Maximise Your Sales During Peak Season: Top Tips for Peak Sales Success

As the holiday season approaches, many small businesses will be gearing up for the busiest time of the year. Black Friday is already quickly approaching, which will kick off festive shopping, and before we know it, Christmas will be over and quickly followed by the highly anticipated Boxing Day sales.

This surge in demand can cause issues for SMEs who are already running lean teams with minimal spare resources, but it also poses a large opportunity to generate high levels of sales and profits in time for the end of Q4. In fact, 40% of small businesses expect to generate a quarter of their yearly revenue from the festive period alone.

However, 54% of these small businesses also say they may be forced to close or suspend operations if they don’t have a successful festive period.

If your business is going into the festive season to make up for lower sales, you can’t rely on the same sales tactics and strategies used throughout the year. Here are our top 5 tips for SMEs who want to leverage the increased customer demand over the next few months.

 

1.    Create Accurate Forecasts for Demand

You can expect your sales to be higher than usual during peak season. But, it can be hard to know just how much additional stock you’ll need; too little and you won’t be able to fulfil orders, too much and you may have spent money on excess inventory unnecessarily.

As a small business, you won’t have the spare cash to overorder and put excess inventory away for the future, so accurately forecasting your demand is important for your finances. Your forecast shouldn’t be a number plucked from the sky, you’ll need to consider your:

• Reorder point = average daily usage x average lead time (in days): This is the level of stock that triggers a reorder of inventory.
• Safety stock = (maximum daily usage x maximum lead time) – (Average daily usage x average lead time): This will help you determine how much stock is needed, accounting for shortages and stockouts.
• Maximum stock levels: The amount of each item you can feasibly hold at any given time.
• Lead times: How long it takes for a product to arrive after ordering from your distributor.
• Seasonal trends: Look back at historic data from your festive sales in 2023 or look at market trends within your industry to help with accurate demand forecasting.

Last year, festive spending was up 1.7% in December across the board, compared to a growth of 6.9% in 2022. This slowdown in growth is largely due to the cost of living crisis, making shoppers more intentional with their purchases. The opportunity is still there but may require a bit more work to optimise your workflow.

 

2.    Invest In Your Team and Internal Processes

Peak season sales can be a huge point of stress for small businesses — and your employees. With events like Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas shopping increasing the pressure, it’s important to plan in advance to make sure your team feels confident and that your internal processes are up to scratch.

The first thing to think about is whether you have enough team members to deal with the increased demand. If you have a small team that’s already stretched too thin, you may not be able to handle the demand when your sales increase. Now may be the time to bring on seasonal staff to help with managing stock, shipping out orders, or just manning the phones to improve the customer experience. If you need some additional support to invest in your team, consider revenue-based finance to fund your seasonal expansion.

Here are some important questions to ask yourself before peak season:

• Are your team trained to correctly deal with customer complaints and queries?
• Do they feel confident with what their priorities are over peak times?
• Do they know how to properly manage inventory and check stock levels?
• Do you have effective communication channels in place for team members?
• Do all team members have access to the right tools, dashboards and data to do their jobs?

3.    Optimise Real-Time Inventory Management

Receiving high numbers of sales is every small business’s dream, but what happens when you don’t have the right inventory management system in place for smooth order fulfilment?

Most small businesses aren’t set up to deal with huge spikes in sales, so now is the time to streamline your inventory management and use automation tools to simplify your work.

Real-time inventory management allows you to easily check inventory levels and assess whether you need to order more stock. Online retailers will usually have some sort of online tracking and analytics with their e-commerce POS systems but it’s important to check beforehand that it provides all the details you need.

Remember that the whole supply chain will be stretched during peak sales season, leading to longer delivery times and shortages (especially with seasonal products), so if you’re not able to retrieve data on your stock levels in real time, you may run out of time to reorder inventory.

If you don’t have the resources in-house, consider using a fulfilment company to help you manage your orders during sales season.

 

4.    Offer Discounts To Encourage Orders

You may not be able to afford major sales and discounts on your products or services, but thinking about your pricing and promotions strategies could help you capitalise on the season and ensure profitability. According to research, discounts are a major factor in encouraging sales for 3 out of 4 shoppers.

Before you completely change your pricing strategy, look at previous sales data, especially if you’ve run discounts in the past. How much discount do you need to offer to boost sales without damaging your profit margins? It’s good to maximise sales and revenue, but if you’re not making much profit, it may not be a financially feasible option.

Luckily, you don’t need to offer 50% off to get attention or increase revenue. Research suggests that consumers find precise numbers (like 6.8% rather than 7%) more prone to change, so are more likely to make an impulse purchase as they think the discount won’t last long. Similarly, you could increase sales during peak season by introducing a time-limited discount to encourage impulse purchases. This shows that using a creative approach to setting your prices could potentially be just as profitable as huge discounts.

 

5.    Stay Flexible

Finally, it’s important to stay flexible during the busy season. As a small business, you’re able to be much more nimble than larger companies – use this to your advantage during the sales period.

If something isn’t working, don’t be scared to quickly pivot and go in a new direction.

Allowing a bit of flexibility in your pre-planning is extremely important. Things can change quickly, and your business needs to be ready to respond and adjust as needed if you want to achieve the best results possible.

 

Drive Sales This Peak Season

If you haven’t started your strategic planning for peak season, now is the time to start!

It’s a good idea to start thinking about strategies to boost orders and brand visibility over the busy festive period. From optimising your sales strategy to allowing for a bit of flexibility, these tips should help you meet customer needs and outperform your competitors.

At 365 finance, we can offer revenue-based funding of £10,000 to £400,000 in capital, so your business can thrive all year round. Apply for funding today without affecting your credit score. Or speak to our team to find out how we can help your business. To find out more, head to our website.