advantage of your email list is to promote a sale or discount code. No one likes to miss out on a great deal, so make sure to mention the promo expiration date.
• Partner up with trending influencers in your industry or area. Many influencers will promote your brand to their audience for free merch or at a low cost.

Tip #3. Keep your customer relationships warm

It’s winter but it does not mean you can let your customer relationships get cold. Building and maintaining customer relationships and increase your customer retention rates. Here is the why:

• Selling to a current customer has a 60-70% success rate
• Selling to a new customer only has a 5-20% success rate.
• Recruiting new customers costs 5x as much as retaining current customers.

Recognizing your customers business outside of the services you provide is a great way to build a relationship. Here are a few things you could do to build on your customer relationships:

• Be a brand ambassador for your clients, refer people who could their services.
• send a congratulatory email when your customer gets good press or wins awards.
• Get social with your clients. Leave encouraging comments in your customers posts via Facebook or Instagram. If your customer promotes something on Twitter, give them a retweet.

Tip #4. Streamline and avoid costly mistakes

Whether you’re a printer or embroiderer, DecoNetwork give comprehensive tools to streamline your business and avoiding those costly mistakes.

Avoid costly mistakes by eliminating spelling errors, incorrect colors, and wrong sizes.

 

from DecoNetwork Blog https://www.deconetwork.com/blog/winter-is-coming-your-4-tips-to-avoid-the-winter-slowdown/

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