Retail Holiday Season Strategies for Success
As the summer season winds down and the back-to-school season starts, many retail organizations face one of the most pivotal times of the year. Fall signals the countdown to Q4, a period that can make or break annual sales targets.
It’s a busy and important time. Store and field operations, HR, talent selection and development, merchant, and marketing teams are all laser focused right now on preparing for a profitable and successful fall and holiday season. That encompasses mission-critical tasks like talent sourcing (and then onboarding, everboarding, and development), finalizing seasonal and core product deliveries on key merchandise assortments, and ensuring marketing calendars and promotions are timely and competitive in the marketplace.
It may still be hot outside where you are, but for most retailers, vacation season is over. It is all hands on deck to ensure we have the schedules maximized to service a higher flow of in-person and online customer needs while balancing the increased amount of freight coming in the back door. Let’s talk about what you can do to optimize this transition and ensure your organization is well-positioned for the make-or-break season that’s on the horizon.
Reinforce the Foundation of Your Success: People
Dan Nowlin, a former boss of mine who served as SVP of Store Operations at Sunglass Hut International, likes to say, “Little things don’t mean much; they mean everything.” Dan’s advice and nuggets of wisdom resonate with me often when I think about what we do at MOHR Retail.
We pride ourselves as a retail-specific talent development company that develops the interpersonal skills that drive results. Here’s what that really means: Whether you’re talking about leadership, negotiation, sales, or service skills, retail is a people business. You can’t get the results you desire without talented, engaged, and supported people. And your people’s most important role? It really comes down to how they impact other people.
Yes, the right product is important, but the most pivotal aspect of the business is the role leaders and influencers play in their interactions every day with other people — customers, vendors, internal customers, colleagues, and team members. Especially in today’s retail environment, people are the very foundation of your success.
That brings me to some of those “little things” I learned from Dan, little things that make a big difference. As we head into the whirlwind of this hectic, demanding, and all-important season, here are a few areas to keep in mind in order to stay focused and aligned around the interpersonal foundation of your success:
Engage Customers with Empathy and Authenticity
As routines shift with the start of school and the change in weather, so do shopping habits. Staying ahead means being proactive with adjusting customer engagement strategies to reflect these new shopping patterns. It is a stressful time of the year for many of our customers. Applying skills like empathy — for example, asking how they are coping with the changes in the season — will help your customers feel valued and allow them to relax, knowing you care.
The most effective retail store associates and leaders are genuinely interested in their customers and what’s going on with them. This manifests itself in the big things — remembering names, orders, personal preferences, previous purchases — and also the little things, like chatting with them about kids being back in school or the extra traffic on their commute to work. Curiosity, authenticity, and empathy when greeting and communicating with customers goes a long way toward building loyalty.
Prepare Your Team for the Holiday Rush
The holiday season can bring skyrocketing sales (we hope!) and, if you’re not adequately prepared, skyrocketing challenges along with it. To help manage the increased demand, focus on implementing targeted retail staff training in addition to ensuring streamlined processes and clear communication from the top down.
Hiring plans need to be finalized now to staff up, and don’t forget the importance of “skilling up” as well. Just-in-time training for new and current team members is critical at this time for making sure everyone is knowledgeable, equipped, and confident to be able to work faster, for longer hours, more efficiently, and more collaboratively. Enhanced customer service and experience while handling an influx of shopper foot traffic is crucial for building brand loyalty with stressed-out holiday shoppers.
It Takes Engaged Team Members to Engage Customers
We always put customers first in retail. However, it’s important to remember that a great customer experience starts with a great employee experience. Find ways to celebrate your team during this season and make their lives simpler, easier, and safer too. Prioritize mental health and well-being across retail store teams and field operations, DCs, and store support centers. People need to be able to trust their boss and feel confident that leadership and the company have their backs and will protect them.
Remember: Little things don’t mean much; they mean everything — think flexible schedules, free lunches, candy, cookies, and plenty of encouraging reinforcement of effort, especially when team members and store leaders are working hard, feeling the pressure, and still have their own holiday shopping to complete. Don’t underestimate the value of delivering joy to your own employees. Happy team members create happy customers.
Communication is Key: Listen, Respond, Ask for Input
Frontline team members are closest to what’s going on every day on the retail floor. Make sure your leaders are proactively engaging with their associates, having regular conversations, listening to their concerns, and asking for their input on solutions. This requires the right mindset and skillset, so now is the time to get your leaders prepared to have these conversations.
It’s also important to focus on the safety issues impacting the physical and mental well-being of retail store associates and customers today. Feeling heard is a step toward feeling safer. That requires listening in a meaningful way, being empathetic, and making a point to understand what store associates and leaders are going through.
Optimize Seasonal Inventory, Merchandise Management, and Promotional Strategies
Yep, pumpkin spice everything is back, and Halloween decorations and costumes are already selling out before Labor Day! As summer items are winding down on the clearance racks and shelves, the fall shipments are increasing. That means more processing and merchandising time, and staff needs to be allocated to ensure the product is on the floor in a timely and customer-appealing manner for impulse shopping.
The competition heats up in Q4, and standing out requires strategic promotions and high merchandise recovery and service standards to attract, entice, and retain customers during this critical period.
Focus on Omni-Channel Readiness
Consumers expect a seamless experience across all channels, whether they’re shopping online, in store, or using a mix of both. A robust, efficient omni-channel strategy is vital so you can make it easy for your customers and your team to understand what they need to do for seamless execution of BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick-Up In Store), fulfillment, online in-store ordering and shipping, and other customer delivery channels.
Don’t Neglect Your Post-Holiday Strategy
The end of Q4 doesn’t mean the work is over. Post-holiday returns, inventory management, and planning for the next year all come into play. Retailers who plan ahead can turn the post-holiday lull into an opportunity to start the new year strong. Keep the end game in mind by planning out recovery needs for the store appearance now. And don’t forget to make room for your team’s recovery as well.
Retail-Specific Support for a Successful Holiday Season
We are busy August through October at MOHR Retail with onsite training implementations as our retail clients prepare their teams for the busy fourth quarter. Our last two public leadership development sessions for 2024 are on deck, beginning in September and October, before the holiday season escalates.
These sessions are a great opportunity for a diverse group of retailers to engage and network with each other while learning and sharing experiences. Many of our established clients use them after a larger implementation to get one or more new leader hires up to speed and ensure a common language and consistency with leadership strategies and skills. These sessions are also a great way to experience the MOHR Retail curriculum and learning design before a full rollout to test the content and gain reactions from the targeted leadership teams.
- RML – Retail Multiunit Leadership kicks off September 10th and runs through October 8th with once-a-week virtual sessions for five weeks targeting district, regional, and multiunit leaders who lead from a distance.
- SSL – Store Support Leadership kicks off October 1st through November 19th with once a week virtual eight-week course targeting retail store support and DC leaders who have the triple responsibilities of Do, Lead, and Influence within their organizations and support those who support the customer.
We want to help you have a successful and profitable holiday season and equip your team with the people-to-people skills they need to drive business results all year long. These sessions are an excellent opportunity to gear up your leaders for the critical months ahead.
With a 40-plus-year career in retail, Dan Nowlin is a legend in the industry for his culture-shaping ability and proven track record in delivering comparative store growth. He’s the author of 365 Shopping Days Until Christmas, “part memoir and part master class in life,” rooted in a single, simple principle: People Work For People.
