The Importance of Business Planning for the Closing Seasons

By Josef Kefas Sheehama

The holiday season is a particular instance when you might have a lot of different demands on your time, both professionally and personally. Before you know it, you’re halfway through December and the Christmas shut-down period is just around the corner.

In order to really switch off from your business it pays to do a little forward planning first. Just because you’re taking a well-earned break doesn’t mean your business is closed forever. This will keep your reach from dropping whilst maintaining online visibility. Planning for the December holiday period, by default, is very important to manage expectations and keep staff, customers, and suppliers happy. The end-of-year rush is such a massive opportunity for businesses. It’s a chance to lock in a successful year; build a base of customers for the future and take your efforts to the next level. One of the most important steps you can take this holiday season is to nail your social media marketing. Your social channels will build momentum and drive customers to your business. We all struggle to identify the right types of gifts for people in our lives. Help your community by taking the guesswork out of this process. Create gift guides you can share on social media. Sprinkle your own products in, but don’t be afraid to share products from other businesses you love.

Furthermore, there is a good chance that most of your customers and suppliers will close down over the holiday period. Their closing and opening dates could have an impact on your business’s closing and opening dates, and will definitely have an impact on your deliverable dates. No business owner wants to let customers down when it comes to delivering goods or services on time. Have you received closing and opening date notifications from your customers and suppliers yet? If not, it may be an idea to contact them. Once you know when your customers and suppliers are planning to close and open, you can plan for your closing and opening dates as well.

This will give your customers time to plan ahead and ensure that they have stocked up as required, and to assist you in completing agreed-upon services to them.

Cash flow management

Let’s face it, December is a short month. This means hoping that you get paid earlier so that you can also pay everyone earlier. Sometimes, however, things don’t go as planned and all it takes is for one customer to pay as per normal which could place limits on the availability of cash flow that you have. You will need to build up some sort of reserve during the year to cover paying expenses early before you have received money from your customers. Paying staff normal salaries and wages is a priority. And then there are staff bonuses that also need to be considered. It is very important that plans are put in place to ensure that salaries and wages can be paid.

Ensure suppliers are paid

If you can’t get materials to make your products, or if you don’t have access to subscriptions to supply your services, then your company will not exist for very long. It is therefore important to keep your suppliers happy, and your account payments up to date. If you are in charge of managing payments and will be on holiday, settle accounts before closing for the holidays. As mentioned above, there’s nothing quite like a phone call from a supplier about late payment when you are on holiday. Take the time to plan ahead and inform suppliers about when payments will be made so that you can have a peaceful break, void of late supplier phone calls.

Open Reserve Account

A sinking account is an account in which you regularly put money in so that you can gradually save up for expenses. Even emergencies can be planned for with a sinking account. You might not know what the emergency will be or when, but life happens and you can be ready. If you regularly add money to an emergency sinking fund, you’ll probably have what you need when the unexpected happens.

Pay your bank obligation

Your relationship with your bank can only be as strong as your financial details. If you don’t know what is going on with your company’s finances, it will be difficult for your bank to know and to provide you with the services you need. Communication is key to building and maintaining a solid banking relationship. That means keeping the bank up-to-date on any changes in your company. The sooner you let the bank know of any issues, the sooner you can work together to come up with a solution.

Encourage your Customers

This holiday season, it’s likely many of the customers who buy from you will be interacting with your business for the first time. It doesn’t have to be the last time. What are you doing to encourage them to come back? You have a powerful opportunity to turn holiday sales into return customers. You just need a strategy to get them back. Consider which of these tactics is most effective for your business, and how it can be deployed to tempt customers back.

Ensure that you have sufficient stock to start your planned January 2024

There is nothing more frustrating than coming back from a lovely holiday break and being ready to hit the ground running, and not being able due to a lack of stock. If you planned correctly, the stock needed for January jobs would have been delivered in December before you closed, or could have been delivered as soon as you opened. This does mean that there is a payment required to the supplier before you potentially receive payment from the customer, so it may be a good idea to get some sort of a deposit upfront so that you can pay the suppliers. This will also avoid your staff sitting around idle whilst waiting for stock to arrive.

In conclusion, businesses often neglect the importance of planning for the December holidays which leads to unnecessary stress, and customer dissatisfaction. If you take the above comments into account, your path to a restful holiday should however be made easier to achieve.

Therefore, by setting goals and planning your first steps out of the block in 2024, you’ll head into the New Year with more focus and purpose.