By Carlos Zubillaga
With Thanksgiving and Christmas approaching, it’s a good
idea for business owners to review some tips to use the holidays in your favor.
Holidays affect business in many different ways. As a
general rule, retail businesses have their busiest time. Service businesses
keep very busy and contracting businesses have a very low level of activity or
none at all.
For retail businesses, a good idea this year is to make your
website mobile-friendly. More and more surfers are using phones and tablets, so
you may be missing a substantial potential by not optimizing you site for
mobile users. Simply go to your site using your phone and see what it looks
like. If it is difficult to see, because it is designed for a big computer
screen, then you need to invest a little money in making it mobile friendly.
Also retail businesses need to start preparing in advance
for the holidays. If you haven’t started yet, you are already late. Inventory
optimization, intensification of your marketing effort, temporary help, and
security, are some of the areas of preparation.
If the holidays are a very slow season for you, consider
closing down completely and give a vacation benefit to all your employees
during the holiday. You can save money in wages and other expenses associated
with being open; or you can provide a benefit to your employees. If holidays
are a slow season but you need to stay open, consider offering optional
vacation benefits and maximize the number of employees that will use their off
days during the holidays.
If the holiday season is slow for you, use the time to work
on those activities that are important but not urgent that you have been
procrastinating on. This is what is usually referred to as Quadrant II in your
time management matrix. Any improvement occurs in Quadrant II: important not
urgent. Examples of Quadrant II activities: re-writing the website copy,
planning strategically for next year, acquiring new business skills through
reading or formal business education, listening to your customers, listening to
your employees, creating a new marketing campaign, studying your competition.
