In Blog 103 I talked about the Anniversary Sale Re-Cap. In this blog I want to talk about how to execute events properly.

To draw people into our department we bought a Pop a Shot. This was a basketball game that was timed and the goal was to score as many points in that time. It was really fun.The game had a speaker to let you know when time was running out so it wasn’t real quiet either. The store  approved it though so we rolled with it. The commotion brought a lot of attention to our area which was great.

New product

This is Johnny…the deep voice on the other end would say. He was my Dexter rep and one of the best. Johnny pitched a washable product one day with a contest to go along with it. The buyer with the best sales and the salesperson with the best sales would each win a luxury trip.

Johnny was a great rep. he always came in to do reorders for our growing business. Dexter was a brand that had really comfortable basic casual styles. We decided to do a “never out program” and our business exploded. He always gave great advice and we developed a great friendship through it all.

For this product he suggested a display with washing machines to grab attention to these leather items that you could actually wash. They were a hit. We backed them up so we had plenty of stock and they sold like hotcakes. The displays drew people into our department as well because people were wondering why we had them over there.

Results

Our department had the top sales at the end of the contest so I won two tickets to Hawaii. A salesperson in another store had the top sales for the salesperson award.

The key on how to execute events properly is to bring them into the department with a compelling display, make sure your salespeople are educated in the product and have plenty of stock. Johnny was great in giving educational seminars on his product and did that for the washable program too. It was a really fun event and even better when I was having Mai Tai’s on a beach later that summer.