How to Win at Christmas Sales when you're a service based Business

Do you feel like you always miss out on sales at Christmas time because you run a service based business that doesn't have any products to sell for Christmas.  Many people are also winding down for the holidays and spending all their time doing Christmas shopping making it a slow season.

Here's 3 great techniques that you can use to enable your business to shine over the Christmas period when you don't have products.

1. Gift Vouchers

Create prepaid vouchers that people can redeem for your services.  Voila, you have just turned your services into a marketable product.

There's a numerous ways you can do this.  You could whip up some vouchers or buy some from your newsagent.  However, you don't want to come across as just flogging a product to increase your sales...it's Christmas. 

Here's some ideas on how build rapport and loyalty to get more out of your vouchers than just sales:

• Sell them to your best and most loyal customers who are always telling their friends about your business (or who want to show their friends just how good it is).  By doing a great job for their friends, you most loyal clients become even more loyal and will buy more for other friends next year.
• Write a personal message on the voucher.  That way, people are more likely to buy because they know that you care about helping them to give a nice present.
• Sell a book of vouchers for a slightly discounted rate.  If you sell a book of 5, they'll give it to 5 people and you'll hopefully get 5 new clients - all while having people thank you for your offering.

2. Christmas Specials

According to ASIC, Australians spend roughly $1,079 at Christmas with many loading up the credit card.  If your business is slowing down, it means that people may simply be redirecting their money to buying gifts.

If it's slowing down, why not run a Christmas special?  It could be a small service offering and for only a specified date range.

There's 3 great angles that this works on:

1. Your regular clients who are short on money will happily book in - because they're getting a discount!
2. People who've wanted to book in but wanted a cheaper price to try out your services will book in.
3. Most importantly, it gives you something to market.  Something to put in front of people and say "hey, I made this discount, will you consider using my services".  More on this in the next section.

Test it out and see if it works for your business.

3. Marketing

Christmas is the time when people expect to be marketed to.  We WANT to be marketed to.  I love scuba diving and I WANT the scuba diving company to send me their best specials so I can show my wife what a great special it is and that she gets my not-so subtle hints on what would make a great Christmas present.

So if you are going to sell Christmas Vouchers OR to are having a Christmas Special, you've just created yourself a marketable event that you can:

• Email to people
• Put up on social media (Facebook, Google+ etc) 
• Put up on your website. 

Having something that is marketable is MUCH more powerful than putting up a picture of Santa on Facebook and wishing people Merry Christmas.

Marketing gives people a reason to visit your website - because you're now helping them to buy a gift or get a discount.  Even telling them your Christmas operating hours is helping them to pre-plan their time before and after your holidays!

How BookingTimes does Vouchers

Maybe you'd like to see how BookingTimes lets businesses sell vouchers and gift vouchers at Christmas through their website and how people redeem them.