2019 Valentine's Day Sales Strategy

If you would like to learn how to create this fabulous

organic style "Puffed Heart" design, check out the

NEW "Simply Organic" course being taught by

Sue Bowler in the UK and Europe this year! 

Do you have a sales strategy? Do you know what a sales strategy is? It's simple really, a sales strategy is a plan by a business or individual on how to go about selling products and services and increasing profits.

Valentine's Day is a super big event in the ballooning world and one that you cannot afford to miss out on! In 2017, Brits spent a whopping £1.5 Billion celebrating Valentine's Day which was a massive increase from 2016 when we spent a mere £908m. In the US it is predicted that 19.6 Billion will be spent this year!

Valentine's opportunities come in many different guise  This decor was created for a Valentine's product launch for an on-line retail company.
Decor by Sue Bowler, CBA, and Nicci Rene.

Valentine's Sales Strategy

1. Define your target market - who are you trying to sell to?

• Businesses using the Valentine's season to promote their products. For this you may need to think outside of the box, some will be obvious, but others not so. 
• Restaurants - to decorate a restaurant to make it look special during their Valentine's dinner service.
• Hotels - this could be before Valentine's to promote that they are offering a Valentine's event, and also to decorate the restaurant and other rooms being used.
• Shops and Shopping Malls- for window and counter displays - check out my blog post "Valentine's Shopping mall decor with Romana Kolenc, CBA, of Baloni Romana in Šoštanj, Slovenia."
• Night clubs and other party venues.
• Car and furniture show rooms - maybe not an obvious target, but this is a great opportunity for these types of businesses to bring a big splash of colour and the Valentine's vibe into their stores! 
• Retail Sales - this is your obvious target market!

  

  Fabulous Shopping Mall Decor by Romana Kolenc, CBA

2. How do you reach your target markets?  Now you have defined who your target market is, you need to be able to reach out to them. Some will be local businesses within your community and you may have done work with them before. Others you may be connected to through LinkedIn or community and networking groups that you are a member of. Some you will need to cold call. If you are not confident enough to walk through a door without an appointment, you could create a professional looking postcard using an app such as www.canva.com and follow-up afterward with a phone call - it's important to remember to follow up! If you have never used Canva before check out this fabulous tutorial by Zoe Adam-Jones - Good Design Matters for your Business.
Zoe created this fabulous example postcard using Canva - Zoe says "when promoting b2b we want to focus on how we can help them stand out, increase customer engagement, and in turn increase sales... what better way than with balloon decor given that it is one of the biggest trends on social media right now." 

To download the organic heart image that Zoe has used for this postcard click HERE
or follow this link: https://us.qualatex.com/en-us/news/organic-heart-decor/

3. Plan your social media campaign to target different groups of customers. Your Facebook page will be directed at your regular clients, whereas you can use your Instagram account to target businesses and clients alike to give you a further reach. 

4. What are you going to sell? It's important that you plan what you are going to sell. You can start by checking to see what you have left over from last year, though it's good to rotate your stock, especially latex balloons. Also be sure to feature current trends - check out all the new and exciting Valentine's balloons in the Qualatex Valentine's catalogue.













Plan your designs - choose maybe five or six different display styles that you are going to sell. Make sure that you have a good variety of pricing points and themes, not everyone wants balloons that say "I love you" or a red balloon!

5. Order your stock early! As the saying goes "you must speculate to accumulate." This proverb says little to help people in search of a sensible long-term investment strategy, but it does suggest something important about one of the basic principles of investing; the relationship between risk and reward. If you don't have the stock, then you cannot sell it. 


6. Plan your window and other store displays, remember what you show you will sell, so make sure that you put your most profitable designs on display - most profitable does not necessarily mean most expensive. Do a job cost form for each of the designs you are planning to make, and check your profitability! If you struggle to cost your designs check out these past blog posts, both are really helpful.
How Much Would You Charge For This Design
How Much Should I Charge For That


7. Make selling fun! If you have a sales team, set targets and incentives for each staff member - make sure that targets are measurable, create a sales record sheet so that staff can easily record sales of specific designs as they sell them. Make sure that you reward the winners - make the prize meaningful, like the opportunity to leave work early!

It might seem a lot of work and effort but a good sales strategy will:

Help you acquire new customers

Help you expand/strengthen existing relationships with customers

Help you sell more products and services 

A sales strategy is something you should work towards all year, but if it's new to you then Valentine's is the perfect opportunity to start!

Happy Ballooning!

Sue
www.suebowler.com
#suebowler