Whew! We’ve survived pre-Black Friday, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday and Cyber Week sales!!! I’m sure we all spent weeks putting together the right products, plans and packages to offer as exclusives to our current tribe and entice others to finally take the leap of faith to work with us. Hopefully your campaigns were successful and that you hit your goals. But I have a question if you don’t mind me being a little nosy. Here goes it. When you created your marketing plan for the holidays, did you revisit your operations plan at all?
Are you reading this and thinking what the heck is Twanna talking about?
Stay with me, there is a method to my madness.
Often times I run in to people who focus heavily on marketing and sales while the rest of their infrastructure is falling to pieces. Believe it or not, a successful campaign will also show you were your weaknesses are. You hit (in some cases even exceed) your goal but now struggling to keep up with the aftermath of being so freaking awesome. If that sounds like you, here are a few tips:
If your emails are overflowing with questions on how to take advantage of your deal and things of that nature, with the next sales campaign, be sure to include an FAQ section that can answer most commonly asked questions immediately so there is no reason for people NOT to buy from you.
If you opened your emails to a “whole bunch” of meeting and scheduling requests because a consultation of some sort was a part of your offered service, add an online scheduling link so your new clients can schedule the appointments themselves which can save you a lot of time in the back and forth.
Ready to pack and ship hundreds of products ordered but not looking forward to creating packing and shipping labels, it’s time to automate this process. You can use companies such as Ship Station to create packing and shipping labels for all major shipping companies.
Now that the labels are ready, you realize you don’t have enough packing supplies. Be sure to add pre-ordering packing supplies to your to do list weeks ahead of time. This way when you sit down to pack and send all of your goodies out to customers, you will have nothing to worry about.
A couple of extra tips:
- Be sure to that the emails you are using as a point of contact for customers/clients is an active, accurate account.
- Be sure to check your online payment gateway. Make sure it has all of your accurate information. You don’t want any delays in getting your funds.
- If your books, products, etc are being hosted a site other than one your own, make sure all of your back end information is correct so there are no delay in sale completion, payments and product fulfillment.
If these aren’t your issues but did notice a few bugs, even if it was just for one person, make note of it and create a plan of correction and add it to your operations plan.
Wishing you all an amazing end of 2016 and an awesome start to 2017.
Twanna is the Business & Project Strategist for Empress Business Solutions. For more than 5 years, she’s worked exclusively with solopreneurs to start and grow their businesses. For more tips on how to stay more productive and motivated in business, please sign up for our newsletter.
