With the Bonfire smoke clearing and the sound of fireworks still ringing, in our ears many people now turn to Christmas preparation and celebrations. Whilst the upcoming festive season brings with it plenty of fun and reasons for celebrations, it is often a challenging time for business owners, particularly if planning hasn’t been done to ensure business continues as normal through this disruptive period.
We’ve put together a list of tips to help you ensure that you make the necessary arrangements to avoid disruption to service or unexpected issues during the festive period and to ensure that you set your business up for the best possible start to 2019!
1. Carefully Plan Cashflow
With the bank holidays and all the leave that staff, customers and suppliers tend to take over the period, business cashflow can be adversely affected. Sales might be lower and customers (making adjustments for their own cashflow) might be slower to pay. It’s important that you carefully plan how your business might manage these issues. Think about whether you can improve cashflow by reducing stock levels in anticipation of lower sales, start chasing up overdue / past term payments due to your business. Essentially get the money due to you, in now and investigate areas of potential cost savings!
2. Prepare Staff
Depending on your business sector, you’ll either be heading into a significantly busy or significantly slower period, either way you need to ensure your staff are prepared. Ensure that all requests for leave over the holiday period are made in good time and that there is adequate cover for all key roles within the firm. Makes sure that staff have received training on dealing with the increase in work or that they have training on how to provide cover for other colleagues.3. Develop a Marketing Plan
Whether you’re expecting an increase in sales or a decline, it’s important that you ensure that your marketing plan is correctly structured and delivered at an appropriate time to have the biggest impact on your sales. Make sure that you communicate any promotional offers over the festive season or prep clients for New Year specials. It’s also a good time to improve your communication with customers by updating them about the progress of your business over the last year and what your goals as a business are for 2019, honest direct communication about your business is an excellent customer engagement tool.
4. Maintain Momentum
Ensuring that you follow the first three tips should hopefully ensure that your business maintains momentum through the holiday season and sets it up for a great start to the new year. November is a crucial month for many businesses, it’s where all the work is done to ensure the business sails through a disruptive December. Communicate this idea to staff, get them geared up and prepared to work hard for your business. Think about offering some incentives or friendly competition within the business to keep staff motivated.
