It’s likely that you caught at least part of a football game this weekend, but did you know that you were also gaining insights that you can use to grow your small business? It’s true! You can learn a lot from football and really benefit from applying this knowledge to your next business promotion. And if you're going to grow your small business, you really need to check out our free inventory software. It'll help you make time for other things rather than constantly keeping stock. Signup here.
#1- Know the Competition. If you truly want to be the best, you need to know who you’re up against. Scout out your competition and see what promotions, advertising and other incentives they have going. Yes, you want to be creative and come up with your own marketing, but what if your idea is similar, but not as appealing as what your competitors are offering? You could end up driving your customers right to them.
#2- Be Prepared. For a football team that means hours on the practice field before the season even starts. While we’re not suggesting that you need to spend hours in the hot sun running routes and hitting tackling dummies, it’s a good idea to do some trial runs on any promotion that you are thinking of investing in. Run the idea by a few friends and get some feedback before you order hundreds of fliers. Before hosting a large party, have a small get together to gauge customer interest and whether or not a crowd in the store really translates into more sales. One way to gauge interest is through inventory turnover. We've made that easy using our free inventory software.
#3- Remember, Not Every Play Is Going to Result in a Touchdown. You’re not going to score big with every promotion that you run. Some campaigns will do better than others, and sometimes it will be entirely out of your control. Having good data will be important to measuring each campaign's success. Again, we've built sales reports and the like inside of our free inventory software which will make this measurement a breeze!
#4- Don’t Give Up. Often There’s Still a Chance to Score Some Points. Just because you didn’t hit the end zone on the first try, that doesn’t mean that you can’t gain something from the play. Look for the benefits that you can glean from any promotion that you try. Sometimes it will be just the experience and a newfound knowledge of what doesn’t work, but more often than not you will pick up a few new customers or at least garner some interest from the community.
#5- Celebrate Your Success. When a campaign does score big, reward yourself with your own version of the end zone dance. Yes, you need to get ready and focus on the next play, but you can take a moment to celebrate a winning promotion. It can be great for team morale and really motivate everyone to keep playing hard.
Can football teach us anything about inventory management? Absolutely! If football teams used Stockpile, they’d know where every helmet, jersey, pad, etc was at any given time. They’d be able to track items so easily that they would never have to waste time searching for the stuff they need and be more prepared as a result of using our free inventory software. Seems like some of the teams could really use that extra time to create some new plays, don’t you think?
