Ensuring Flawless Retail Store Execution for Father’s Day

Father’s Day is quickly approaching, and even with the impact of COVID-19 still reverberating through retail today, expectations for Father’s Day spending are higher than they’ve ever been. With over $17 billion in expected spending, and with many more planning to purchase gifts instead of spending at restaurants, retailers have a huge opportunity to capitalize on this peak sales period and not only boost sales, but show customers that they can safely handle high-traffic seasonal events.

While all retailers certainly have plans in place for executing Father’s Day promotions and sales on high-value products, now all of this has to be done alongside the added complexity of new safety regulations, curbside pickup, and cleaning procedures, all of which require work that store associates have to complete. Without a strategy to keep store associates working efficiently while accounting for all of these new tasks and activities, it’s inevitable that some tasks will go unfulfilled. This can quickly erode customer trust and loyalty during a time when they’re figuring out which places are safe and easy to shop at.

You can avoid many of these pitfalls by simplifying the process of executing in-store activities and streamlining how corporate, managers, and associates communicate with one another, creating a powerful customer experience and boosting sales.

Here are a couple strategies you can use to ensure quick and effective execution of Father’s Day promotions and initiatives:

1. Boost Store Associate Efficiency with Task Management

COVID-19 has created many new projects and initiatives for store associates to carry out. From new safety initiatives to curbside pickup to sanitization procedures, store associates have to balance a great deal of high-priority tasks, in addition to their regular workload. This makes holiday promotions more difficult to complete; with all of these new tasks, it’s easy for store associates to forget to execute new promotions or miss important details and execute promotions incorrectly.

With a real-time task management app, associates have a list of prioritized tasks at their fingertips, constantly updating in real time as new high-priority activities need to be completed. With this functionality, as well as the ability to receive immediate alerts and notifications, they can focus on the most impactful tasks, ensuring that safety initiatives are carried out, curbside pickup orders are fulfilled quickly, and Father’s Day promotions are set up quickly and correctly. These tools also make it easy to change or reassign tasks if need be; store managers can send instant updates to the relevant associates’ mobile devices in real time, along with any important notes or clarifications they need to carry out the promotion.

2. Simplify Communication with Real-Time Messaging

How efficient your organization’s communication is makes a huge difference to the execution of critical projects. If communication is done by email, or if managers have to find associates on the sales floor to provide instruction, it’s inevitable that delays will cause poor or inconsistent execution. Efficient execution relies on ease of communication between corporate, managers, and associates. If managers need clarification on the details of a Father’s Day promotion, or if associates have a question for their manager about how to set up a promotion, they should be able to do so quickly and without difficulty.

Real-time intelligent communication tools are helpful for making sure that the most relevant, up-to-date information is in the hands of your store managers and associates. With real-time intelligent communication tools, associates can quickly ask questions to clarify tasks, and managers can follow-up and check that critical tasks are taken care of. It also helps if these tools are specifically built for a retail environment, so messages are auditable and can be sent based on organizational hierarchy. This way, communication is useful but also secure and organized, ensuring that everybody only receives information that is relevant to them.

With COVID-19 making such a dramatic impact on retail today, the stakes of high-traffic holidays like Father’s Day are greater than ever before. With real-time task management and real-time intelligent communication tools, you can quickly and effectively execute Father’s Day promotions and sales, giving your customers what they need to celebrate with their families.

To learn more about how to flawlessly execute major holiday promotions and increase sales, check out our recent white paper, “Improving Retail Execution and Communication in Times of Uncertainty”.