Cope with Post-Festive Sales Decline Successfully

 Festive seasons bring great sales opportunities: every industry is packed with customers. Nevertheless, one industry that collects the most candies from the basket is retail. With ERP Software for the Retail industry, businesses are thriving in the market, if they are supported by the right Retail ERP Partner. Consumers shop extra, get drawn towards exciting deals, offers and promos. Businesses feel abundant and exploit as much profit as possible.  

However, the issue starts the post-festive season, when the surge in festive shopping ends, best-selling smartphone models go out of stock, and lower-than-expected wedding-related purchases off-take. According to Bizcom, a sales automation firm that transacts with 7.5 million retail stores, revealed that sales fell 14% in November 2021 for fast-moving consumer products. Industry executives quoted “sales of smartphones, television, refrigerators and washing machines fell 15-20% sequentially in November.”  

This crisis comes up every year. However, pandemics, travel restrictions, and other prohibitions made it even harder. Even though everything seems to be coming on track, retailers have to exploit the latent opportunities to stay ahead in the competition. They may implement a ERP Software for the Retail industry specifically designed to handle retail businesses while making their operations even more seamless and staying ahead of competitors.  

Forecast Demand and Stock-Up  

The first step is to forecast demands and order inventory accordingly: carefully research different items in demand and purchase inventory accordingly. On the other way around, you can also get an AI-based system extracting inputs and generating insightful and actionable reports. Organize inventory in-store according to the demand. Place the most demanded items in the most visible and accessible area. Having demand forecasted you may ditch items unworthy of investment.  

Figure Out the Right Offer for the Target Audience  

One of the most efficient ways to boost demand is to offer the right offer to the right audience segment. But how would you section your customers? First, divide your frequent and infrequent customers, then deliver exclusive deals and attractive offers designed especially for your loyal customers. You may create deals according to their shopping frequency and preferences. Integrate all the channels and extract customer data to get insights. A Unified AI-based technology can do this job perfectly. It attracts customer-related transactions and turns them into insightful reports.  

Make No Space for Long Queues 

Make sure you do not let your customers stand in long queues at the check-out counter. Enable more secure cashless payments to make the transactions quicker and keep the traffic smooth. Additionally, you may as well allow self-check-out ports and empower customers to make quick checkouts and leave the store soon. This way you can also free up the floor space and save other customers from feeling all congested. Adopt Retail POS Software like the one LS Retail offers to bust long queues.  

Quickly Give your Customers What they Want 

Customers are impatient and making them wait for their desired product/ service is a risky affair. Make sure they get what they want right away, connect all the touchpoints, and let them place orders from whatever platform they want. If they want to place an order while sitting in a metro while listening to the latest songs, so be it. Deliver their orders quickly or let them collect them from the store, the choice is theirs. As soon as they enter the store, make sure they do not struggle to find their item. Reinforce your staff with handheld devices containing product information, so they can quickly find the item and guide customers to the same.  
 

Encourage Referral Promotion   

Delighted customers might refer your business to others. A WOM (word of mouth) promotion is the most effective promotion. Encourage customers to share referrals with their friends. Enable social share buttons on your website, promote post-purchase messaging, feature referral programs on your home page, promote referrals on high traffic pages, and so on. Additionally, customers might even post your brand’s products on their social media and allow free promotion. Otherwise, you may also contact different influencers and pay them to sponsor your product to their audience.  

Businesses must combine innovation with technology and work with “Technovation” to thrive in this sales shortage. We recommend implementing ERP Software for the Retail industry. LS Retail is an ideal solution in this situation. If you are looking for an implementation partner, contact Trident, the Gold Partner of LS Retail.