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Here's the thing: it'll quilt out

I recently decided to make a quilt. I’d been thinking about it for a while, and with the easy distractions of the internet and being able to work from my home, I decided that the manual, physical distraction of making something myself would be good for me in the evenings.

There’s something soothing about slowing hand-stitching hexagons together, piece by piece, that you just don’t get from screen time or social media.

And I love that I’m working on a project that is purely for me. It’s not for sale, it’s not a gift, it’s not for clients or my partner or my family. It’s for me. My taste, my colours, my shapes – just for me.

This quilt, currently still in small pieces stored under my sofa as I work on it slowly, has already given me so much.

A big part is the connection with crafty friends. One friend in particular, Kelly, has been named my Quilting Godmother, and has helped me to learn the steps I need to take. I’ve only sewed buttons and bits for the past 15 years, so her wisdom and awesome teaching has been a blessing to help get me started on the road of quilt-making.

I recently met up with her and took some hexagons to show her, to make sure I was still on track. I’d been putting them together, but worrying that I wasn’t seeing something that would trip me up later. Is this corner tight enough? Have I made this too tight? Will the colours work? Perhaps this sense of questioning everything you’re doing resonates…

Kelly kindly looked at my hexagons, told me they were fine (even good!), so I told her I had been worrying.

And then she told me my favourite new mantra:

It’ll quilt out.

She told me, once I’ve pieced everything together, done things I don’t yet understand about batting and backing, the small mistakes won’t matter. They’ll even add to the charm.

Here’s the thing:

Maybe today, Black Friday, the start of the busiest weekend and weeks of the year, you need to remember that it’ll quilt out.

What are the things that matter? Focus on them.

Ask yourself:

Here's the thing: incentives

When we think about incentives, we often think about money. That to incentivise a customer to buy, we have to offer a discount. Or to incentivise a member of staff to work late or quicker, we need to offer them a bonus or overtime pay.

In a culture so bound by monetary value, it’s no surprise that this is the case. Want something delivered today? Sure, you just have to pay for it. Want to make the sale immediately? No problem, just remove your profit margin.

I could write for hours on our relationships with money, and especially on the ‘need to earn more and spend less’ mentality that I often hear from clients. I really could, but I’ll save it for another time.

Because right now, on the cusp of Christmas and Black Friday (a week today), I want to suggest that encouraging customers to buy is not simply about 15% off, or buy one get one free.

I was talking to a client the other day, and I asked, ‘What incentive can you offer the customer?’ She immediately went to discounts and giveaways, which made me realise that that’s still the first reaction to so many people who want to boost sales in the short term.

But let’s just pause for a moment.

There are lots of reasons customers decide to buy a particular item at a particular time. There are many millions of pounds spent on trying to discover customer motivations and how to capitalise on them, but we don’t need that research. We already know.

Customers buy because:

They like a product (for themselves or someone else)
They trust the vendor/maker/seller
It matches their value perception of the product
It’s the right time for them to buy it (they were just thinking about something like that for baby niece Lela, and this fits right in)
There’s a time limit on the availability of the product (in essence, FOMO)
And yes, because there’s a money-saving opportunity

Customers are moved to make a purchase based on one or all of those reasons, or variations of them. And every customer has their own beliefs and values that make them different. Some customers are generous towards others, so it’s very easy for them to make a decision to purchase a gift, but much harder for them to decide they’ll buy for themselves. Some customers are the exact opposite.

And I say all this knowing that Black Friday is a good opportunity to boost sales, and that sometimes a discount or a giveaway boosts engagement and results in sales anyway. You can make good, strong business decisions to offer a monetary incentive, but let me just offer some thoughts before you do:

Do you always offer discounts and giveaways to boost sales? Doing this regularly may de-value your brand. Save discounts for special occasions, and be creative about giveaways. Make them generous and focused on a particular goal (eg getting rid of old stock, or building your email subscriber list).
Do the customers who are buying your discounted product also buy from you at full price, or will they in the future? If your discount attracts people who only buy from you when your products are on offer, it might be a sign that you need to add in a lower price point (that still offers you at least 25% profit).
Which products can take the discount? Both in terms of profit margin and sales status – bestsellers often don’t need to be discounted to be popular, and are more likely to be de-valued by a big discount.
Can you save discounts for special occasions? Like twice-yearly sales, or birthday sales, or launch discounts. You may find it better to offer discounts in a strategic, planned way, rather than simply as a push to get people to buy because it’s slow for you right now.

I’m not saying never offer discounts – just be confident they’re the right thing for your business right now.

And if you need a few ideas to offer non-financial incentives, here are some goodies:

Buy now, while stocks last! A great one for Christmas, and definitely motivated by FOMO.
Don’t end up in the dog-house this Christmas (buy one of our products instead). A good one for targeting men at Christmas.
Here’s something extra-special that’ll suit you really well. Customers need reminding that you understand them, and understand what they’re looking for.
How can you even resist something so beautiful / cute / useful?! Especially good for baby and pet products – things that tug at the heartstrings. Or remind customers how well you solve a problem they’re having.
You can get this by tomorrow if you order now. Be explicit about your turnaround times, especially in the run up to Christmas. Speed sells, especially for desperate customers.
Similarly: you can get this sent to a friend tomorrow, and it’ll be gift wrapped. Mid-December marketing.

Incentives are basically anything that completes this sentence: Buy now, because…

You can finish it however you want! You can use whatever little extras you like. You can also simply point out how awesome you are. ‘Buy now because our customer service is great’. ‘Buy now because this is a bestseller and we know people love it’. The options are really endless.

But I encourage you to see incentives differently than simply money off.

What’s your experience? What has worked for you? What hasn’t? Where do you get stuck? I’d love to hear!

Here's the thing: think long-term for Christmas

It’s a funny time of year, November.

You might be finding, like several of my clients, that Christmas sales are slow so far, that Christmas is following a pattern of getting later each year. That, perhaps, customers are now expecting Black Friday in all its dark, looming glory.

I remember saying, back in April, that it’s still possible to launch great products, talk about them, and sell them for Christmas, without all the forward planning that’s expected and primed by journalists and bigger companies. I still believe that, though time is kind of at its last now. (Translation: if you want to sell something for Christmas, you should probably have it live and finished now.)

In that post from earlier in the year, and with much of my work, I aim to help clients and readers juggle priorities, often between short-term, deal-with-it-right-now, get-the-sales-in stuff and long-term stuff of dreams. I often talk about the difference between urgent and important (more on this below), which we tend to muddle up in the day to day.

At Christmas, over the coming weeks, it usually becomes purely about the short-term. It’s time to just get the orders out, just keep on top of stock levels, just make and sell – no long-term planning, nothing particularly strategic, save for the odd strategic coffee run.

I get that, and I encourage it. Please avoid trying to write your five year business planning in the next eight weeks!

But.

(You knew there was a but coming, right?)

But, I do truly encourage you to keep a little notebook to hand, or a spreadsheet open, to make a note of the things that happen each day during the Christmas sales period. A place to write down how sales are going, how many hours your and your staff did that day, how your stock levels are going, whether you were featured, whether you ran out of anything or encountered any disasters (from staff being sick to the postman turning up late to running out of printer ink).

Keeping records like this, making notes of the learnings as they happen, will help you to dissect more accurately what went well and what didn’t at Christmas. Past experience helps us to anticipate future experience, and knowing what you could do differently next year will help you infinitely.

I posted a little note about this of Facebook earlier in the week, and Betsy Benn made herself a snazzy notebook, which I’m sure she’d happily share, should you wish:

After @jenny_hyde post yesterday I made me one of these! Let me know if you’d like one!

A photo posted by Betsy Benn (@betsybenn) on Nov 12, 2015 at 5:00am PST

Here’s the thing:

Yes, get completely stuck into the day to day over Christmas. Focus purely on orders and keeping going.

But, out of the corner of one eye, in a little space in your heart, know that there is a whole future beyond Christmas that’s worth a little of your time.

Think of keeping notes as a way of sending messages to your future self. (You can pretend to be in Back To The Future if it helps…) “Ran out of wrapping paper.” “Supplier not picking up, and extended lead times.” “Staff member sick, so calling in the cavalry (mum).”

Whatever your experiences are, you’ll appreciate being able to read them back in black and white after Christmas, so that you can remember them accurately and make plans based on facts, as well as feelings.

A little note on urgent and important:

Take a black page or piece of paper
Divide it into four quarters
Across the top, mark the columns as ‘urgent’ and ‘not urgent’
Down the right hand side, mark the rows as ‘important’ and ‘not important’
You now have four segments to fit your to do list into:
- urgent and important
- urgent, not important (like replying to a Facebook message, or dealing with a sales call – it’s happening right now, but it’s not helping your business)
- important, not urgent (all the things that are going to make a difference to your business, but fall to them bottom of the list)
- not urgent and not important (most social media, or piddling about)

We tend to get caught up in what’s important, but the wiser businesswoman shifts her gaze to what’s important, and not urgent, because that is usually where the most value lies.

Wherever you’re at, whatever your Christmas plans, I wish you all the best in the coming weeks. I’ll be here, should you stumble or need a clear thought. And I hope you keep track of what you’re up to.

Here’s the thing:

Here’s the thing:

Enter The Forge