Part 1 of 5: When Success Becomes Your Biggest Threat
Marcus had always been a problem solver. As a software consultant specialising in enterprise systems, he’d built his reputation on tackling the challenges other developers couldn’t crack. So when his accountant delivered the devastating news on a rainy Tuesday morning, Marcus’s first instinct wasn’t panic—it was determination.
“You’re growing broke,” his accountant had said, sliding the cash flow projection across the desk. “Three major contracts, excellent margins on paper, but you’ll be out of cash in six weeks.”
Marcus stared at the numbers, his engineering mind immediately shifting into analysis mode. How could a business generating £150,000 annually be on the brink of collapse?
The answer, as he would soon discover, lies in a crisis that’s quietly strangling ambitious businesses across the UK—and the painful journey he’d embark upon to solve it himself.
The Silent Epidemic Destroying UK Businesses
What Marcus didn’t know that Tuesday morning was how common his predicament had become. Across the UK, nearly half (47%) of SMEs report cashflow challenges, and the statistics paint a sobering picture of an epidemic hiding in plain sight. A staggering 65% of failed SMEs blame cash flow problems for their failure, while 82% of business closures are directly attributed to cash flow issues.
This isn’t about failing businesses—it’s about successful ones like Marcus’s that have inadvertently created their own financial quicksand.
In the professional services sector where Marcus operated, the problem is particularly acute. The UK has the largest and most developed market in Europe for professional services, with accounting, management consulting, and legal services contributing £71.5bn to the country’s real output in 2023. Yet this very success creates a competitive environment where payment terms have become increasingly punitive for smaller players.
Marcus’s situation was disturbingly typical: 78% of UK SMEs are forced to wait at least a month beyond agreed terms for payment. In professional services, the average ‘lock-up’ time—from invoice to payment—has crept up to 124 days. This means firms like Marcus’s are essentially providing interest-free loans to clients, often for months at a time.
The Anatomy of Growing Broke
Marcus’s crisis began innocently enough. His consultancy had landed three significant contracts within two months: a £35,000 system upgrade project for a manufacturing company, a £28,000 integration project for a logistics firm, and a £42,000 data analytics platform for a financial services client. On paper, it was the best quarter in his company’s history.
But here’s where the mathematics of disaster kicked in.
Each project required immediate investment. The manufacturing project needed specialised software licences costing £4,500 upfront. The logistics integration required a freelance specialist at £450 per day for three weeks. The financial services project demanded new security certifications and compliance tools totalling £3,200. Before Marcus had received a penny in payment, he was £12,500 out of pocket, not including his existing overheads of £8,500 per month.
Meanwhile, his clients’ payment terms—standard in the industry—meant he wouldn’t see payment for months. The manufacturing company operated on 90-day terms. The logistics firm, despite being cash-rich, routinely paid 60 days late. The financial services client, ironically given their business, had payment terms of 120 days.
Marcus was funding £21,000 per month in expenses and overheads while waiting an average of 124 days for payment. The numbers simply didn’t work.
The Human Cost Behind the Numbers
The real tragedy of Growing Broke isn’t the spreadsheets—it’s the people behind them. Within three weeks of his accountant’s warning, Marcus found himself checking bank balances multiple times daily, losing sleep over cash flow projections, and snapping at his team over minor issues.
This wasn’t unusual—78% of business owners cite cashflow concerns as the main cause of their mental health worries, and four in five small business owners report experiencing poor mental health related to business pressures.
The operational impacts were immediate and severe. Marcus had to turn down two potential projects worth £25,000 combined because he couldn’t afford the upfront investment. This is a common phenomenon—more than a third of business owners have had to refuse work due to insufficient cash flow, losing an average of £26,000 in potential revenue.
More troubling still, Marcus found himself considering short-term loans and increased overdraft facilities. He was joining the 34% of SMEs who rely on overdrafts to meet monthly obligations, often at interest rates that make profitable work unprofitable.
Why This Story Hits Close to Home
Marcus’s situation isn’t unique—in fact, it’s disturbingly common in the professional services world. What makes his story particularly resonant for me is how closely it mirrors my own experience back in 2008, which is precisely why I understand the Growing Broke crisis so intimately.
I’d just signed my first national contract—the breakthrough that was supposed to transform my business from a local player into a major consultancy. The contract was worth over £180,000, more than my entire previous year’s revenue. To honour just day one of that contract, I had to recruit and resource seven new team members, with foolish agreement to their standard 90-day payment terms.
Then, 56 days into the contract, I was working late when the news broke on the BBC. Deloitte had announced that they were placing Woolworths into administration. I watched the news anchor deliver the announcement, and in that moment, I knew I’d lost everything—the contract, the money, and the likelihood of being able to retain those seven additional staff members I’d hired.
That experience taught me everything about the Growing Broke crisis: how quickly success can become a catastrophe, how payment terms can destroy profitable businesses, and how even the biggest, most established clients can disappear overnight.
The Moment of Decision
Faced with this crisis, Marcus had three options: seek immediate help through professional guidance, find a quick fix through emergency funding, or tackle the problem himself through systematic self-education and implementation.
True to his problem-solving nature, Marcus chose the third path. “I’m an intelligent person,” he reasoned. “I’ve solved complex technical problems for Fortune 500 companies. Surely I can solve my own business’s cash flow issues.”
What Marcus didn’t fully appreciate was the scope of the challenge ahead. Cash flow management isn’t just about tracking money in and out—it’s about understanding the intricate relationships between pricing, project management, client relationships, operational efficiency, and financial planning.
Tomorrow:We’ll follow Marcus as he begins his DIY journey, starting with a brutal discovery about what his services actually cost to deliver. You might be shocked by what he found lurking beneath his “profitable” pricing structure…
Ready to start your assessment?
Don’t wait for a crisis like Marcus faced. Begin with our free “How to Break Free from Pricing Prison” assessment to understand what your services really cost to deliver. It takes 10 minutes and could save your business.
This is Part 1 of Marcus’s 5-part transformation story. Each day this week, we’ll reveal another stage of his journey from Growing Broke to sustainable profitability.
The Hidden Pricing Mistake That’s Quietly Killing Your Business (And How to Fix It)
This is the first in our 9-part series on the most costly pricing mistakes SME owners make. Don’t let these silent profit killers destroy your business.
Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of working with hundreds of ambitious business owners across the UK and beyond, and I’ve noticed something alarming: even the most conscientious entrepreneurs consistently fall into the same pricing traps that quietly erode profits, stifle growth, and create unnecessary stress.
That’s exactly why I’ve created this comprehensive series, breaking down the 9 most common pricing errors that could be costing your business thousands, or even tens of thousands, every year.
Why Your Pricing Strategy Is Make-or-Break for Your Business
Let me be brutally honest with you: pricing isn’t just a number on a tag—it’s the heartbeat of your business. Get it right, and you unlock sustainable growth, healthy profitability, and the freedom to scale on your terms. Get it wrong, and even the busiest, most in-demand business can find itself struggling to survive.
I’ve seen it happen too many times. Talented entrepreneurs with incredible products and services, working 60+ hour weeks, constantly busy with clients, yet somehow always struggling to pay themselves a decent wage or invest in business growth. The problem? They’ve fallen victim to pricing mistakes that are slowly bleeding their business dry.
Throughout this series, we’ll tackle each pricing pitfall head-on, drawing on real-world examples, proven strategies from our award-winning #ADDAZERO methodology, and practical insights you can implement immediately. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to refine your pricing for the next stage of growth, this series will give you the tools and confidence to price strategically and profitably.
Pricing Mistake #1: Underestimating Time and True Costs
Today, we’re diving into what I consider the most insidious pricing mistake of all: underestimating the true cost of delivering your product or service. This mistake is particularly dangerous because it’s often invisible until it’s too late.
The Problem: You’re Only Seeing Half the Picture
Here’s what typically happens: entrepreneurs focus solely on the obvious, direct expenses—materials, software subscriptions, subcontractor fees—while completely overlooking two critical components:
The value of their own time (every single hour, not just billable time)
The indirect costs that keep the business running behind the scenes
When you don’t account for every hour you invest—client delivery, admin tasks, marketing, business development, even learning new skills—your prices might look competitive on paper, but your profit margins quickly vanish into thin air.
Why This Happens (And Why It’s So Common)
Most business owners fall into this trap because they’re thinking like employees, not business owners. As an employee, you show up, do your job for a set number of hours, and get paid a predictable salary. As a business owner, you’re wearing multiple hats:
The specialist delivering the core service
The salesperson finding new clients
The administrator handling invoices and paperwork
The marketer promoting your business
The strategist planning for growth
The accountant managing finances
Yet when pricing time comes around, most entrepreneurs only factor in that first role—the specialist doing the actual delivery work. Everything else gets treated as “free” time, which is not just wrong, it’s business suicide.
The Real Impact: Short-Term Busy, Long-Term Broke
Short-term impact: You appear busy and successful from the outside. Your calendar is full, clients are happy, and you’re constantly working. But underneath, cash flow is tight, you’re always worried about covering bills, and you can’t figure out why you’re not getting ahead despite all the hard work.
Long-term impact: This chronic underpayment creates a vicious cycle. You can’t afford to hire help, so you’re trapped doing everything yourself. You can’t invest in business growth, so you stay stuck at the same level. You can’t take time off, so burnout becomes inevitable. Eventually, this leads to missed opportunities, declining service quality, and in the worst cases, business closure.
I’ve seen too many talented entrepreneurs burn out and close profitable-looking businesses simply because they never learned to price properly from day one.
Real-World Example: Sarah’s Web Design Wake-Up Call
Let me share Sarah’s story—a freelance web designer who came to us after months of feeling like she was on a hamster wheel.
Sarah was pricing her websites at £2,500 each, which seemed reasonable based on her research. She calculated this price by estimating 40 hours of design work at £60 per hour, plus £100 for software and hosting setup. On paper, she was making good money.
But after six months, Sarah was exhausted, stressed, and barely paying herself minimum wage. What went wrong?
When we helped Sarah track her time properly, here’s what we discovered:
The “Hidden” Hours Sarah Wasn’t Pricing:
Initial client consultations and proposal creation: 8 hours per project
Client communication, calls, and email management: 12 hours per project
Revisions and feedback incorporation: 15 hours per project
Project management and file organisation: 6 hours per project
Invoicing, admin, and follow-up: 4 hours per project
Marketing and business development: 10 hours per week (spread across projects)
The Invisible Costs Sarah Missed:
Professional insurance: £150/month
Workspace costs (even working from home): £200/month
Equipment depreciation and maintenance: £100/month
The Reality Check: Instead of 40 hours per project, Sarah was investing 85 hours. Instead of just software costs, she had £880 in monthly overheads to spread across her projects. Her effective hourly rate? Less than £20 per hour, before taxes.
No wonder Sarah felt like she was drowning despite being constantly busy.
The Transformation: What Happens When You Price Properly
When Sarah implemented our complete cost calculation method, her prices increased to £4,200 per website. Initially, she was terrified she’d lose clients.
Instead, something remarkable happened:
She attracted higher-quality clients who valued her expertise
Her profit margins became healthy and sustainable
She could afford to invest in better tools and training
She hired a virtual assistant to handle admin tasks
She took her first proper holiday in two years
Her stress levels dropped dramatically
Most importantly, Sarah’s business became truly profitable and scalable for the first time.
Your Next Steps: Stop Working for Free
If you’ve recognised yourself in this pricing mistake, don’t panic. You’re not alone, and it’s completely fixable. Here’s what to do right now:
Start tracking your time immediately. Use a simple app or even a notebook, but track everything for the next 30 days.
Audit your business costs. List every expense, no matter how small. You’ll be surprised what you’ve been absorbing instead of pricing for.
Calculate your real hourly investment. Once you see the full picture, you’ll understand why your current pricing isn’t working.
Commit to valuing your time. Your expertise, experience, and time are valuable. Your pricing should reflect that reality.
Sign up for our Newsletter. Where I share the literal step-by-step guide on exactly how to do this.
The Bottom Line
Underestimating your true costs isn’t just a pricing mistake—it’s a business sustainability issue. Every hour you work for less than your worth is an hour stolen from your future growth, your family time, and your peace of mind.
Your business should fund your life, not drain it. And that starts with pricing that reflects the true value and cost of what you deliver.
Ready to Master Your Pricing Once and For All?
If you’re tired of being busy but broke, if you’re ready to build a pricing strategy that actually supports your business goals, then I want to invite you to learn more about our Price+Package=Profit Formula course.
This comprehensive program runs just twice per year and has helped hundreds of business owners develop bespoke, highly profitable pricing strategies tailored to their unique needs and goals. We guide you step-by-step through the process of calculating your true costs, positioning your value, and pricing with confidence.
CLICK HERE to join our priority list and be the first to know when enrollment opens.
Don’t let another month go by where you’re working harder than your highest-paid employee but earning less than minimum wage. Your expertise is valuable. Your time is precious. It’s time your pricing reflected that truth.
Coming up next in this series: Pricing Mistake #2 – Competing on Price Alone (And Why It’s the Fast Track to Failure). Subscribe to our blog to never miss a crucial insight that could transform your business’s profitability.
What’s your biggest challenge with calculating your true costs?
Share in the comments below—I read and respond to every one, and your question might help other business owners avoid this costly mistake.
Launching a startup is an exhilarating journey filled with dreams of growth and success. To navigate this path effectively, startup founders must rely on data-driven decision-making. Key metrics provide invaluable insights into the health and progress of your startup, helping you make informed choices, allocate resources wisely, and drive sustainable growth. Let’s delve into the essential metrics every startup should measure and explore how to gather this vital data.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Why Measure: CAC reveals how much it costs to acquire each new customer. This metric is crucial for evaluating the efficiency of your marketing and sales efforts.
How to Gather Data: Calculate the total costs spent on marketing and sales (including salaries, advertising, software, etc.) over a specific period and divide it by the number of customers acquired during that period.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
Why Measure: CLTV estimates a customer’s total revenue throughout their relationship with your business. It helps you understand the long-term value of each customer.
How to Gather Data: Calculate the average purchase value per customer and multiply it by the average customer lifespan (when a customer remains engaged with your business).
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
Why Measure: MRR provides a predictable and steady revenue stream, especially for subscription-based startups. It’s a fundamental metric for tracking revenue stability.
How to Gather Data: Sum up the recurring revenue from all active subscriptions or monthly contracts.
Churn Rate
Why Measure: The churn rate measures the percentage of customers who stop using your product or service. It’s essential for understanding customer satisfaction and retention.
How to Gather Data: Divide the number of customers lost during a specific period by the number of customers at the beginning.
Burn Rate
Why Measure: Burn rate calculates how quickly your startup spends its available funds. It helps determine your runway—the time until you run out of money.
How to Gather Data: Subtract monthly expenses from total monthly revenue to determine how much cash your startup is burning through.
Conversion Rate
Why Measure: Conversion rate indicates the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as signing up or purchasing. It’s a critical metric for optimising your website or app.
How to Gather Data: Divide the number of conversions (desired actions) by the total number of visitors and multiply by 100 to get the conversion rate percentage.
Viral Coefficient
Why Measure: For startups with viral potential, this metric quantifies the organic growth driven by existing users through referrals.
How to Gather Data: Track how many new users each existing user brings in. If each user brings in more than one new user, your startup has the potential for viral growth.
Gross Margins
Why Measure: Gross margins indicate how efficiently your startup produces goods or delivers services. It’s crucial for understanding profitability.
How to Gather Data: Subtract the cost of goods sold (COGS) from total revenue, then divide by total revenue and multiply by 100 to get the gross margin percentage.
Runway
Why Measure: Runway is how long your startup can operate before running out of funds. It helps you plan and secure additional funding if needed.
How to Gather Data: Divide the current cash reserves by the monthly burn rate to determine how many months your startup has until funds run out.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Why Measure: NPS measures customer satisfaction and loyalty, indicating whether customers will likely refer your startup to others.
How to Gather Data: Send out surveys to customers asking how likely they are to recommend your product or service to others, typically on a scale of 0-10.
Data-Driven Success
Measuring these key metrics isn’t just a choice for startups—it’s necessary. These numbers clearly show your startup’s performance, allowing you to adjust strategies, allocate resources, and foster sustainable growth. In the age of information, data-driven insights are the compass that guides startups toward success. By gathering and analysing these metrics, you’ll be better equipped to make informed decisions, weather challenges, and lead your startup to the forefront of your industry. Remember, data isn’t just numbers; it’s the roadmap to realising your startup’s full potential.
I’m often shocked when I ask business owners the last time they put their prices up?
It’s very rarely
Recently…
It’s infrequently
in the past 12 months
And sometimes
they can’t even remember it was that long ago!
I just don’t get it!
You pay more at the pump almost EVERY time you fill up with fuel. Your groceries, your clothes shopping, your weekend away – EVERYTHING else in your life has gone up recently, and yet when it comes to raising your fee’s there’s a vague look and tumbleweed rather than a definitive YES!
In today’s episode, we unpick the cost of not putting your prices up, and share 14 different pricing strategies YOU can implement TODAY across your business to begin to generate more revenue and more profit!
Putting your prices up
For me, there are at least 3 rules when it comes to raising your prices:
Do it NOW
Review it REGULARLY
Continue to put them up regularly also!
The simple answer is, rarely do business owners put their prices up enough, or often enough. There is this innate FEAR of ‘losing’ business, which either prevents them from doing it or when they do, still not charging what they SHOULD be charging for the value they deliver!
Then, when they finally do it, they do it nervously, almost apologetically, often blaming something else (Government, Recension, Brexit, COVID) rather than simply doing it because you’re worth it.
And finally, once it’s done, we quickly see a multitude of Sales and Discounts under the pretense of offering added value but simply as another means of apology for having raised the price!
(Sound familiar?)
In this #ADDAZERO Podcast episode, we share no less than 14 different pricing strategies, for you to consider, review, and introduce to YOUR business
A typical household in the UK spends over £2,500 each month. But in the run up to Christmas our spending habits change dramatically.
To begin with we buy a lot more! A typical household spends over £800 extra in December.
The increase in our spending reveals a lot about what we get up to around Christmas.
It won’t come as a surprise to learn that we spend a lot more on going out, eating food and drinking alcohol. We also of course spend money buying gifts for our family and friends.
How much more do we spend in December compared to a typical month?
Food + 20%
Alcohol +30%
Gifts + 85%
How has our spending at Christmas changed over time?
The most popular Christmas presents from over the years are now seen as classics of their time: Rubik’s cubes, BMX bikes and Tamagotchis.
Others seem to be timeless. When the original Star Wars film was released more than 30 years ago, the Millennium Falcon cost around £20. Fast forward to The Rise of Skywalker in 2019 and the toy is still in the bestseller lists at around £75.
But the way we buy things is changing. The value of online shopping has nearly doubled over the past five years. It now accounts for £1 in every £6 we spend.
And new events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday mean we spend more in November too, particularly as many shops have moved from one-day to week-long events to tempt us to buy gifts earlier.
So, I’ve put together 21 Ideas to help you Dominate the Festive Season
In nearly every retail sector, the holidays are a huge boost to the year’s sales. But how do you stand out from the crowd when every business is fighting for consumers’ attention? Even if your NOT in the retail sector!
Start promotion early (your already VERY late)
Some stores literally start putting up Christmas items for sale in July. That can be frustrating for people who feel pressure during the holidays. No one wants to feel that kind of pressure for half a year.
Think of ways your early holiday promotion can be helpful to the customer so that the holidays are less stressful. For example, you could make it easy for people to create “wish lists” or put things on layaway (an old practice that has made a bit of a comeback in some industries).
You could offer a service where you help them with products or services for their holiday parties, rewarding them for starting early but not forcing them to finalise specifics until closer to the date.
However, subtle in-store marketing is key; no one wants to see Santa next to Halloween decorations.
Spread the love and promote other local businesses
Join up with other willing local businesses to promote each other’s sales and services. It might be as easy as tossing a few coupons or sales information in the customer’s shopping bag. Or, you might offer reduced prices or rewards when customers shop at participating businesses.
Even better, partner with a business whose product or service ties into what you offer. That provides a real service to your customer. For example, if you are a catering service, perhaps you could partner with a cleaning service and advertise it as helping customers with their Christmas parties before, during, and after.
Reward your top customers
The holidays are a time to give gifts, and you can do the same for your most loyal customers (learn more about how to retain customers here). Offer them deeper sales and savings, extra perks, or even open the doors of your business outside of regular hours so they can have a personalised shopping session.
Help word-of-mouth advertising along
If you have local websites or bloggers that talk about your industry, connect with them months before the holiday and see if you can partner with them. They could review your products, obviously, but it would be even better if you could make it a win for them (help them grow their readership and traffic).
For example, offer up a blog contest prize that can be redeemed in your shop. Bloggers have to comply with laws and inform their readers of reviews that they’ve been asked to give, but it is still a way to get a real person talking favourably about what you have to offer.
In a digital world, paper stands out
The holiday season is a time when many people find the onslaught of promotional emails to be absolutely overwhelming. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday–all come with a wave of emails from every mailing list a person is on.
How do you get your promotion to stand out? How to you even communicate with customers at the holidays and get them to see it?
When everything is digital, the personal and physical object stands out. Send real holiday cards or postcards. Send actual coupons and gift cards. Nostalgia for printed photos and media is growing; tap into it.
Create a shopping event
Whether you decided to make the event last through most of the holiday shopping season, or on special sale days, you can turn your store into a go-to location. Local musicians, mince pies, mulled wine –whatever you choose to do, make the act of coming to your store a reward. Have giveaways to reward those who come.
Create kid-friendly events
Parents are always looking for events that they can take their kids to and hosting a free event of that nature at your shop is a great way to get parents in the door. Have colouring contests, photo booths, cookie decorating–whatever is appropriate for your location. Make it easy for parents to do some shopping while their kids are having holiday fun.
Consider pet-friendly events
If your business is in an industry that would allow for it, create an event for pet owners. In 2018, pet owners spent almost £34.5 billion on their pets. For some, their pets are their kids. Consider an “best dressed dog” contest, or a “tackiest festive dog costume” contest. Give away dog treats with every purchase to anyone who comes in with a dog.
If you’re giving away prizes throughout the holiday season, make one geared for dog owners.
Make your store friendly for the non-shopper
Create an area in your store where children can relax while parents’ shop. A book corner, with tables and toys, works great. Or, create an area where people who are tired of shopping but are with someone who isn’t can take a seat and relax. Offer holiday treats or punch.
Capitalise on holiday traditions
There are many holiday traditions, and your marketing can capitalise on them. Instead of the “12 Days of Christmas”, you might have twelve days of sales. Depending on your industry and customer base, you will want to gear your promotions around the most attractive traditions for your audience.
Help your customers make a memory
Bring Santa to your store and set up an area for kids to have their photo taken with him. Create a selfie area for shoppers. Tap into the “maker” movement and create an area where shoppers can make an ornament or holiday keepsake. Offer prizes for those who post photos of these activities to social media.
If you’re using themes for various sales and promotions, tie these memories into the themes.
Give away tools that help customers
Offer your customers free promotional items that would be useful at during the holidays. You might have a planning guide or notepad printed to help people complete all of the holiday tasks of the season.
Perhaps you’ll give customers “letter to Santa” stationery and an envelope, already addressed and stamped, offering to put it in the outgoing mail, so their children can write Santa a letter and parents don’t have to fuss. Calendars are also useful but think outside the box and consider what item would be most attractive to your customer base.
This takes planning, ahead of the holiday season. Consider all of the stressors and challenges you face, and what kind of tool or giveaway could help. Get started months before so that when the holidays arrive, you have your items ready to go.
Make customer referrals easy
Personal referrals are the best word-of-mouth advertising you can get. We trust our friends and families. Offer special discounts or a free product when a customer refers someone to your shop during the holidays. Incentives are key, here.
Help out your local artists
Artists and crafters are trying to earn a living in your community. Consider helping them out by displaying their artwork or featuring it on some of your marketing materials (with permission and payment) with identifying artist information.
Promoting and offering the works of local artists and crafters can be a promotional point in and of itself, particularly for the buy local movement that continues to grow.
Have a post-holiday event
Plan an event after the holidays where you thank your customers for supporting your business. Depending on how exclusive you want to be, the event could be a general invite, or for your best customers. Whether it’s a dinner at a local restaurant or an after-hours social, it’s a great way to show appreciation to customers outside of the sometimes-over-filled holiday season.
A party in January is a bit more memorable than one from the often-packed months of November and December.
Give a portion of your sales to a local charity
Increasingly, customers want to spend in a way that makes a positive impact on the world. Choose a local charity or two, and let customers know that a percentage of the proceeds will be donated. Be sure to promote this in your regular advertising, and to let the charity know as well so that they can alert their own mailing lists.
Make returns super easy, and be public about it
While it isn’t pleasant to think about, some of the holiday sales you make will result in people coming back to return their gift. Small businesses often think they can’t compete with Big stores because of their return policy, but the truth is that some of them actually make returns tricky for holiday shoppers.
Create a customer-friendly return policy, and begin advertising before the holiday season kicks in, as well as letting your customers know in-store and at purchase time. Making returns easy is its own kind of service, and you want to be sure you advertise it like any other.
Spread the holiday cheer throughout the year
Consider having a holiday in July (or some other month). Promote it during the regular holiday season, and consider tie-ins. For example, you could create a punch card for regular holiday shopping that you reward during the off-holiday season.
If you have a store window, use it
The art of window dressing is still an important one. No matter what kind of window or display area you have, you need to be making the most of it. This is not the time to “set it and forget it.” A shop whose window stays the same all year round, except for a strand of holiday lights in December, does not entice shoppers.
Show off your products and tell a story about your business through your display. Think of it as a further extension of the narrative you’ve wrapped your brand in. Connect it to themes and any social media or print marketing you already have running. Consider a contest that lets a winning customer design your window display in January.
Be sure to have a fresh window display up by mid-November and change it out several times during the holiday season.
Pamper your customers
While it may not be appropriate for all small businesses, consider creating a “pampering station” where customers can get a quick massage, a manicure, or some other related service.
Not every customer wants to be overloaded with drinks and food, and this kind of approach meets the physical needs of weary shoppers. Partner with a local spa or salon and see what you can come up with that benefits everyone involved.
Make shopping a fun game
Create an in-store scavenger hunt that leads customers through your store in search of listed items. Not only is it fun for customers (particularly if there are prizes or savings for anyone who finds everything on the list), but it helps show of your products better.
You might choose to do this every day during regular shopping hours or host a fun evening event and turn it into something larger. Perhaps you’ll have separate games for children and for adults, or partner with other businesses and expand the hunt to several stores. Make sure to share photos or video on social media and make it a local movement.
Whatever the case, people enjoy games and will come to a shop they might not have been to before just to participate.
But Jay I’m not in retail?
GREAT, then there is even MORE opportunity for you to stand out and be seen. Dr’s, Dentist, Physiotherapists, Lawyers, Accountants, and many other serviced based businesses only have to do a fraction of what retail shop front businesses have to do to stand out because EVERYBODY else uses it as a excuse to do nothing!
Be CREATIVE, and if you really are a Bah Humbug and can’t think of anything, go ask any 6,7 or 8 year old what a cool Christmas might look like and be amazed by their ingenuity!
In summary, the trick to promotion during the holiday season is to be personal and customer centric. Promotions that help you build a relationship with your customers are the best way to stand out from the crowd.
Wishing you and ALL you serve a Cool Yule!
I’d LOVE to hear your feedback, so whilst you are here, please drop me a comment below.
And, whilst your doing that, simply click on the social media links and share this across your own network as well and help somebody else benefit from the content also 🙂
Whilst there is an abundance of information available on SUPER SUCCESSFUL businesses, with articles, news feeds, books, magazines, podcasts all brimming with news of the next ‘over night success’, I’ve spent the last 3.5 years studying businesses that fail!
I’m not referring to the local corner shop or yet another car valeting company that is no more, I’m talking about brands which used to dominate the British High street, but are no more! (Companies like, Toys r Us, Woolworth, Comet) you see, I learnt a long time ago, you will always learn far more from failing that you ever will from winning!
Think about that for a second!
When was the last time everything was going exceptionally well, the enquiries were flooding in and you were struggling to keep up with demand, did you STOP and spend time analysing WHY it was happening? You simply don’t. You get on with servicing the current demand, enjoy the moment and celebrate accordingly.
No, it’s only when things don’t go as well as we had planned do we stop and begin to frantically ask WHY?
So what can we learn from studying failure? What lessons can be gleaned and used to prevent the same fate be falling ourselves, that we may learn sufficiently that the opposite may be the result?
LOTS.
You see, whilst there is far fewer people happy to share with you the failure within their business, the information is harder to come by and often more scattered causing us to have to really dig around to pull the information together. SO MUCH information can be learned if only we ever thought to look.
Over the past 3-4 years I’ve studied almost 150 high street brands of yesteryear to learn what caused their downfall And the results were SHOCKING!
Whilst there were a hundred and one reasons (otherwise known as excuses) given as why the company had failed, it boiled down to 2 fundamental flaws which ultimately determined they were destined to fail!
From this I began working on what actions could, should they have taken to prevent this, and remain the high street brands we all knew and loved. It’s taken me well over a year to compile the results sufficiently to formulate a program to which business owners can follow to mitigate the same fate which has resulted in launching our #ADDAZERO Business Challenge.
One element which fundamentally caused businesses to fail was where the emphasis was placed between People, Systems and Processes!
The other element can be identified by acknowledging EVERY business can be segmented into 8 parts. It is of fundamental importance that every business owner acknowledges each of these 8 parts and the relationship each has each other. More than 65% business failures could be identified as a failure to acknowledge the impact change either within or impacting one part of the business had on the other parts. The moment the equilibrium was upset, a silo mentality could soon be observed, where parts not affected failed to amend accordingly to compensate for the change, ultimately resulting in an unsustainable business model and eventual failure.
Our #ADDAZERO Business Challenge has been devised to aid business owners in 3 ways:
Ensure the business has a stable foundation to prevent cracks from appearing as the business moves from a growth to SCALE business plan.
Identify the additional requirements on which to build a SCALE business model without affecting the foundations.
Identify the final additional resources required should the business owner wish to replicate, franchise or exit the business.
What I’ve also found is that whilst ALL these aspects are required, the reluctance of business owners of either established or sizeable businesses to return to STEP 1 even if only to ensure they have everything crossed off, and their desire to move to parts 2 and 3 prior to fully checking and implementing part 1, resulting in poor results and a volatile growth plan!
This is by no means a ‘quick fix, overnight success story’ but it does ensure you have a stable business capable of significant and sustainable growth without risk of going or growing broke, and with the stability to be unaffected by change by having the flexibility within both people, systems and processes to ‘ride any storm’ and come out the other side victorious.
To determine if your ready to begin the #ADDAZERO Business Challenge, simply click below to access our e-book which you will require to complete and return in order to establish if you and your business are ready to #ADDAZERO!
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