Years ago, there was a stocktaking sale, rapidly however this has expanded, and now we have an EOFY sale too. If you look up google trends and do a search on "EOFY sale" in Australia

This is the graph you will get. In the past seven years, it has grown dramatically from nothing 

Ask yourself, why do companies, like us do it? Mainly because of supplies as they are doing deals, why?

) They are budgeting for the end of the financial year, they know they need money to pay taxes, payroll tax, insurance, etc. So they want to liquidate stock to pay the tax bill.

) Managers need soon to justify to their stakeholders what they have done. This is their last chance as soon the financial reports will be done and with it their annual performance report card. They need excellent performance if they want their promotions, jobs and bonuses. You do not want to be a sales manager with a flat sales figure what you want to do is show I have sold well and now sales are going up. If their sales are low, they know they need to get cracking.

) Organisations are starting to implement changes to the next financial year. We see, for example, a supplier will say to us, we are moving out of these lines and going more into these lines are you interested in......

) Companies are now starting to organise their stock for a stocktake. They can see now stock that is getting old, looking obsolescent, that they have ranges of stock that is fragmented - a lot of one item and not enough of another item, damaged stock and were slow selling/overstocked assortment items. They are very conscious of the stock they need to lose. I had one come to see me a few days ago, "Bernard, we have a $300,000 worth of old monitors, can you move some of them?" 

) If you are into seasonal products, it is the high selling point of winter, from now on winter stock will start to drop. Now is probably the last chance you get to get rid of this stock in bulk, so it is a good time to clear stock from this season to make way for the new.

The result is that the consumer does see real deals here, so it becomes to them an exciting time. Many have tax reasons why they should move now e.g. Instant Tax write off. They can see retailers trying to move stock. The trick here is that consumers have to navigate through the deals to get to the ones that are good for them.

So it does work.

What I suggest is that consider doing all the above, look at your stock, see how it looks then support, run and promote your 'end of financial year' sale. I can tell you that it works for us.

Jurek Leon is an Australian consultant in retail. He certainly knows his stuff, often talks on TV and puts out an excellent monthly newsletter for retailers which I recommend you subscribe too [Website removed] here.

His current edition has a fascinating post. 

Say we have an item in your shop which was $9, now maybe you buy a whole lot at a low price or perhaps you want to get rid of them, so you decide to reduce the amount to $5.99. Note like many good retailers you are not going at $6, but $5.99 plus you are not going to say 33% off because you know that dollar amount discounts work better than percentage discounts.

So you make a label to sell them and say you have these two options.

Option A: The reduced price is shown in big letters

Option B: The old price is shown in big letters.

Now, have a good look and decide which one is better?

Please, after you have worked out which one is better and decide why you think its better scroll down to the answer below. 

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Most people go for the first one, I did too as its the new price I want people to see, but studies show that it Option B that works better.  Why? Well according to the study. 

"It’s because the discounted price is literally smaller than the original. Behavioural economists like Bri Williams call this the ‘size-congruency effect’. She says you are better to go with your marked down price in smaller font (Option B) than the conventional stand out (Option A), proving yet again that our assumptions about how best to influence customers can often be incorrect."

This is an example to her that retailers need to test and measure results. I agree with that too, how else are you going to find what works best with your business.

I was asked a few days ago about whether I thought it was worth it for a retailer to hire a digital display? To do it, they were quoted $3,000 which they believe is a reasonable price.

Here is an example, which I think you will agree with me looks effective. 

These displays are currently being used to push retail content to drive purchase decisions. What is great is that as hanging such a display is relatively easy with simple mounting it can be placed as in here in a relatively useless position, high up on the wall. Just make sure the screen is big enough to be seen easily from where people stand. This allows you to keep valuable floor space uncluttered while still having a way to spread the news on what’s happening in the shop.

To me, it looks like a lot of money for what it is, which is what I said.

HI-RES pictures to make the display are often freely available from the supplier of the goods. What you need is about 15 pictures, if you want to, you can use your smartphone to take these pictures too. Just take plenty of pictures and carefully pick the best.

Here is why I say fifteen (15) images. If you display each for say twelve (12) seconds each with second (3) seconds change over, this will give you four (4) minutes, which for a start should be long enough. 

Now if you know how to use some package like proshow, which if you don't know how to use it it is not that hard to learn. I have found it well worth to learn it personally too. For example, I take a heap of pictures at weddings, then make a video and everyone been very appreciative. If you must a trained photographer can for a few hundred dollars make you a professional video. Put it on a small USB stick.

Now all you need is a TV which many of us have spare at home or get a cheap second-hand TV. 

Now hang up the screen and your up and running. 

I would be surprised if it comes in at much over $500. 

You can then improve and change it as your shop changes without asking anyone permission.

One point that surprised me when I went to the New Retail ’19 conference which is considered  Australia’s largest retail gathering was directed I think at the medium to large retailers was the importance that these people saw in the Chinese market. 

What became apparent is that almost every Australian retailers there is looking at this market, now are you?

Currently, Chinese students, tourists and residents are responsible for up to two-thirds of luxury retail sales in Sydney and Melbourne in some places like Far North Queensland even more.

Here are some more figures:

There are about 165,000 students of Chinese descent coming to Australia a year (31%), 17% of them have family investments in Australia and their total economic contribution in Australia is over $7 billion dollars. 

There are about 28,000 migrants of Chinese descent coming to Australia a year (16%)

Australians of Chinese descent make up about 5.6% of the population. 

And here is the big one, there are 1,425,800 Chinese tourists every year in Australia (15.5%), and they are big buyers almost twice as big as the average. Today Chinese tourists in Australia spend 26.5% of the tourist trade. In the retail sector, they spend about $2,500 each.

I think every retailer should have a China strategy?

Here is something you can do immediately, put up a welcome sign in Chinese like this one in your shop.

Then why not walk around your area and see what retailers are marketing to this market.

The question often raised is, do I have the right stock NOW in my shop.

Well, it is a good question now that Valentine's Day is tomorrow and in this 11th hour, it is an excellent question to ask. 

Firstly how does Valentine's Day look this year?

Well according to google

I checked the public interest from 2016 to 2019 (in blue) shows a slight drop but nothing dramatic, however, unlike other years, attention is more uniform across all states. What I find particularly interesting is that the public still do not know what to buy and that includes women looking at what they should buy their guys.

Now we have established that we are looking at something similar to what we are used to, we can use the mirror marketing functions in our point of sale software. This works if you have a similar situation to previous years although I have my doubts whether Russell Zimmerman, Executive Director of the ARA  [link was removed] is right that it will exceed last year

Still, Valentine's Day is a good example to show mirror marketing as it requires specialised stock and the BIG question now is, do you have the right stock? 

Go to Register Reports marked in green.

Now select in stock, "Stock Sold During Period(a) Not Sold in Period(b)"

Now out pops this.

Select the report what was sold in a previous period (a) last year but has not been sold in a period (b). 

This is an old database, so I used old dates, but you should use 1/2/2018 to 28/2/2018 as (a) and 01/2/2019 and 28/2/2019 as (b).

Now in brown, you will see that there is a lot more option but let's keep it simple here. 

Now you will get a report with what you sold over the period (a), but you are not selling in your current period (b). Why is the question for you to investigate now?

What to do in future

I suggest you run this at the start of every month because once you get to know it, you will find mirror marketing very useful and if you do this you will miss almost no marketing season.

I noticed this is what one of our clients Nextra Forum West has done

Seasonal marketing is a great way to advertise your shop.

For example, those of you in shopping centres would have seen how the centres went all out gone all out to welcome the Chinese New Year 2019, the Year of the Pig to attract visiting Chinese who number annually about 1.4 million and Australians with Chinese ancestry who number about 1.2 million. Visiting Chinese tourists spend about $11.5 billion here, it is estimated to be about a quarter of all tourism expenditure in Australia. They are big spenders, particularly in quality items. 

Here are some more seasonal marketing days over the first half of this year from this list but I am sure everyone in an area will be able to take more than just these. 

Feb 14th Valentine's Day

March is considered the start of the Autumn wedding season

17th March Saint Patrick's Day

April has a few days

1st April's fool day (alway good for a laugh)
19th Good Friday
21st Easter Sunday
22nd Easter Monday
25th ANZAC Day
 
12th May Mother's Day

June is considered the start of the EOFY/Stocktake sale also good for Winter Sale

30th June End of Financial Year

There are also some community-minded days that you can leverage too as attaching your shop to a charitable cause works well as shoppers now increasingly choose to give their dollars to causes.  

Then there are Fun days

these often work well too in promoting your shop. For example, tomorrow is "Send a Card to a Friend Day", I am sure people that sell greeting cards could sell a few cards promoting this. 

Promotional packaging is all about making your product stand out from the crowd.

If you go to the supermarkets, you will see it filled with many special promotional packs.

You will find that they are a better way of moving dead stock then discounting. The idea is to take some stock that is not selling make a bundle with something that is selling well. 

The software tools to set it up can be found here. 

The improved single transaction detailed report which several people contributed too is proving extremely useful in monitoring how the promotion is going. See the blue arrow.

If you are going to do something like this, I suggest that you should try to make something about the packaging to make it look unique, eg special string or wrapping paper.  

One problem that people do get into is if they mix GST and GST free items together, is they produce can weird GST rates. I suggest that you do not do this mix.

See how you go and as always let me know.

Currently, 2018 Christmas retails sales are expected to grow 2.9% this year. According to the well-known comparison site, finder.com.au Australians are expecting to spend $1325 each on average on Christmas. “people expect to spend on average $464 each on presents, $444 on travel, $131 on alcohol, $122 on food and $61 on decorations,”

Are you part of it?

Do you have the right stock NOW in your shop? Another important question is do you actually have the stock you think you do? It is easy to forget what you have.

What I do suggest is you look at your mirror marketing reports.

Go to Register Reports marked in green.

Now select in stock, "Stock Sold During Period(a) Not Sold in Period(b)"

What the report will tell you is what was sold in a previous period last year but has not been sold in this period. What you are trying to do is mirror your success last year.

Now in brown, you will see that there is a lot of flexibility for your reports there is also an integrated traffic analysis available too but let's keep it simple for the time being.

Now you will get a report with what you sold over the period, but you are not selling in your current period. What you find is I am sure worth investigating.

After that please redo this report for other years besides last year.

If you find goods missing, you need to hurry as we have less then 20 days left.

The big plus is that it brings people into the shop as the amount of work involved is almost zero, and there is nothing upfront — all it is on the register another button.

Here are some benchmarked figures all based on average values.

This is a graph over two years for the average number of transactions per month.

As you can see, there was a drop last year but it seems to have stabilised. Much of this drop, I am sure is due to the reduction in working hours that some of our clients did in 2017, but some is a drop in sales in the market. What we think is happening is that as Telcos are offering better deals to those people buying these products, they need to buy less as what they have lasts longer. Interestingly though the average unit price sold has gone up.

Still, overall it works out to 3 to 4 transactions a working day.  Which is lovely, as who can complain about 3 to 4 extra customers a day in the shop? Plus you get access to free promotions.

The profit itself on a sale is primarily determined by sale number, and this has only very slightly gone up in the past two years. It is now about $1.14 a transaction.

Effectively what it works out too is you press a button in your POS system, collect some money, and you make a $1.14 and maybe that customer will buy something else too.

If you want to know more about it, please contact us.

Do yourself a favour, while you are trying to collect customers email addresses, try and lose the manual process of asking people for the address and filling it in manually. Set it up on the net, a collection form and let your customers fill it in. 

If you are using an email marketing software, like MailChimp which we link into it has built in such a form.

On your website, if you have one make sure that it has such an opt-in email form.

Now the idea is to use it everywhere to build up your email list.

Studies in the US, which I believe are valid here, show that 45% of all shopping traffic in brick-and-mortar shops during the Christmas season occurs in the following ten days. 

1. Friday, November 23 – Black Friday (Today - Less important than in the US but rapidly growing)
2. Saturday, November 24
3. Saturday, December 1
4. Saturday, December 8
5. Saturday, December 15
6. Friday, December 21
7. Saturday, December 22 – Super Saturday
8. Sunday, December 23
9. Wednesday, December 26
10. Saturday, December 29

Peak shopper times are between 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m.

Looking at the list, it seems like much Saturday work is coming up.

These days, you need to plan and have your rosters, stock and signage right.

Warning

It is also a good idea to have someone special do security on those days; I believe that many of the security problems in retail can be solved by having a grandmother greet everyone who comes into the shop.

In retail getting customers to come more often to the shop is vital.

Questions:

Why do some customers come often and others do not?

Have you thought about this tried to figure out why some come a lot?

If you know, maybe you can use this information to get more people to come to your shop. Well, let us do that!

In your point of sale software and go into register reports>customers

There you will find a report "Top customers"

Now click on that report (see the arrow in green)

Now put in the dates you are looking at, I suggest at least a year and if you like a minimum spend.

See where the green arrow is highlighting. Change the sort order by visits.

This will give you a report with a grouping of your customers based on how often they buy from you. Now chew over why these people are coming, what are you doing right to get them to come?

Now let’s dig deeper

There are many other orders e.g. a listing by people that buy a lot you can use in this report, all which have their own story too. So there is plenty to chew over here.

Black Friday is considered to be the official start the Christmas shopping retail season. In the US it is one of the busiest retail days of the year. Its importance in Australia is growing as you can see here.

There is every indication that this year will exceed last year so almost all significant retailers Australia are doing something by offering the public some good specials and most will have extended trading hours to take advantage of the increased traffic on that day.

Also what we are seeing is the marketing groups are pushing their members for submissions for the day.

If you are part of Zip, you need to have your submissions in by this Friday, 9 November. One advantage of Zip as a marketing group is that its membership is free.

Note I would not worry about Cyber Monday, it is more for software companies like us in Australia, rather retailers.

If you have not done anything yet, I do suggest that you do give serious thought about doing something at least put a few signs up and put something on your receipts. 

I was stunned when I was informed today that Bauer Media is cutting Cosmopolitan Australia in December, as commercially it is no longer viable. In the process another eleven jobs have are gone, and another restructuring and centralisation are underway.

This magazine was an icon, and many will have many good memories of this product so why not make an event if you sell a product like this to get people to come into the store for an impulsive purchase of the last couple of editions.  While supplies last, the final edition, get your copy... collector's item (which I am sure it will be) ... 

Maybe when they come into the shop to buy this product, they will buy more too? All you need to try it is a small sign on the window to make an event.

If you are interested in some marketing idea for today, what about trying to market coffee today as today is the International Coffee Day? It should be good for a few sales. 

Such things are easy to set up in your receipts in your POS system. If you have a VIP club it is easy to send email newsletters out.

International Coffee Day 2018, celebrates the most popular drink in the world. According to recent research, it is good for you too.

An example of how these marketing days are good for business.

You have a Facebook page for your business!

The way Facebook works is that the business pages are connected to the person who created it. So if you got someone to make you a facebook page for your business, that Facebook page is linked to their account, it is their property. Now say they leave your business, there can be problems as even if the person gives you admin access to that page, as it is still technically connected to and owned by them. In today's case, the separation has not been a happy one, and they refuse to even talk to the owner of the business.

The only way around this if they wish to continue with Facebook is to start a new page and start again. They then have to report to Facebook that the old one is impersonating the business which is messy as I am sure that Facebook does not want to get involved in disputes regarding the admin position of this page.

If you have such a Facebook page now, make sure that it is linked to your account. Also, consider giving someone else your passwords just in case something happens to you, and so the business can still use its Facebook page. If you are reluctant for some reason to do this, consider setting up a “legacy contract” for that someone who will take over an account is for some reason you cannot.

Some people to buy your products need a kick; some come anyway. A straight 10% discount offer as such is often killing your margins.

If you get an exciting product, this has proven to be a successful method. What you need is your retail email mailing list and point of sale system like ours that can handle VIP marketing.

Firstly send everyone out an email with an offer for the goods. Hey, we just have now this XYZ product.

Those that did buy send them shortly afterwards an offer to buy a second one at say 5% off. See how you go, if they liked one then they may want another.

Awhile later those that did not respond at all, send them an email with a 10% off 

If you are still stuck with stock after a while, well you have nothing to lose by offering 20% off to all.

See if you can do something similar in your business.

The idea being Instead of giving a straight discount, going through the previous purchase histories of your customers and then personalise your offers.

It will help you maximise your margins