Preparing Your Business For Black Friday – Revisited

As we pointed out in our blog last week, this year, Black Friday falls on November 24th.

Are you ready for the rush of customers that plan on visiting your store? Perhaps, we should ask another question first. Do you adequately prepare your store for Black Friday each year?

Doing so entails launching a strong advertising campaign to let your customers know that you are offering discounts on items that will address all of their holiday gift-shopping needs.

If you plan on getting in on the Black Friday action – it’s only the busiest shopping day of the year! – then it’s important that you get your business prepared in a few other ways.

Be sure to stock up on inventory.

Nothing could be worse than having a Black Friday sale and running out of your popular products long before the sale is over. Naturally, this huge sales day provides you with numerous opportunities to generate a significant amount of sales. It’s important to have the supply that meets the demand on Black Friday – more so than any other day of the year!

On Entrepreneur.com, Josh Felber highlights the importance of making your store easy to navigate so that people can get to your popular items quickly. “Now is also the time to clean up your stores; place items within reach and remove any items that may block the pathway for shoppers running throughout your storefront,” he writes, “Prior to Black Friday, communicate with any vendors and suppliers to ensure they can also keep up with the increased demands that come with the holidays.”

You may want to hire some temporary staff members.

How will you be able to handle all of those extra customers? The simplest answer would be to add some extra staff members. This is common practice for Canadian retailers every year at this time. With big crowds expected, it only makes sense to ensure that there are enough people working your sales floor to help your customers locate what they’re looking for. The last thing you want is for people to go elsewhere because customers aren’t getting any help finding what they want.

“We all know the phrase: ‘Good help is hard to find.’ That\’s particularly applicable when it comes to finding seasonal help for BFCM (Black Friday Cyber Monday) sales,” writes Michelle da Silva on Shopify.com, “Prep your job ad, post it on the appropriate job sites, and begin screening candidates.”

Increase your payment options.

You’re not still running a cash-only business are you? If so, you’re scaring shoppers away! Keep in mind that Black Friday is a day when people tend to spend more money than normal, given the tremendous savings they enjoy on each of their purchases. The thing is, most shoppers aren’t likely to be carrying a lot of cash on their persons. Offering your customers payment options such as credit cards and debit cards is the best way to (ironically) cash in big time!

Canadian POS Corporation can help you! Contact us today to learn more about how we can get you all set up to accept credit cards and debit cards in your store. Be sure to ask about our Countertop and Wireless POS terminal options. Call us at 1-877-748-2884 or email us at info@localhost.