Seasonal sales are easy to predict because they arrive like clockwork every year. Even though these regular annual sales offer a great opportunity for businesses to grow their revenue, there may be ways to create a more efficient use of company resources and maximize the seasonal sales cycles to achieve your full potential.
By leveraging the company’s available resources effectively, yearly sales revenue could be far higher than what the business may expect. To help enterprises gain a better grasp of the concepts crucial to increasing annual sales revenue, 12 associates of Forbes Finance Council offer their best tips for the practical management of seasonal sales cycles.
Members share how to maximize your revenue all year round as a seasonal business.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Diversify Sales
Many businesses hinge on Black Friday, Cyber Monday and seasonal sales. Those are the most active times but customers are always hunting for deals. Integrating more frequent but creative sales initiatives helps reduce sales variability and risk. Businesses can also run exclusive sales with major affiliate partners to keep money flowing in without causing customers to tune out. – Carlo Cisco, SELECT
2. Review, Revise And Augment Your Plans
Take the time to prepare for the remainder of the year by starting with performance reviews relative to annual/medium-term plans and budget. Revise the plan for tactical deployment of product and sales teams. Visit existing customers and channels to ensure retention and to gain market and competitive insights. Finally, take the time to upskill your teams through training and coaching for the next round of battle. – Rohit Bassi, Corridor Capital
3. Provide The Best Customer Service
Like a five-star hotel or a Michelin Star restaurant, customer service is everything. Having waters or candies for your clients goes a long way. It is a small gesture but a huge investment. When your clients feel like you care, everything changes from there. When a client or potential client feels at home they will not only purchase your goods but be a client for life because of the small things you do. – Tyler Gallagher, Regal Assets
4. Adapt To Sales Cycles
Know your customer and adapt to cyclical sales. Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins worked together to keep stores busy all day. Lawn mower and snow blower repair shops are common for a reason. Understand the reason for your business cycles and adapt to it. Establish partnerships, run special discount promotions or offer additional value for free during down periods. – Sean Brown, YCharts
5. Communicate And Plan With Your Partners
The best tip for managing seasonal sales cycles is to communicate and plan with both internal and external partners. Understand trends in your historical data and plan accordingly for safety inventory, bulk purchases which entitle you to discounts or improved rates and schedule timely deliveries. Most importantly, organize your human capital accordingly (temporary staff, etc.) to support these seasonal cycles. – Geanette Rodriguez-Ojeda
6. Enhance Total Quality Management
Bringing back the concept of total quality management (TQM), but enhanced with modern business analytics, would yield greater insights into inventory churn on a weekly, monthly, yearly or seasonal basis. Understanding true variation, middle office can cut waste and forecasts better downstream (or upstream). Also, sharing intel with partners in your value chain will help brace for economic surprises. – Franklin Tsung, BlackCrown Inc
7. Look At Your Off-Season Like A Pro Sports Team
Seasonal sales cycles provide a great opportunity to strengthen your team’s capabilities ahead of the next “season.” When things are slower, invest in sales training. Spend the time and effort to upgrade sales tools like presentations. Have sales personnel cross-train so they understand the business better and spend time with product managers to pass on feedback from the field. – Robert Roley, SS&C
8. Hire Seasonal Employees
Everyone knows industries like retail can get hectic depending on the season. A great way to meet the demands of these business cycles is to hire seasonal, part-time or temporary employees. These new hires can be a great addition to your team during certain seasons. They’re hired understanding that they likely will only be working for that season, but not past that time. – Gregory Keleshian, Crestmont Capital LLC
9. Create A Solid Dynamic Forecast
When attempting to maximize potential revenue with a seasonal sales cycle, it’s extremely important to have a solid dynamic forecast in place. A forecast allows you to determine your monthly sales and more importantly, cash position. A seemingly solid decision made when sales are high may have an unexpected adverse cash effect when sales are low, not giving you the opportunity to recover. – Jody Grunden, Summit CPA Group
10. Take Advantage Of The Gig Economy
Consider a side hustle for your business during off-season times. Maybe that looks like promoting repair work, how-to classes, catering or increased online sales for off-season merchandise. Consider renting out your business space for special events. – Elle Kaplan, LexION Capital
11. Review Year-Over-Year Performance
It’s important to keep track of year-over-year performance, not just month-to-month data. This helps ensure you are on pace with projections and gives you the ability to make corrections well ahead of the season — whether you need to boost spend in marketing, add employee coverage, or increase inventory purchasing. – Ben Gold, QuickBridge Funding
12. Save Aggressively At The Peak
Many businesses are prone to business cycles with seasonal ebbs and flows. Plan ahead for slow season by saving aggressively. During the slow months it can become difficult to break even on cash flow without taking out a business loan. Combat this by saving wisely during the peak months. Although profits are high during the peak, you need to look at the year in its entirety and plan accordingly. – Jared Weitz, United Capital Source Inc.